qBittorrent
qBittorrent is a near-perfect GUI BitTorrent client for GNU/Linux, *BSD, Mac and Windows computers systems. It is fairly light-weight and very efficient. It has all the basic features one would expect from a modern BitTorrent client and it has also got some useful features most other BitTorrent clients do not have such as a multi-source search function and RSS feed subscriptions.
qBittorrent is available for Linux, Windows and macOS.
qBittorrent does not yet support BitTorrent protocol version 2. Support for libtorrent 2.0 is in the works.
Features and usability[edit]
qBittorrent is really easy to use. Adding a torrent to download is as simple as clicking a button and choosing the file. Creating torrents is also easy and strait-forward. Choose Tools then Torrent Creator from it's menu, choose a file or folder to share, optionally add trackers and click Create torrent. It's that easy.
qBittorrent's biggest advantage over similar software is it's built-in search function. It may be disabled by default, enabling it is a matter of choosing it from the menu View then Search engine. This function relies on having "Search plugins" installed. Some are bundled with the default installation, others have to be manually installed. This feature, when the right search-plugins installed, makes qBittorrent a one-stop shop for everything publicly available which you may want to acquire. It eliminates the need to open a browser except when content from private trackers is required and desired.
The RSS feed reader and downloader is another great feature qBittorrent has which isn't there in most clients. It is possible to filter RSS feeds for keywords and automatically download new torrents matching a set of rules. This is very handy for downloading specific spins of new releases of Linux distributions when they become available. It is, for example, possible to subscribe to the RSS feed for fortorrents.fedoraproject.org and only download new releases of Xfce spins.
qBittorrent has all the other basic features one would expect from such a program such as DHT support, trackerless torrents, torrent queuing and prioritization, selective download of files in multi-file torrents, peer banning, private trackers and private torrents, uPnP for port-forwarding and system tray integration.
Headless mode[edit]
qBittorrent can be ran in a "headless" mode where it demonizes and starts a web service which can be used to control it. This is handy for running it on a limited server which is on 24/7.
Verdict and Conclusion[edit]
qBittorrent is a really nice and user-friendly client and it's search-function makes it real easy to find new Linux ISOs to download. It is very efficient, low on memory use even if a lot of torrents are open and it is generally very nice.
There were some issues with crashes and instability in the past. Try upgrading to qBittorrent v4.2.5 or newer if you have issues with an older version.
Underlying technology[edit]
qBittorrent is written in C++ using the libtorrent-rasterbar library.
qBittorrent can only be compiled against the libtorrent-rasterbar 1.x branch as of September 2020. Support for libtorrent 2.0, required in order to support BitTorrent protocol version 2, is being worked on.
Known Issues[edit]
qBittorrent 4.3.4 and newer will not work with trackers with an invalid SSL certificate. There is currently no way to force it to ignore invalid SSL certificates.
Links[edit]
- Website: www.qbittorrent.org
- Wiki: github.com /qbittorrent/qBittorrent/wiki
- Source-code repository: github.com /qbittorrent/qBittorrent
Alternatives[edit]
| Program | rating | type | framework |
|---|---|---|---|
| qBittorrent | 
|
Graphical | Qt |
| Transmission |
|
Graphical | Multiple interfaces (Qt/GTK/cli) |
| KTorrent | 
|
Graphical | Qt/KDE |
| rTorrent |
|
Terminal | Ncurses |
| WebTorrent Desktop |
|
Graphical | Node.js |
- See also: BitTorrent clients compared
Enable comment auto-refresher