this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023

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BiglyBT: Open source torrent app with plugins, decentralized ratings/comments, and "swarm search" that crawls the DHT to find torrents without a tracker/search site (github.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If anyone's unfamiliar with this client, it's been around a long time, and was previously named Vuze (and before that: Azureus)!

Tis been under active development by the two main devs for all these years. The adware crap was removed from day 1 of the fork and it's a really solid (and featurefull) client. Highly recommend. Also does I2P.

The absolute best feature is Swarm Discovery and Swarm Merge, which lets you find identical large files across different torrents and cross-seed and merge said torrents while downloading both. With Swarm, I've been able to download torrents with <1.0 availability - completing both torrents and become the seed hero. And this was before it supported the v2 BitTorrent spec (which gives you individual file hashes).

I still use qBit for my *arr automation but BiglyBT is always there for everything else and as a great backup client.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wait can you explain what happened with the adware thing?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Towards the end of its life, Vuze started adding crap like ads in the sidepanel and spyware in the installer. Plus a bunch of useless features like DVD burning and 'content network'. My guess is the two main devs got involved with some investors at the time of the Azureus rename and didn't like the way it was heading, so forked the project and rebranded to BiglyBT so they could go it on their own. Since it was open source, and mostly their own code, they couldn't really stop them. Edit: More info at TF.

Sad thing is, many people are blissfully unaware of the history and still running Vuze to this day - when it hasn't been touched in 6+ years. Amazingly the site is still up but nobody's home, so its very risky to be using an out-of-date client like that with a spyware-laden installer - with the very real possibility of the binaries being switched out. (Their SSL cert has lapsed several times.)

The good news is, if anyone's still running Vuze, BiglyBT is a straight swap-out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The ads were a Vuze thing, not BiglyBT.

When the devs left Vuze and forked the code into BiglyBT they never included ads or anything like that. That's what the comment meant, that since day 1 of the BiglyBT fork it did not include the ad junk that Vuze has.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What is qbt? Is this a short name? For ssh I use transmission is qbt anyway better?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

qBittorrent

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yea qBittorrent, chosen as was meant to be lightweight so runs in a docker container on a Raspberry Pi 4 (but often eats all 8GB available RAM - could be just a problem with the docker imagine tho.) Haven't used Transmission so can't compare.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

Ha. Had no idea Azureus/Vuze kept going/forking. This BiglyBT sounds decent (name a deliberate play on Trump's "big league"/bigly thing?). I see stuff like this and wanna try it, but since I only DL video these days and use RD with Stremio, I don't really have a use case lol.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The ratings/comments feature sounds super nice

Something about Java apps make me avoid them though not sure why. Is this unreasonable?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's the UI. I agree. Something about swing UI is just off-putting.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I just tried it. Custom UI with wonky text, doesn't support system dark mode, started up taking over my whole ultra-wide screen in a flood of white. Immediately removed this.

Java apps can be made well though but this isn't one of them.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Compared to the memory footprint of web browsers, a Java BT app is pretty tame on modern computers these days. Nor do you have to faff around with installing JRE manually. It just works.

Resource usage is pretty good tho and it can handle hundreds of torrents with ease.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What about thousands?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Have heard ppl used it with that many but not tested myself.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

BiglyBT is still my favourite torrent client, is what I use on android too lol

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Cheers, used to use azerus, didn't like vuze. This seems pretty good, I'll test er out

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Azureus? Vuze?

...what year is it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I constantly get a "Swarm discovery" popup I can only decline. The agree button is grayed out no matter what I do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Does this thing have support with like medusa, couch potato, etc?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I used to like Azureus, even though it was often very heavy on I/O and might have killed an old rust-spinner or two. Good to see core devs trying a comeback after the Vuze drift, I can't blame them for trying to make it into a business but it just didn't work out. Hopefully they can move the ecosystem forward for casual users who can't be arsed to set.up the "Arr" rigamarole.