Denver Colorado Blog

created by James Worthen

Random Entries

KTorrent, Linux's uTorrent Alternative

Feb 28th, 2007 - Subscribe
Keywords: utorrent, ktorrent, bit, torrent, bittorrent, comparison, review, linux, windows

KTorrent, Linux's uTorrent Alternative
by FrosT

Introduction
Recently converting over to Linux I have found that my favorite torrent program, uTorrent, is not supported by the Linux OS. This boggled my mind, and instead of using Wine for Linux, I went hunting for a new program that can be comparable to uTorrent for the Linux operating system and well I found one. KTorrent was the exact program I was looking for. Plain and simple plus very easy to configure! Honestly, if I had to choose between uTorrent and KTorrent, I would definitely choose KTorrent over uTorrent and here's why.

KTorrent's Ease of Use
KTorrent was very easy to use and configure. It gave you just the right amount of options to have total control of your torrents. uTorrent was also very easy to use and configure except it gave you a little too much options, and at times it seemed that some options did not work the way you wanted them to. Now it could just be the user, but with KTorrent when I set the Seeding ratio, I expect the torrent to stop seeding when this ratio is reached. I could never get uTorrent to stop seeding once that ratio was reached. But with KTorrent, I set that ratio to 1.5 and once it the 1.5 ratio, what did you know? KTorrent automatically marked the torrent as finished and stopped seeding! The other options are which ports to use for transfer and where to download files etc. which uTorrent does give you access to, but the way KTorrent has the options laid out make KTorrent remarkably easier and simpler to use than uTorrent.

Transfer Speeds of Torrents
When using uTorrent I would always wonder if I was getting the best speed out of that torrent and if my settings were a little bit off that would slow the torrent down. Not with KTorrent! Since I started using KTorrent I found that my speeds remain very high all the time without doing any special configuration. I have not even installed Peer Guardian on my new Linux system yet and KTorrent still works like a champ. I download everything a lot faster than I ever did because of the way KTorrent laid out the options and gave me the way to configure each port. Basically in every comparison KTorrent runs faster, and smoother with easy configurations than uTorrent ever would.

Ending Notes
When using Linux, I would highly suggest KTorrent over uTorrent with WINE. Due to the fact that KTorrent will provide you everything uTorrent does and than some, it should be an easily selection. No use in battling with WINE when you do not have to. As for windows users, uTorrent is probably your best bet of Bit Torrent software as I do not think KTorrent runs under Windows.

Comments: 6

Comments:

eadwine
on February 28th, 2007

A Windows port may be something in the future, but not at this point in time. Developers said they would "see after the release of KDE4".

Glad you like the program! It's a great piece of software indeed.

gdc
on March 08th, 2007

Sorry I didn't read the above but in regards to earlier matters... =p

I know there's a few more words and I will award for "whilst" +4

Jim: That was hot, you scored +50points in one freekin' sentence nice!
haha. I'll add some more words when I remember...

anonymous
on March 16th, 2007

As a newbie to linux and ktorrent use and performance, i definately support Mr kfrost article. Though i reckon the icons could be improved.......thats about all.

eadwine
on April 14th, 2007

Icons is likely KDE regulated, and could be set to different ones in the preferences of your KDE system

anonymous
on December 19th, 2007

how come ktorrent unpacked has 11.2 MB, whereas utorrent has less thank 1MB ?
not quite the same thing, just a valid alternative

anonymous
on January 14th, 2008

Then, not Than. Think "then" as time, "than" as choice. Rather have this THAN that.
sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.backup1, then
sudo kate /etc/apt/sources.list
(Dapper)