Battle of the Torrents
In my ongoing progress towards OS freedom (leaving Windows and embracing Linux), I've moved my bittorrent duties from my ancient Windows box to my spiffy new Linux box [1]. For a couple years now, I've been using BitTornado as my torrent client. I like it. It's simple, clean, and effective. Yes, it opens a new client session for every torrent, but I didn't consider that to be a significant issue.
BitTornado is listed as "unstable" on Linux. So I decided to take a look at what else is out there. I'd heard some really good things about Azureus, and know several people who use it. It's in the Ubuntu library, so I install the package and tried it out.
Wow. Can a program get any more bloated? BitTornado had, if I recall correctly, 3 options: upload limit, download limit and preset limits. It had a pause/resume feature, and a cancel (quit) button. Very simple, very intuitive, very elegant. Azureus is a monster. The options tab has a bazillion choices (there are over a dozen categories, many with subcategories, all of which have multiple options). There are nebulous states (queued? waiting?). I had 2 torrents spend 9 hours in the "queued" state, doing absolutely nothing except sitting there annoying me. "Force start" did nothing (what is it supposed to do?). Canceling and restarting did nothing. They just sat there. There wasn't even a little red sad-face to tell me that I was connected but doing nothing. 27 billion options and not a single one of them is "work correctly".
After a quick web-search, I found QTorrent. It's part of the Ubuntu library, so it was simple to install (though I did have to go to the command line to start it). It's options are pretty much limited to "run" and "stop". There's not even a "pause" option in there. That is, I'll admit, a mark against it--as is the lack of transfer limits. However, when I opened those torrents that spent 9 hours "queued" in Azureus, QTorrent started them up instantly. In a couple hours, they were all happily downloaded and acting as seeds. That's nice.
Unless it upgrades a bit, I'll move away from QTorrent eventually; it doesn't allow for pauses, or transfer limits--things which can be important when I'm working on web projects and need bandwidth for "real" work. And the lack of a ratio listing bothers me. I like to make sure that I give back at least as much as I take. If a torrent is active, I'll leave it until it has at least a 2.0 upload ratio. For "important" torrents, I'll often let them run to 10 or 20 before I stop them to let other torrents use the bandwidth.
But I really appreciate the "elegance" of QTorrent. I does what it's supposed to, without any extraneous crap. Azureus has fallen into what I consider to be a common trap for open-source (and many proprietary) applications: the "we can, so we will" mentality. Developers keep slapping on features just because they can. They continue to do this until it's all about the features, and not about the core functionality of the application. They have no concept of "elegance": doing what is to be done with the minimum of clutter or waste.
Say what you will about Microsoft, the fact of the matter is most of their stuff "just works". Yes, it's buggy and insecure, but 99.44% of the time, you click on the button and it does what you expect it to. It's not up to the standard of "elegance", but it's at least pointed in the right direction.
This is something the Linux community needs to learn, something they need to embrace: the concept of "elegance". It's not about "bigger", it's about "better". More often than not, "simple" is the best choice. At the very least, it should be the default state.
Linux is approaching a crossroads. It can rise up and become a powerhouse that will take down the Goliath of Microsoft... or it can plummet back into the depths of Geekdom. The key, pure and simple, is "elegance". Make Linux elegant, and it will take over. Let it continue to flounder in a morass of complexity and detail, and it will never see the mass market.
Elegance is a simple concept. It's not hard to follow. The Linux community (especially Ubuntu) simply needs someone who understands it to give them direction and guidance.
And if anyone is willing to pay me a decent salary to take up that responsibility, I'd be more than happy to do so. ;)
[1] A good friend of mine is one of the owners of a company (Soho VFX) that does CGI effect for Hollywood movies. He had an old "junker" computer laying around that he traded for 12 lbs of Johnsonville Brats. This "junker" box has dual athalon 1.8GHz processors, dual-display video card, and a DVD drive. It is, I am quite sure, more powerful than any other box in my house. It's all a matter of perspective isn't it?
Imported from the Buzz
BitTornado is listed as "unstable" on Linux. So I decided to take a look at what else is out there. I'd heard some really good things about Azureus, and know several people who use it. It's in the Ubuntu library, so I install the package and tried it out.
Wow. Can a program get any more bloated? BitTornado had, if I recall correctly, 3 options: upload limit, download limit and preset limits. It had a pause/resume feature, and a cancel (quit) button. Very simple, very intuitive, very elegant. Azureus is a monster. The options tab has a bazillion choices (there are over a dozen categories, many with subcategories, all of which have multiple options). There are nebulous states (queued? waiting?). I had 2 torrents spend 9 hours in the "queued" state, doing absolutely nothing except sitting there annoying me. "Force start" did nothing (what is it supposed to do?). Canceling and restarting did nothing. They just sat there. There wasn't even a little red sad-face to tell me that I was connected but doing nothing. 27 billion options and not a single one of them is "work correctly".
After a quick web-search, I found QTorrent. It's part of the Ubuntu library, so it was simple to install (though I did have to go to the command line to start it). It's options are pretty much limited to "run" and "stop". There's not even a "pause" option in there. That is, I'll admit, a mark against it--as is the lack of transfer limits. However, when I opened those torrents that spent 9 hours "queued" in Azureus, QTorrent started them up instantly. In a couple hours, they were all happily downloaded and acting as seeds. That's nice.
Unless it upgrades a bit, I'll move away from QTorrent eventually; it doesn't allow for pauses, or transfer limits--things which can be important when I'm working on web projects and need bandwidth for "real" work. And the lack of a ratio listing bothers me. I like to make sure that I give back at least as much as I take. If a torrent is active, I'll leave it until it has at least a 2.0 upload ratio. For "important" torrents, I'll often let them run to 10 or 20 before I stop them to let other torrents use the bandwidth.
But I really appreciate the "elegance" of QTorrent. I does what it's supposed to, without any extraneous crap. Azureus has fallen into what I consider to be a common trap for open-source (and many proprietary) applications: the "we can, so we will" mentality. Developers keep slapping on features just because they can. They continue to do this until it's all about the features, and not about the core functionality of the application. They have no concept of "elegance": doing what is to be done with the minimum of clutter or waste.
Say what you will about Microsoft, the fact of the matter is most of their stuff "just works". Yes, it's buggy and insecure, but 99.44% of the time, you click on the button and it does what you expect it to. It's not up to the standard of "elegance", but it's at least pointed in the right direction.
This is something the Linux community needs to learn, something they need to embrace: the concept of "elegance". It's not about "bigger", it's about "better". More often than not, "simple" is the best choice. At the very least, it should be the default state.
Linux is approaching a crossroads. It can rise up and become a powerhouse that will take down the Goliath of Microsoft... or it can plummet back into the depths of Geekdom. The key, pure and simple, is "elegance". Make Linux elegant, and it will take over. Let it continue to flounder in a morass of complexity and detail, and it will never see the mass market.
Elegance is a simple concept. It's not hard to follow. The Linux community (especially Ubuntu) simply needs someone who understands it to give them direction and guidance.
And if anyone is willing to pay me a decent salary to take up that responsibility, I'd be more than happy to do so. ;)
[1] A good friend of mine is one of the owners of a company (Soho VFX) that does CGI effect for Hollywood movies. He had an old "junker" computer laying around that he traded for 12 lbs of Johnsonville Brats. This "junker" box has dual athalon 1.8GHz processors, dual-display video card, and a DVD drive. It is, I am quite sure, more powerful than any other box in my house. It's all a matter of perspective isn't it?
Imported from the Buzz