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?
I found qBT to be missing features utorrent has, and thus I stick with UT v2.2, which is the latest recommended one before they started making controversial changes.
What features are those?
I checked real quick and the setup guide that changes all the settings according to your internet speed, and the ability to stop torrents when they meet the goal. Qbt can only pause or remove them. Pausing leaves you connected and anti-piracy groups get your IP and submit complaints, and I don’t want them automatically removed. There may be more.
In qBittorrent, “Pause”, aka “stop”, stops all data transfer and tears down all peer connections associated with the torrent. You can even verify this with Wireshark. This is functionally equivalent to uTorrent’s stop button.
See this thread here.
I checked it out more, there’s no “remove torrent & delete torrent file”, there’s only “permanently delete files” which is not clear at all and sounds like it will delete both the .torrent and the downloaded files, which is not what I want. utorrent 2.2 seems to be pretty flawless for me.
If you right click a torrent and select remove, it automatically deletes the torrent files that qBT stores in the appData or home folder. If you check ‘permanently delete files’ it also deletes the media associated with the torrent file.
Most people dislike uTorrent because of the fact it was loaded with malware(cryptominer) and ads(hopefully the version you are using is before this crap). Also, download speeds are faster on qBitTorrent.
That being said, the UI is definitely a little different and I understand not wanting to learn a new workflow. You do what works best for you, friend.
Thanks for the info!
You are very welcome. You aren’t the first person to have been misled by the pause versus stop name convention thing. There are tons of questions about it on the qBT forums showing many other people were concerned that there was no way to ‘stop’ torrents in qBT. I had to look into it myself when I first switched.
Utorrent kind of went really downhill and sold itself. Nobody should ever use utorrent anymore
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=GS6uWKCO_S8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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
auto adding public default trackers to any public torrent
qB already has that, see Tools / Options / BitTorrent / “Automatically add these trackers to new downloads”
I don’t use that feature but it seems to be there.
The third should be possible with this maintained fork:
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.
I have had the same experience switching from deluge to qbittorrrent. It’s like, another world.
uTorrent is adware
Is it still being updated? I ran from it when I knew Transmission and Qbittorrent were a thing.
Ever since uTorrent started mining on users computers, ive been on QBT
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.
UT has been garbage for some time. I reckon the data it uses to send your info back to them and to load ads, bogs down the network, especially on slower networks. The last time I used it, there were also graphical artifacts all over. Qbit on the other hand, is much cleaner and simpler to use, and it doesnt add any unwanted network traffic, which is why it’s probably faster
TIL I’m the only one who says “microtorrent”.
You’re not alone brother. There are dozens of us! Dozens!
what is that
The “u” in uTorrent is actually greek letter mu, which as a SI suffix is pronounced “micro” and means one millionth (10^-6)
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. ☹️
sudo apt install qbittorrent
sudo pacman -S qbittorrent
flatpak install org.qbittorrent.qBittorrent
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.
qbittorrent also has better theme support in my opinion. Dracula theme is even available for both the local client and WebUI server client: https://draculatheme.com/qbittorrent
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.
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.
Trasmission never worked well for me, on the other hand qBittorrent did the job perfectly.
QBittorrent has been my torrent Client for 4/5 years at this point, never having problems. It works on my Steam Deck too (Arch).
