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Written in GTK, Deluge is a powerful BitTorrent client which, in my opinion, is the GNOME counterpart to KTorrent, the most popular client in KDE. The version I will review in this article is the latest at the time of writing, 1.1.6, released on April 6, 2009.
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Written in GTK, Deluge is a powerful BitTorrent client which, in my opinion, is the GNOME counterpart to KTorrent, the most popular client in KDE. The version I will review in this article is the latest at the time of writing, 1.1.6.
Deluge 1.1.6
Deluge has a clean, easy to use interface which may be familiar for those who used KTorrent. At the bottom Deluge will display in several tabs plenty of information regarding the active torrents:
- the status of the download (download speed, upload speed, share ratio, seeders, peers, ETA etc.)
- details like the name, hash, number of files or total size of the torrent
- the files included in the torrent
- peers IPs, client version and speeds
- the last tab, Options, will allow to set individual settings for each torrent you are downloading, including bandwidth and sharing settings or the location where the torrent will be saved
Starting a new download
Deluge allows to pause and resume downloading and it also integrates a queue manager for prioritising torrent downloads. You can sort torrents by name, size, progress percentage, seeders, peers, download and upload speed, ETA, share ratio, date added and tracker. You can also show or hide each of those columns in the View -> Columns menu option.
Deluge also allows you to create torrents and start seeding them very easy. Just go to File -> Create Torrent, add the files or folders you want to include into your torrent, fill in the Author and Comments fields and then add a few trackers. Next you can start seeding your torrent on popular torrent websites.
Creating torrents with Deluge 1.1.6
Although it has support for plugins, I could only find two available plugins on the official website, aside from the two included by default, Blocklist (to download and import IP blocklists) and Label (to offer filters on the state, tracker and keyword of the torrent).
It is highly configurable via the Edit -> Preferences dialogue, allowing to set upload/download speed limits, choose download locations, system tray integration (including the ability to start it in tray, without displaying the main window), and torrent complete notification (even by email). It also provides a Classic Mode in the Interface tab (which is enabled by default).
Preferences
One feature I missed in Deluge was a Search plugin, to search popular torrent sites directly from within Deluge instead of using a separate web browser. It would be nice to have such a feature in Deluge, as a plugin if not possible otherwise.
Overall, Deluge is definitely a very good choice, especially if you are a GNOME user. It is powerful, it has a simple and intuitive interface and comes with all the configuration options needed to customise and use it the way you want. Full Story |
