Interview with the KTorrent developers

One of the most hotly debated topics on the Internet today is, without a doubt, BitTorrent: the most popular peer-to-peer network protocol today. Within KDE, the primary BitTorrent client is KTorrent. Joris Guisson and Ivan Vasić - the developers of KTorrent - have done an awesome job, so the least they deserve is public recognition - we're pleased to have them as guests today.

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Comments

by John Tapsell (not verified)

It's a great program - Thank you Joris, Ivan and any others!

I've only had one problem with it though - since I upgraded to kde 3.5.6 on ubuntu, KTorrent crashes for me every few hours. Any ideas why?

Also I prefered it when there was always a search tab available. It was changed so you have to click search first, then enter the search, which makes a new tab, then click the search button again to hide the search dialog..

by superstoned (not verified)

There seems to be a new version of a certain other torrent client, which sends a (broken) command which crashes ktorrent. The latest ktorrent fixes this, so get it ;-)

Not sure where I read this, though, after noticing the crashes I started a search for the 'why'. I found a mail or something about it, and now it's fixed with the new version :D

by John Tapsell (not verified)

Thanks. I found the ubuntu bug report:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ktorrent/+bug/110881

Hopefully this will be applied soon.

by Patcito (not verified)

if you're using kubuntu

a new package is available here for feisty:
http://buntudot.org/people/~jdong/ktorrent/2.1.4/feisty/ktorrent_2.1.4~0...
for edgy:
http://buntudot.org/people/~jdong/ktorrent/2.1.3/edgy/ktorrent_2.1.3-0ub...
it was made by the official ktorrent packager for ubuntu.

I found them on the official ktorrent dl page.
http://ktorrent.org/index.php?page=downloads

the problem is with DHT dl I think. it's fixed now.

by Roy Schestowitz (not verified)

Hey John,

Good to find you helping around KDE. Seen your People Behind KDE piece on KSysGuard. Keep up the good work.

by hvm (not verified)

i had the same problem on kubuntu with kde 3.5.6. when i read the backtrace i saw something about dht. so i deactivated dht and ktorrent doesn't crash anymore. i'm not sure if that was the problem but i thought it would help others to know.

by zonk (not verified)

Yup, it was DHT, all right. A bug in the DHT handling code made it possible to crash KTorrent by sending a malformed DHT message, and recently some buggy BitTorrent client appeared, that is sending exactly that kind of buggy DHT messages. It's fixed in KTorrent 2.1.4, so grab it and reenable DHT! This feature is too useful to be missed like this ;).

by Frerich (not verified)

What kind of site is that? :)

A heckload of Google ads and a picture of some Miami Vice guy? I clicked on the 'About me' page (I thought maybe it's some KDE guy) and read:

'In three words: I'm smart, handsome, and confident. I consider myself really good at thinking, socializing, programming, identifying songs and singing, driving, reading and writing.'

...and that's all one needs to know I guess.

Thumbs up for KTorrent tho, I use it myself every day - it integrates sooo nicely into KDE. :-)

by Darkelve (not verified)

Ktorrent: yet another KDE program I've yet to try.

And can we get an interview with Knode developer(s) sometime?

by Dominik (not verified)

That interview alredy exists: http://behindkde.org/people/vkrause/

by Darkelve (not verified)

Hey, thanks!

by am (not verified)

Have to agree with everyone else, this program just keeps getting better and better! Keep up the great work!

by mirshafie (not verified)

It's nice to see that KTorrent gets to stand in the spotlight. It has really improved quickly, so I'm quite positive that the little annoyances will be fixed soon enough.

Many developers in the BitTorrent world seem very isolated, but the devs listen to suggestions and seem to want to have contact with tracker admins, which is very good.

Great job, devs!

by DSC (not verified)

I use KTorrent constantly and, now I've switched back to SUSE from Kubuntu, I have one that doesn't crash all the time :-).

However, I prefered that tabbed layout. It makes better use of the the space in a layout that is already wide and it's fewer clicks to get to the info you want.

Maybe we could have an option to change the layout.

The latest version seems quicker, too.

Thanks for the effort. Kepe up the good work.

by zonk (not verified)

Read the comment below. SuSE ships a crippled version of KTorrent, that happens to be crippled by removing DHT functionality that was found to have a crash bug. You can have the same effect in Kubuntu by simply disabling DHT in prefs, or yet better, upgrade to 2.1.4 which had the bug fixed.

SUSE ships a crippled version of Ktorrent.
I believe DHT is disabled due to some laws preventing peer to peer distribution or software in Germany.

This causes problems for SUSE users outside of Germany.
So my question is:

where can I get a Ktorrent rpm for openSUSE 10.2 that is not crippled?

Try the download page on the KTorrent site.

At your usual stops? Packman and Guru

Ditch RPMs! Compile it from source! It's Linux, you're talking about! ;^D

by Me (not verified)

Ktorrent is my torrent client. Light, fast and... KDE integrated! what more can i want?.. well, a redesign of the GUI, but this'll come with 2.2 version ;-) NICE!

