Azureus provides a BitTorrent protocol implementation using java language. Because it uses Java it is platform independent and will work for users of Windows or Linux. There is also an OSX version available for download (Mac)
Azureus offers multiple torrent downloads, queuing/priority systems (on torrents and files), start/stop seeding options and instant access to numerous pieces of information about your torrents. It has a very easy to read graphical user interface and due to it's popularity it is constantly being developed and upgraded.
Azureus now features an embedded tracker easily set up and ready to use.
I have been using Azureus for quite a while now. To be completely honest I haven't yet tested out many of the others listed on my site, but that's because I haven't felt the need to as Azureus offers me all I need and more. I would certainly recommend it's use! In order to run Azureus you need to have Java installed. If you don't already have it you can get java here. Because it uses Java you can install Azureus on multiple platforms, it is not restricted to Windows.
Azureus can be configured to show as much or as little information as you want. Nearly everything in the application is configurable to some degree. It also has a configuration wizard built in to help you setup Azureus for your line speed and also test that ports are forwarded if you are behind a firewall.
You also have the ability to make torrents with Azureus. It's quick and easy with some cool options like multi-tracker support thrown in. See my guide for information on how to make a torrent with Azureus.
I don't use half of the features it has available as I simply don't need get too technical with what I am doing. To give you an idea of how the solution looks and works have a look at the screenshots below.
A full user guide on Azureus is available from the authors here, I wont even attempt to rewrite or recreate it as they have done an excellent job already! You should also check out their Port Forwarding Guide!!
Below you will find more information and links regarding Azureus along with some screen shots to give you a feel of how it looks and works.
2.4.0.2 - released 16th March 2006
New Features:
* Core | Make default recheck behaviour after crash only check pieces active at last save point plus config to revert to old behaviour of checking everything
* Core | Attempt to repair invalid port #s returned from trackers potentially improving outgoing connection success rate
* UI | Allow some selection of split data/protocol stats in some views
Changes:
* Core | Improved payload data vs. protocol overhead byte accounting
* Core | Remove option to truncate files when setting to do-not-download as too many users confused by this
* Core | Pick up alerts raised during closedown and give user chance to see them
* Core | Improved optimistic disconnect algorithm in several ways - should speed up single seed torrents
* Core | Only remove temp files created by Azureus in the "tmp" dir as some users placing files in there
* Core | Resumed downloads now placed into queued state rather than started
* Core | Improved magnet download potential
* Plug | Added vendor id to DHT packets and increased version appropriately
* Plug | Warn if UPnP port removal is slow as this can hang AZ closedown
* UI | Add NAT Test item to OSX "Azureus" menu
* UI | Filter-as-you-type is now more visible
* UI | "Show In Explorer" on a Folder now opens to show what's in the folder
* UI | Mr. Slidey formats URLs to clickable links
* UI | Language Selection on first visible screen after initial installation
* UI | Reduced the # of windows popping up at once on first run after installation
Corrected bugs:
* Core | Ensure SO_REUSEADDR is set when binding during NAT test
* Core | Retain data from terribly slow senders
* Core | Fixed a case of potentially becoming uninterested in peers incorrectly
* Core | Prevent infinite recursion and breakage of some file systems when moving torrent's data into a folder inside itself
* Core | Improve fingerprint performance of shares
* Core | Prevent reporting of double completion events to tracker under some circumstances
* Core | Ensure DNS timeouts are set as early as possible as they weren't working
* Core | Change per-torrent max peers so that values shown correctly in UI and also allow unlimited override
* Core | Fix bug in crypto stream that could lead to corruption
* Core | Strip unwanted attributes from imported torrents such as "file name"
* Core | Ignore invalid Vivaldi coords that are too small
* Core | Default to trivial url in torrent if it is missing
* Core | Fix initialisation sequence problem that was causing startup errors if config corrupt
* Core | Apply correct permissions when updated to Windows prog dir to fix multi-user problems on update
* Core | Downloads stopped during seeding recheck sometimes came back as 99.x% complete
* Core | Fix up timers on clock change to ensure announce and scrape work ok (amongst others)
* Plug | Column dispose listener wasn't being called when there was no cell dispose listener
* UI | Fixed window size/position not always being saved
* UI | Fix default language: Use same language from diff. country when user's lang/country doesn't exist
* UI | Fixed new table rows getting last graphic cell's image
* UI | Column sort is now case-insensitive (again) for text columns
* UI | Fix number display Seeds2Peer column (when radio is really small)
* UI | Fixed Drag and Drop. Should work in Windows and Linux.
