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Deluge: get a powerful yet user friendly Torrent client

April 16, 2008 By 27 Comments

Deluge is a full-featured open source bittorrent client that runs on multiple platforms. It is designed to be low on system resources utilization while providing powerful features and a user friendly experience.

I am not sure why, but I’ve been always looking for a good alternative to Azureus or µTorrent, admittedly the two most powerful Torrent clients. I have been using the Azureus-based BitTyrant (more on that one here), but have also had my eye out for some time on the open-source Deluge. Freewaregenius 5-Star PickAnd although I have previously tried multiple releases of the Windows version, they have always been somewhat unreliable and buggy; until this one: from the purely subjective experience of a single user I can report that this release (v.0.5.8.9) seems to be a very good, solid torrent client.

It is worth mentioning that as of the 0.5 release, Deluge was completely re-written from the earlier code and supports more features and better stability. Here are more notes on this program:

  • The user experience: the interesting thing about this program is that it is very simple and “clean” looking, perfect for regular users who do not want to deal with a lot of complexity.
  • Features: as of the 0.5 release Deluge supports encryption, peer exchange, binary prefix and UPnP, and a web UI that works on Firefox (didn’t try it – sorry). Other features include global as well as individual torrent upload/download limits, moving incomplete torrents on the local drive, enabling safe “blocklists” (Safepeer, Peerguadian, Emule), peer exchange, local peer discovery, private torrents, password protection, RSS, minimizing to tray, and other features which I either do not care to mention or do not understand.
  • Deluge Technical ComparisonTechnical comparison: for a technical features comparison with Azureus and µTorrent, click the thumbnail to the right (table adapted from Wikipedia’s torrent comparison article).
  • Plugin architecture: makes this program (a) adaptable and easy to work with, and (b) quite powerful. Note that many of the features mentioned above might require activating the relevant plugins. At the time of this writing, all Deluge plugins were included in the installation package.
  • Memory consumption: a mere 15 megs in memory. This is important given that Torrent clients typically reside in the background doing their thing while you work on other applications.
  • Installation: you will be asked to determine a number of options on first use (download/upload limits, ports to scan, etc.) If you do no know what these are go with the default value.

The verdict: I really like this program; I like that its simple yet powerful and does not consume a lot of resources, and that I can recommend it both to the torrent novice as well as seasoned torrent users as a legitimate alternative to Azureus or µTorrent.

Version Tested: 0.5.8.9

Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista. MacOS X, Linux.

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 9.1 megs).


 
 
 
Samer Kurdi

Samer Kurdi

Has been reviewing software since 2006 when he started Freewaregenius.com
Samer Kurdi

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April 16, 2008
Samer Kurdi
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  • FredThompson

    uTorrent takes up 8.5M, roughly half the size of Deluge. Azureus is a bloated, buggy hog. uTorrent is portable. Deluge does have NAT traversal. Is that really helpful? Would you expand a little more on why you think this is better than uTorrent?

  • Samer

    I didn’t say that it is necessarily better that uTorrent. I said its a legitimate alternative.

  • http://aussierodney.com Rodney

    The webUI component would be the important one for me, as the torrent client runs on the machine in my network that operates as a central file server. It’s the one that is connected directly to the wireless access point, while the webcam drivers & laptops are scattered around the house. The server & webcam drivers are all controlled remotely via VNC, & when I’m away, Hamachi as well.

  • http://icyf.blogspot.com hapbt

    bla bla bla, why would i need an alternative to utorrent?

  • Samer

    If you are using a software and are happy with it, please don’t feel obliged to change because I suggest an alternative.

    For myself I never liked uTorrent.

  • Chris

    Looking at the screenshot,
    If you changed the icon to the one used by uTorrent, I’d probably never even notice. haha!

    I’ll have to see how it fares on the home network.

  • Hiram Q. Pustule

    I’ve been using BitTorrent for a while now, and my biggest problems with it are three-fold. One, not enough people seeding a large file; two, people who seed spam, velveeta, viruses, and trojans under assumed names–I suspect most of them are just re-seeding something they downloaded, rather than deliberately trying to infect my system, but it honks me off either way; and three, my internet provider is Comcast.

    A new client isn’t going to address any of those issues, but that webUI might be worth a closer look. Thanks for alerting me to the program.

