Thursday, July 16, 2009

BitTorrent client for my NAS

After I decided to build my own NAS server, I was in the market for a BitTorrent client that would match my very specific requirements. Here they are

  1. It has to be FOSS
  2. It has to run on Linux (since that's the OS of choice for my future NAS)
  3. It has to have a web interface (I love that feature on Synology NAS)
  4. It should have a CLI /daemon mode (since my NAS will be running in headless mode)
  5. It has to be fast and light on resources (that means Java apps do not qualify)
  6. It has to be feature rich (UPnP, NAT-PMP, DHT, Peer exchange and Encryption are must)
  7. It has to be an actively maintained project
Using Wikipedia's BitTorrent client comparison page, I was able to quickly narrow it down to these three: Deluge, KTorrent and Transmission. Honorable mentioning goes to BitTyrant, which seems to have the most features, but is a Java app.

From closer examination, it seems that it's not easy to run KTorrent in headless mode without relying on hacks, so it's out.

Deluge looks quite good, but seems to be a bit more difficult to configure than Transmission, probably because I'm already familiar with Transmission.

So, for me Transmission seems to be the winner. I'll follow up with my installation and configuration notes at later date.