Azureus

Official Site
Popularity Rating: 100

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This is one of the more recent clients to hit the big time on the torrent scene. And this client is used by more users than any other. What makes it so great? Most likely its the amount of customizable options. Almost anything that can be done in a client can be done with Azureus. And even if there is something that is not built into the client, there are a number of plugins which add even more functionality. It uses java, which makes it cross-platform compatible.

Where to begin? Its got a single window gui for all your torrents, as most do now. Virtually all the features of BitTornado are available here too. It supports superseeding, and actually turns it off automatically for well seeded torrents. You can view all kinds of information about your download progress, your peers, the files being downloaded, etc. You can select individual files from torrents to download. It also supports quick resuming, and includes health status lights for each torrent.

That covers most the major features in BitTornado. What sets Azureus apart is it has many more features. You can set Azureus to download to one directory and move the files to another when complete. It can also prioritize certain file type automatically, so you can get *.txt or *.nfo files earlier and look though them while downloading the rest. You can have it scan your torrent directory for new torrent files periodically and auto-begin them.

Azureus also can log global statistics and view them. It also has an advanced queue system for both downloading and seeding. Set the number of concurrent downloads you want, and the number of active torrents (downloading and seeding) you would like. When one of your downloads completes the next one in the queue may begin. It has several options for auto-seeding torrents as well. You can have it watch you completed torrents and rank them based on the number of seeds or the ratio of seeders to leechers. Then it can seed however many of the highest ranked torrents you want.

You can also open download bar(s) for your downloads. These will be small bars which stay on top of other windows and show the torrent name, percent complete, and download and upload speeds. So you can keep track of downloads easily while doing other stuff. You can also select and deselect the columns shown in the my torrents window. Select and arrange all kinds of torrent info, including upload and download speeds, size downloaded/uploaded, amount left, eta, number of complete copies seen, min and max upload and download speeds, etc.

So, you like the options but wish it had more? Like maybe RSS support? Well go get a plugin for it. As if there weren't enough regular features, many more things can be added with plugins for Azureus, including RSS support for obtaining torrents.

There are some new features in the most recent version as well. The one with the potential biggest impact is the distributed decentralized database. This uses a udp port, so you will have to open that one the same way you did for TCP. But this allows two new things: trackerless torrents, and functioning torrents when the tracker goes offline. Both these things could really help in some situations. Note that this trackerless system is incompatible with other client's trackerless systems. Other things are better bandwidth management, and a new chat option for each torrent you are on.

There are only two potential drawbacks I can see with this client. Since it uses java, it can be kind of a ram hog. But this isn't really the fault of Azureus, since java does this in general. And most clients can eat ram, especially when left open for a long time. The other thing that may discourage some users is that there are almost too many options (that can be a bad thing?) A novice may not fully know whats going on, and may screw things up by blindly changing settings. Or getting things like the queue system all set up to work on its own the way you want may take some time.

Most heavy downloaders will likely love this client. If you are an occasional downloader and don't need tons of settings, you might like BitTornado better. Azureus has virtually every feature clients have, including some minor ones that nobody else has. If you have a decent computer Azureus running on java won't be too much of a performance issue, and if you have a general understanding of BitTorrent getting settings right shouldn't be too bad.

And it has to be one of the best right? After all, it is the most popular.