  • Samer

    @Hiram,
    A new client won’t address these issues, but enabling safe “blocklists” prbably will help quite a bit. Click the following link for more info: http://deluge-torrent.org/faq.php#6n31

  • arul

    Thanks Samer for introducing an alternative to Transmission for Ubuntu.I like Deluge better on Linux but must admit uTorrent on Windows is great.

  • Dutton

    Personally I think U torrent is great but i’d like to know more on this deluge and so o’ll give it a try.

  • zzenn

    Sorry to see you’re getting exposed to some fanboy-ism. I do like utorrent, but I don’t like it’s not open source. I’ll give deluge a look. Thanks!

  • Fatih

    this is very bad program. only support language : kurdi and english.

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  • http://--- fretus

    uTorrent used to be great. Then it started crashing with version 1.7.? With 1.7.7 they fixed that they said. Well, not really.

    So, does anybody have crash reports on Deluge? or does anybody know/have old uTorrent version before it became a crashy program?

    Thanks

  • FredThompson

    @fretus, methinks a crashing uTorrent client is a problem on your system only. It doesn’t crash on any of my systems, actual WinXP or VM WinXP with Ubuntu.

    If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. In your case, something is broken but it’s probably not uTorrent. Try removing it and cleaning the registry and user configurations in Documents and Settings.

  • http://nothingyet John

    Deluge .5.9.0 is ready! Maybe this is more stable! Great .torrent client though

  • EJump

    for someone like me in Malaysia that have their torrent activity throttled by our monopoly ISP, deluge is the only client that capable of beating

  • Hoodafukisalice

    I installed it. Maybe a great torrent program, but I found the GUI unappealing. Looks like the typical old timed Linux based GTK ported applications to Windows.

    The Gimp is also ported from a GTK based GUI to Windows, however, it looks much better now (very close to the native UI of Windows). So does Pidgin, the open source multi-platform chat client, which again uses GTK. I hope the Deluge developers take notice of how other GTK based programs are looking fine on Windows. Until they do something, I’m sticking to uTorrent.

  • http://codinghut.com vaelek

    I have been using uTorrent for some time now. Recently, after a LOT of trial and error and digging around, I discovered that uTorrent can cause random blue screen’s under Vista. If you run uTorrent and frequently have crashes mentioning tdx.sys this is likely the cause. I only experience it when my system is “idle” for a period of time with uTorrent running. I use a laptop and it seemed to only happen when the lid was closed. Seemed to crash about once a day with no real pattern. This was a real pain to track down and I now only use it when necessary and do not leave it running when i am not actively using my system. Deluge looks very similar in design. I like my torrents so I am going to give this app a shot.

  • Bill Smith

    Does nobody use Bitcomet? It’s the only one that gives me anything good. I might try this out later though.

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  • Marc

    However and as far as I’m aware, uTorrent is no good for Macs. If I’m wrong, please let me know. I’m sick to death of Azureus.

  • KnITe

    Deluge is a pretty good client, open source (no trojan or spyware features…), frequently updated, comes with plugin system (ALOT of plugins). The gui is functional and plain, could handle a lil more eyecandy.

    Also in the news:
    ————————————————-
    Fatih on April 22nd, 2008
    this is very bad program. only support language : kurdi and english.
    ————————————————-
    $ find /usr/share/locale -name deluge.mo|wc -l
    61

    Troll.

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  • http://gupshupblog.com Sunil Jain

    Hey :)
    I have found a way to increase the speed of utorrent client,hope this helps everyone
    http://www.gupshupblog.com/2009/05/increase-utorrent-speed-with-screenshots-expalined/

  • Wes

    Man, this thing is great. Using it after a private tracker banned nearly all versions of Utorrent because of the goofy, new stuff they’ve been doing. Halite is quite good, too, just a little more barebones. And I’ve read good things about Ktorrent, but making it easy for Windows users to find and install doesn’t seem to be a high priority. Anyway, I’m quite impressed with Deluge.

  • kaze

    webpages doesn’t load while using utorrent even if i limit the download to 40-50 KB/s and lower other settings. i have to reset my connection or power off so i could browse again but when i run utorrent again, i got the same problem. i have read about deluge here and use it in linux before so i tried deluge for windows today. i run deluge (same torrent) with the download speed limit set to unlimited (DL at 140+ KB/s) and yet there’s no problem in loading pages unlike with utorrent. i’m using deluge from now on.