By the way, has anyone know if kmldonkey will be ported to kde4? It seems abandoned. No matter, but, at least ported? I don't want to use a GTK frontend.

Bye!

by Sebastian Sauer (not verified)

It's not aborted. I am one of the devels and I still use it daily mostly for http, ftp and torrent downloads. It's just, that I am very happy with it and don't miss there anything. Also it didn't crashed or showed any other bug one single time in the last 2 years or so.
Re port to KDE4: for sure since I also like to use it on KDE4 :) Only question is, at what 4.x release it will be done.

by Me (not verified)

OK thanks, as you, for me kmldonkey is almost perfect, and think that isn't neccesary adding new features. Knowing that it'll be ported is enought. :-)

by Matt (not verified)

Well, this is awesome to know. Do you have any plans on utilising giFTd as well as mldonkey and co? I'd like to see kmldonkey continue to expand in its P2P and download managing greatness. :)

by Sebastian Sauer (not verified)

Sorry for the late reply. Well, there are no extensions planned. Also there exist already a pretty cool KDE-app for giFT, http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Apollon?content=9899 :)

by andre (not verified)

there is still a problem in the creation of torrents. That really should be made easier. Only few people understand how it works. I would like to select an amarok musician and say, okay, let's make torrent out of it.

by Iñaki Baz (not verified)

Thanks a lot for the best torrent program.

by hummingbird (not verified)

Yeah, thanks guys. I've been using KTorrent for quite some time and it worked well for me. Switched to RTorrent now though (no X) and love it as well.

Anyway, great work on KTorrent...keep it up!! <3

by Noah (not verified)

Yeah it's too bad that any decent bittorrent site bans ktorrent because it cant report to the trackers correctly. Some cool app there...not. Seriously if you want a REAL torrent app then use rtorrent. KTorrent cant even do what its supposed to do correctly, so why are people singing its praises?!

PS: I can't belive I'm the first one to post this little tidbit of info

by Frank (not verified)

> KTorrent cant even do what its supposed to do correctly, so why are people
> singing its praises?!

Maybe because it just works for lots of people who never had the particular problem you had (for instance, I never had, KTorrent worked always fine for me. I am not a too heavy bittorrent user though). To codemn an app because of one single bug is a bit weak.
I would also first check if the protocol is clearly defined here, and who implements it wrong, the trackers or KTorrent.

by John Tapsell (not verified)

If the "single bug" is actually downloading torrents, then for a torrent downloading program that's kind of a biggie...

by Morty (not verified)

This was about reporting back to trackers, not about downloading. Incorrectly reporting to the trackers may get you banned on some tracker. It's obviously not a big problem, since it does not affect most of KTorrent users.

Besides the KTorrent developers are very responsive to this kind of bugreports, and try to solve any issues cooperating with tracker admins. And he does not even mention wich version of KTorrent having the problem. The developers fixed some issues regarding this prior to 2.1.

by Morty (not verified)

This was about reporting back to trackers, not about downloading. Incorrectly reporting to the trackers may get you banned on some tracker. That's may and some. It's obviously not a big problem, since it does not affect most of KTorrent users.

Besides the KTorrent developers are very responsive to this kind of bugreports, and try to solve any issues cooperating with tracker admins. And he does not even mention wich version of KTorrent having the problem. The developers fixed some issues regarding this prior to 2.1.

by John Tapsell (not verified)

hmm, I just tried rtorrent, and it does indeed download about 4 times faster for me. Your explanation does make sense - any sources that sites are banning it?

by Morgan (not verified)

Just wanted to say that.

by Vasilis (not verified)

KTorrent is indeed a very good and promising program. But, it needs a lot of work on the download speed issue. If you open the same torrent file on KTorrent and Azureus, you will notice that Azureus downloads the file much faster than KTorrent.

by Luca Beltrame (not verified)

However Azureus slows my machine down to a crawl, not to mention its terrible Linux support and the large number of memory leaks... the speed improvement is shadowed by these flaws.

by Frank (not verified)

I had to enable some options to make KTorrent fast I believe, UPnp, DHT, and the like (Can't check, I am at a computer without KTorrent installed right now).

by Chani (not verified)

last time I used ktorrent, it was unusably slow, and vaguely annoying. but that was a long time ago. I guess I'll have to try it again sometime. normally I either use some really basic ncurses client or an almost-as-simple gtk one. it's been so long since I've downloaded anything that I don't even remember what they were called...

by pedro (not verified)

I have to admit that the first time i used ktorrent, i didn't find it very functional for me, and i kept using azureus. However not long ago i decided to give it another try, my surprise was big. It is almost all i could ask for a BT client (and also it's light, fast, and kde integrated). I am VERY VERY VERY pleased with ktorrent. GOOD JOB!!!!!! You are doing it great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THANKS THANKS THANKS!!!!!!!

by riddle (not verified)

Good program. Love the KDE integration, intergated search, UPNP... can't wait for 2.2.