* UI | Mr. Slidey no longer slides from (on slide-in) or onto (on slide-out) a different monitor
Azureus Plugins
Auto Seeder
Automatically seeds files based on the contents of torrent and data directories.
AZCVSUpdater, A CVS Build Updater
This plugin helps manage Azureus CVS releases by automating the process of checking for new builds, downloading them and installing them (and more!). 2.0
Azureus Platform Plugins
Not user downloadable.
Azureus Core Plugins
Due to refactoring the Tracker Templates and IRC have been moved to a separate plugin. This is it.
Share Exporter
Exports torrents for shared resources to a directory.
Azureus Update Support
Not user downloadable.
BitTorrent IRC Bot
This plugin for Azureus works as an IRC bot.
Column Example 1
This sample adds 3 columns to Azureus.
Column Example 2
Adds a graphical share ratio column.
Country Locator
Adds a column identifying the peer country in the details view
Example
Lists torrent files from a directory.
i18nAZ
Modifying/Create Azureus language files.
Multi-Port Trackers
Some over-loaded trackers use multiple ports to handle announces.
RSS Feed Scanner
An RSS feed parser that allows unattended, automated download of torrents by means of advanced feed filter configurability.
RSS Import
This plugin reads an rss feed and imports the torrent files into azureus, according to the filters you set.
SafePeer
This plugin allows you to use SafePeer to import a list of IPs to block to the IpFilter from some database (by default the one of PeerGuardian) Forums & Bug Report.
Extra Seeding Columns
Adds three columns to give seeding information: Actual Torrent file name, 1:1 upload ratio Eta and upload remaining percentage.
Speed Scheduler
Schedule your upload and download speeds based on time and day of week.
Swing Web Interface
This plugin lets you control Azureus remotely via a browser.
XML over HTTP
This plugin lets you control Azureus using an XML over HTTP remote interface.
English - German - French - Dutch - Portuguese Spanish - Swedish - Chinese (simplified) - Polish Finnish - Danish - Italian - Chinese (traditional) Russian - Norwegian - Bulgarian - Brazilian-Portuguese - Czech - Lithuanian - Slovenian Turkish - Catala - Galician - Greek - Hebrew - Serbian - Malay - Japanese - Hungarian - Romanian - Thai - Korean - Slovak - Bosnian - Frisian - Macedonian - Georgian
Micro-Sized Yet Feature Filled
Most of the features present in other BitTorrent clients are present in µTorrent, including bandwidth prioritization, scheduling, RSS auto-downloading and Mainline DHT (compatible with BitComet). Additionally, µTorrent supports the Protocol Encryption joint specification (compatible with Azureus 2.4.0.0, and now BitComet 0.63) and peer exchange.
Resource-Friendly
µTorrent was written with efficiency in mind. Unlike many torrent clients, it does not hog valuable system resources - typically using less than 6MB of memory, allowing you to use the computer as if it weren't there at all. Additionally, the program itself is contained within a single executable less than 160 KB in size.
Skinnable and Localized
Various icon, toolbar graphic and status icon replacements are available, and creating your own is very simple. µTorrent also has support for localization, and with a language file present, will automatically switch to your system language. If your language isn't available, you can easily add your own, or edit other existing translations to improve them!
