Azureus: A Better Way to BitTorrent

BitTorrent has become one of the most widely used apps on the Internet — so popular, in fact, that it’s estimated that over 33% of all Internet traffic is now generated by BitTorrent. 33%! It’s not that surprising, really. BitTorrent is an awesome tool.

As cool as BitTorrent is, the official client is a pretty spartan. In reaction, numerous other clients have sprung up to offer an enormous variety of features. The best software, however, is Azureus, a Java-based program that runs beautifully on Linux (and Mac OS X and Windows as well).

To use Azureus, make sure you have an up-to-date Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed and configured with the java executable in your PATH. Next, download Azureus at http://azureus.sourceforge.net. Choose the appropriate version of Azureus (you’ll probably just want the one based on GTK), and once it’s on your computer, untar it with tar xvjf Azureus…tar.bz2. Now cd into the resulting azureus directory and enter ./azureus to start the program. If things don’t work, check out the tips at http://azureus.sourceforge.net/howto_linux.php.

Simply opening Azureus isn’t enough. You need to start downloading a torrent to really see the magic. You can find Linux ISOs and software at http://www.tlm-project.org/torrents/ and http://www.solidz.com/torrents/ Once you find something interesting, save the .torrent file on your hard drive, and then go to File, Open,.torrent File. Point Azureus at the downloaded. torrent file, choose OK, and in a few moments, your download should begin (and a corresponding upload, as that’s the way BitTorrent works).

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