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Long-Awaited BitTorrent 4.0 Released

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the quite-a-thing dept.

wintermute1974 writes "After sitting at a stable release of 3.4.2 since last spring, Bram Cohen's official BitTorrent client has been upgraded to version 4. In addition to its existing, rock-steady functionality, BitTorrent now sports a new queue-based UI. The revision details are on the BitTorrent site. Packets are now marked as bulk data too, which is significant considering that about a third of all Internet traffic is currently torrent data."

11 of 521 comments (clear)

  1. Azureus rocks... by patniemeyer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's Java based and seems to have every useful feature you can imagine:

    http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

    I haven't checked out the new official client yet, but Azureus has always been way ahead of the pack and I assume it still is. (Things like fast restart, nice visualizations of clients and file pieces, etc.)

    Pat

    1. Re:Azureus rocks... by slavemowgli · · Score: 4, Interesting

      BitTornado is another nice client, with the added benefit that it's not written in Java. Not that I've got much against Java personally, of course, but it's quite a resource hog that I'd rather avoid when possible.

      --
      quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
  2. Trying to get more users? by ProdigySim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It looks to me like this new client is adding alot of the features other clients added in themselves. The main part being the configurations from a GUI. Perhaps he's trying to get everyone using HIS client, so there's more control over the populus of BT users?

  3. ABC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    has had a far better interface and featureset for years.

  4. Bulk data? by IntellectualCritic · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Packets are now marked as bulk data too

    Can somebody explain what that means?

    I'm assuming that's not like bulk mail over the internet. I'd hate to accidently download viagra when I just when a torrent file.

  5. BitTorrent Open Source License by IvyMike · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Dear Lazyweb:

    This version of bittorrent is licensed under the BitTorrent Open Source License. Could you please compare and contrast this with other open source licenses for me?

    Thank you, Lazyweb.

  6. Initial impressions... by Rexz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Installer doesn't give any indication it's installing until you get a "Finished!" box. No choosing paths, no status indicator, nuffin.

    Two donation nag screens.

    Steals .torrent file associations.

    No scraping the server for total seeder/peer numbers.

    No moving completed downloads. No advanced seeding rules. No selecting of individual within a torrent. No download speed capping.

    25mb memory usage running just one torrent.

    Nothing excites me about this client. I look forward to its apparent efficiency increases being incorporated into Azureus et al, though.

  7. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by parcifal · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is already happening, wired even had an article on it, and the advance comes from the porn industry which has a number of contributions to the internet to its credit.

  8. Why The Official Client Matters by EventHorizon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1. There is actually no RFC or other detailed documentation for the BT protocol. The unofficial clients were all written based on the source code from the official client (and more recently, based on the source code of other unofficial clients). IMO Bram should create a formal RFC, but that is pretty unlikely (he's not interested and the IETF is probably too conservative to do p2p).

    2. Sadly the python clients are the only ones usable on 64MB virtual private servers. Most of the unofficial clients are platform-specific (Win32, GTK+), or require a bloated JVM that has no chance of working in less than 128MB.

    I find it tragic that noone has released a high quality POSIX C client. Maybe the OpenBSD guys will eventually get around to OpenBT?

  9. Re:GI JOE PSAs by mixmasterjake · · Score: 3, Interesting

    here's the dude in chicago that makes 'em

    http://www.fenslerfilm.com/

    --
    TODO: come up with a clever sig
  10. Unix Gurus by Mark_MF-WN · · Score: 3, Interesting
    A lot of the old Unix research gurus in university positions switched to OSX. I can't count the number of professors I've had who would set their Mac laptop down on the front desk, ssh straight into their home or office computer, and run their slides and code demos remotely.

    The idea of OSX as just a pretty GUI is a gross disservice. I wouldn't touch OSX (or any other proprietary OS) with a ten foot pole myself, but credit where credit is due.