Actively Developed and Improved
The developer puts in a lot of time working on features and making things more user-friendly. Releases only come out when they're ready, with no schedule pressures, so the few bugs that appear are quickly addressed and fixed.
I started using µTorrent myself recently. I had heard some good things and some bad things before trying it so I decided to give it a go and find out for myself. I haven't used Azureus since and in fact, Azureus has been completely removed from my system.
µTorrent is unique in its use of resources. Azureus has many features, which is why I used it, but it uses a lot of resources as it is a Java based client. Typically I was using 100mb of RAM while running Azureus and Java. µTorrent uses between 2mb and 4mb! It's so light weight, it doesn't even need installing. You just run the .exe.
It also has all of the features I have come to love in Azureus. It gives me detailed information on each torrent and even looks a little like Azureus in the way of layout (see screen shots). It has a Torrent Maker built in, and you can see how easy it is to use by looking at this Visual Guide. The latest release introduces an experimental IP filter, which is what I was missing after dropping Azureus.
There were some issues with the way it behaved with trackers early on in it's development but anything after 1.1.3 is now OK in that regard.
So for me, µTorrent is now King. I'll be updating this page as I go, reporting any developments and changes as they happen.
Release links
Mar 07 µTorrent 1.5 Released
Jan 11 µTorrent 1.4 Released
Dec 10 µTorrent 1.3 Released
Nov 25 µTorrent 1.2.2 Released
Nov 23 µTorrent 1.2.1 Released
Nov 09 µTorrent 1.2 Released
Oct 24 µTorrent 1.1.7.2 Released
Oct 21 µTorrent 1.1.7 Released
Oct 17 µTorrent 1.1.6 Released
Oct 15 µTorrent 1.1.5 Released
Oct 10 µTorrent 1.1.4 Released
Oct 02 µTorrent 1.1.3 Released
Sep 26 µTorrent 1.1.2 Released
Smart bandwidth usage
File level priorities
Configurable bandwidth scheduling
Global and per-torrent speed limiting
Quickly resumes interrupted transfers
UPnP support (WinXP only)
Supports popular protocol extensions
Localized to different languages
Typical memory less than 4 MB
Incredibly small: 154 KB
--- 2006-03-08: Version 1.5 (build 437)
- Change: Lower # of pieces started at the same time
- Fix: Fix issue when compact allocation getting enabled even though it's off
- Fix: Tab icons now transparent
--- 2006-03-07: Version 1.5 (build 436)
- Feature: Setting to determine the number of µTorrent users.
- Feature: Use icons instead of network ok/nat error
- Feature: Auto detect read cache size
- Feature: Language file can be auto updated
- Feature: Keys can be used in main listview to move to the right item
- Feature: New easter egg
- Feature: RSS Help button
- Feature: Reorder RSS favorites
- Feature: If user is running from temporary internet files, prompt to install it.
- Feature: Added popup menu to easily change if the scheduler/dht is enabled.
- Feature: Added log-to-file option in logger.
- Feature: Option to always prioritize the rarest pieces.
- Feature: Added active/inactive categories in category list
- Feature: DEL key works in RSS history, and the last item is selected
- Feature: RSS history remembers only 500-600 items
- Feature: XML parser supports # tags
- Feature: Determine the values to show in the speed popup list automatically.
- Feature: Category list to filter main torrent list.
- Feature: Propagate encryption support through PEX
- Feature: Choose what happens on double click in torrent list
- Feature: Show a special message if utorrent crashes while NOD32 is active.
- Feature: Added scheduler mode to seed only (hold Shift button)
- Feature: Support min_interval key
- Feature: Ctrl Up/Down to move up/down a torrent
- Feature: Show average up/down speed since start.
