So a bunch of people in this subreddit told me that uTorrent was trash and to switch to QBitTorrent.

I didn’t think much of it. How could one be so much better than the other? They’re both just torrent downloaders.

Holy shit was I wrong. I don’t even really understand what is happening, but downloading torrents on QBitTorrent is so, so, so much faster and I don’t even understand how.

A movie downloads in basically seconds compared to 10 or 20 minutes on uTorrent.

Why is this? What is this magic? What makes QBitTorrent so much faster?

  • @rtxn@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    866 months ago

    uTorrent has been down the shitter for over a decade now, I wouldn’t be surprised if the download speed was throttled without a pro subscription. It could also be a difference in how the applications discover seeds, or how much CPU time or memory is allocated to downloads.

    As a general rule, if an application is full of anti-features, it tends to have better, usually FOSS, alternatives.

  • ram
    link
    fedilink
    English
    586 months ago

    uTorrent doesn’t play well in the landscape of the modern bittorrent protocol. It’s also adware, infringes upon your privacy, and is a malware risk.

    qBittorrent is my client of choice, but other popular and great clients are Deluge (only up to ~500 torrents), transmission, and rtorrent (on Linux). There’s other clients as well but YMMV, especially if you do any private tracker usage.

      • ram
        link
        fedilink
        English
        36 months ago

        Ya, my only issue with Deluge is after ~500 torrents it starts to slow. I’m on private trackers, so I always tend to have ~2,000 torrents seeding at once. For my particular usecase, it simply becomes too slow and bogged down to be viable.

        Granted, I’ve not used Deluge in some 2 or 3 years; maybe they improved process handling since then? I’d love to be corrected if so.

          • ram
            link
            fedilink
            English
            26 months ago

            If you do, I’d be interested to hear results. Deluge’s plugins are nice and it’s easy to make your own. If it wasn’t for the performance issues, I’d likely still be there.

  • @CaptainBasculin@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    206 months ago

    I don’t know if uTorrent does ratelimit torrents someway (they shouldn’t be by theory), but it being adware is enough of a result to switch to another torrent client.

    I’m more of a fan of Deluge, but alternatives like qBittorrent / Transmission are solid choices.

    • SterbenDeathGun
      link
      fedilink
      English
      56 months ago

      Trasmission never worked well for me, on the other hand qBittorrent did the job perfectly.

  • @Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    186 months ago

    I’m assuming you mean you were using one of the older, “safe” versions of uTorrent. But yeah, the technology has updated. It’s better.

  • angelsomething
    link
    English
    116 months ago

    I have had the same experience switching from deluge to qbittorrrent. It’s like, another world.

  • SterbenDeathGun
    link
    fedilink
    English
    116 months ago

    QBittorrent has been my torrent Client for 4/5 years at this point, never having problems. It works on my Steam Deck too (Arch).

  • @DingoBilly@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    116 months ago

    You were probably using the wrong version of utorrent.

    I think you need something like 1.6. No adware, no malware, just works fast and easy.

  • Blaster M
    link
    fedilink
    English
    106 months ago

    I prefer Transmission, as they have Windows ports as well.

    • Howdy
      link
      fedilink
      English
      26 months ago

      Yup, I’m using transmission in a docker container that ensures my VPN is always connected. Nice to not have to worry about that.

    • nudny ekscentryk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Transmission afaik does not have a built-in search functionality with plugins for popular trackers

      • @TwiddleTwaddle@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        16 months ago

        That feature makes sense to aggregate search results from multiple public trackers, but if you (like me) use private trackers then it’s almost always easier to just go to the actual website for your search. Not to mention any automation software such as the *arr stack make that feature obsolete. It’s definitely a cool feature, but not useful for everyone.

  • @skydivekingair@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    96 months ago

    I tried grabbing Qbit and all I could find was malware. I used to be so so good at navigating all this stuff and stopped to stream for a little. ☹️

  • @Untitled4774@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    86 months ago

    There are a handful of features that I really like with qbittorrent but there were plugins I can’t find replacements for from Deluge:

    • having items deleted after meeting seeding requirements, as *arr auto imports, but having exceptions for private trackers
    • the above without having the *arr stack have a permanent warning
    • auto adding public default trackers to any public torrent

    I’ve switched back and forth a few times and I run them side by side but let deluge take the reins of most of it because I have it set up to be hands off with the above.

    If anyone knows how I can set up qbt the same way that would be great though

  • @LocustOfControl@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    86 months ago

    I do miss that really detailed block download page, but that’s only cos I’d watch it instead of doing something useful with my life.

  • @MIDItheKID@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    66 months ago

    I switch from uTorrent to qBittorrent when Ninite dropped it. I wasn’t aware that uTorrent had become aware, and Ninite had my back. I trust those guys with the selection of softwares they offer.

    • FlavoredButtHair
      link
      fedilink
      English
      16 months ago

      Yea and their background updater is a must. I paid $10 for the exe. No serial numbers needed.