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.
And 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.
Technical 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).
