I have a router I’m running nord vpn but I use bitTorrent on windows and I’m looking to switch. Does anyone have a flavor of Linux and program they use?
Any advice would be helpful I’m getting nowhere on forums.
I use qbittorent through Mullvad using Gluetun as qbt is running in docker.
DHT and PEX don’t seem to work though, I did brief research and it seemed related to mullvad no longer allowing port forwarding? I don’t know enough about how it works but I tried messing with it for several hours a couple days ago to no avail, only trackers appear to work for connecting to other peers.
On a headless Ubuntu LXC running in proxmox, I just access the qbt interface via its Web portal.
Just use qbittorrent
qbittorrent + mullvadvpn
(on debian 12)
Why Debian 12 specifically?
If you want a free VPN, you can try Riseup: https://riseup.net/en/vpn
There’s qbittorrent for torrenting.
Generally most people get recommended to start their Linux journey with Mint as it is noob friendly (while still having full functionality) other options to consider would be popOS Ubuntu & Fedora.
qBittorrent is the most recommended I’ve seen, although I use transmission.
Why do you use transmission? Genuinely curious. The times I tried to use it, it seemed so basic and lacking functionality
Honestly, whatever floats your boat. There are many good options here, just try all and use the one you liked most. Or just go and pick one, or use the one that comes pre-installed in your distro.
Recommended ones:
- qbittorrent (my favourite as for many other in the comments)
- Transmission
- Deluge
- rtorrent (great if you run a headless server)
I would also look in to I2P. Their are a few clients that support it like qbittorrent.
Qbittorrent: you can bind the application with a network interface and ensure all the connexion will use your vpn.
bonus: you can use it as a server (without any graphical interface) and manage the torrent with your browser. This way, you can create a torrentbox on a dedicated computer.
This is what I use. Once you get it working, it’s a great setup. I have it running on my mini HTPC under the hood, and it really doesn’t use much in the way of resources.
It has a webui that I can use to search and add torrents, and you can choose an alternate UI for the page if you want (I used VueTorrent, it looks better on mobile).
And, like others have said, you can bind it so that if your VPN disconnects, torrents won’t just keep running in the background.
Second VueTorrent. Makes for an absolutely blissful experience managing torrents and with qbittorrent’s built in search plugins you early have to go to the sites anymore
Asus WRT Router > Proton VPN
^
ProxMox EV
^
Debian 12 Headless VM
^
Docker Compose
^
Docker Engine
- Unbound
- Pihole
- Prowlarr (for indexers)
- Radarr
- Sonarr
- Lidarr
- Readarr
- 4 Instances of QBit for each ‘Arr
- Jellyfin
- Jellyseerr
- Traefik for SSL/TLS
- Homepage
Kind of a crude & simplified way of putting my setup but I think it gets the point across.
+1 for the WRT router, if you can get a decent device with an enough powerful CPU it can host Transmission
Deluge and Surfshark VPN
qBittorrent
I think it is even heavily used on Windows.
Transmission. Simple, fast, efficient.
qbittorrent
Did qbittorrent have memory leaks for anyone else? From time to time I’m forced to kill it because it’s make my pc unusable. Still my torrent client of choose, but I would like to know if this is something someone else experienced.
ive not experienced that in the almost 10 years of using it on multiple debian based distros
Transmission
This with remote transmission on your phone to control it
You can torrent easily on Linux using any distro and any client.
It’s very unlikely you’ll have any issues.
