Deluge: A Bittorrent Client for Linux

Bittorrent has, within the past few years, really taken off as the successor to centralized peer to peer (P2P) networks. Instead of relying on a single person from which to download a file from, bittorrent instead allows the downloaders to have a part in the sharing. With bittorrent, even if I have not downloaded a complete file, as long as I have downloaded a complete "chunk" of the file, I am able to help people who have not yet downloaded that particular chunk. In this way, the load for the person who has the whole file is lessened, and the "swarm" made more efficient.

There are a ton of bittorrent clients out there, no matter which platform (Mac, Windows or Linux), you are using. In this review I will go over one of the more attractive bittorent clients - Deluge - that I have recently used.

Deluge, like Azureus and KTorrent, is a single program that allows a user to download multiple torrents at a time. In addition, Deluge allows a user to download only parts of a particular torrent. In the screen shot, for instance, I am beginning to download a concert by the band Leftover Salmon. This concert included 32 songs, but what if I only want the first set? Or the second disc? Or maybe I only want one song. With Deluge, that is possible. Just navigate to the "Files" tab and make sure the files you want to download are checked. Anything not checked will not be downloaded.

One of the biggest advantages Deluge has over Azureus and KTorrent (at least for someone running the Gnome desktop environment, as I am), is that Deluge doesn't impact my operating system too much. With Azureus, it is necessary for the Java libraries to be installed. If Azureus is the only thing I use that needs Java, this suddenly means that what should have been a 10-11 MB installation now takes up nearly eight times as much hard drive space. In addition, Java tends to use up quite a large chunk of my system's memory, so using Azureus slows down my typical day-to-day activities, if I am downloading a torrent.