- Feature: Show encryption status in Flags field
- Feature: Copy hosts from peer list
- Feature: Peer Exchange (only with µT peers for now)
- Feature: Protocol Encryption
- Feature: Bypass Windows XP Firewall
- Feature: Make torrent prioritized from add torrent window
- Feature: RSS toolbar button
- Feature: Smart RSS episode filtering - avoids downloading the same ep twice.
- Feature: ESC minimizes
- Change: Rearranged settings dialog
- Change: Default to priorizing rarest pieces
- Change: Switch default theme
- Change: Skip hidden/system files when creating torrent.
- Change: Right align some columns.
- Change: Remove spaces from urls in RSS feeds
- Change: DHT binds UDP socket to net.bind_ip
- Change: Smarter block hashing, tries to avoid re-reading from the file if possible.
- Change: Tracker connections obey max_halfopen/max_connections
- Change: Switching folder in the Add window tries to detect if you point at an already downloaded folder.
- Change: Added support for " in XML parser
- Change: Optimized disk-io
- Change: coalesce_writes defaults to true
- Change: &Exit to E&xit
- Change: Show up/down arrows in listview headers
- Change: Rearranged some stuff in the settings dialog
- Change: Add FAQ to the help menu
- Change: Use UTF-8 instead of utf-8 in created torrents.
- Change: Min autodetected piecesize is now 64k.
- Change: Remember last active RSS page.
- Change: Don't increase counters while paused.
- Change: Auto detect if RSS feed uses latin1 or utf8.
- Change: Sort by scrape peers instead of connected peers
- Change: Relevance rounds up instead of down.
- Change: Rename langpack to utorrent.lng.
- Change: If langpack is in the exedir, it gets installed to APPDATA.
- Change: Remember if torrents have errored when you restart
- Change: Optimizations to piecepicker algorithm
- Change: Fast/Slow pieces
- Change: Simplified encryption settings
- Change: Support langpack.zip with translations.
- Change: Don't download first/last piece of a file first. Can be re-enabled.
- Change: Added a black down image to the spyglass icon
- Change: Protect webui with a password
- Change: Include beta build # in http requests.
- Change: Show <Search Here> in the search box.
- Change: Open partfile in read only mode if read/write fails.
- Change: Read cache uses less CPU
- Change: Support paths >260 chars.
- Change: Icons in RSS Releases (thanks TVTAD)
- Change: RSS Not filtering matches full release name
- Change: RSS Reader supports more date formats
- Change: Adjusted some lazy bitfield parameters
- Change: Renamed to RSS Downloader
- Change: Allow deleting multiple history lines at the same time
- Change: Improvements to RSS parser
- Change: Pause button toggles
- Change: net.low_cpu defaults to false.
- Change: Reworked network code for faster speeds.
- Change: Add torrent dialog defaults to whatever folder entered in settings
- Change: Added some qualities to rss reader
- Change: Changed date format
- Fix: Work better when large fonts are used.
- Fix: Prevent windows from going above pixel 0.
- Fix: Ratio on generals tab wasn't computed exactly like the main list.
- Fix: Crash bug with columns
- Fix: Better support for adjusted computer clock.
- Fix: Don't behave incorrectly if 0-byte files are deleted by the user.
- Fix: If the torrent storage path hasn't been created, create it.
- Fix: Fix a crash related to language packs.
- Fix: Superseeding works better
- Fix: RSS feeds are utf8-decoded
- Fix: Deleting from RSS history forgot about sorting
- Fix: Disallow some more characters from filenames
- Fix: Crash when deleting multiple items from RSS history
- Fix: RSS parser parsed month bad for some timestamps.
- Fix: Fixed crash in torrent creator
- Fix: Ipfilter memory leak
- Fix: Support mixes of name and name.utf8
- Fix: Sorting reverse by name didn't work
- Fix: Improved autoload so it waits a bit if the file hasn't fully been written to disk yet.
- Fix: Stop ALL torrents when scheduler is active.
- Fix: When moving a complete download, use the name entered in the add dialog instead of the default.
