Transmission is a very nice bittorrent client available for Mac and Linux users. It is currently at version 0.7.1, but has been around long enough that it has a full set of features and is absolutely stable enough for everyday use.
While not as feature-filled as a program such as Azureus, Transmission will undoubtedly meet the bittorrent downloading needs of basic users. As you can see from the screen shot, Transmission has a very nice, single-pane interface. In that window you will see all the torrents that are currently downloading. Click on a particular torrent to highlight it, then click the Inspector button, and you will be shown a pop up window that provides more details about a particular download. Included in the Inspector is information regarding torrent-specific activity, such as number of peers you are connected with and number of seeds, as well as your upload and download rate for that particular file.
In addition, the user is shown a list of all the files in a particular torrent, and their completion percentage. For instance, in the screen shot linked to this article, you can see that I am currently downloading four concerts. Clicking the Inspector button shows me each individual song from that concert, and how close to completion a particular song file is. So, if the concert itself is a long way from being complete, but a particular song has already finished downloading, I am able to listen to it, in order to judge the quality. This can be a lifesaver, as it could save me from downloading a complete concert, unaware that it didn’t sound very good.
To add torrent files to Transmission, you have a couple of options. The first is to simply have Transmission set as your default bittorrent client, so double-clicking on a torrent file will automatically start Transmission. The second way is to set Transmission to watch a particular folder. For instance, if you always move your torrents to your “Torrent” folder, you can have Transmission watch that folder. Then, whenever you drop a downloaded torrent file in the Torrent folder, Transmission will see this, and automatically start downloading it.
If you typically find yourself downloading multiple torrents at once, then Transmission’s Minimal view may be for you. Instead of the main window showing your completion percentage, remaining time and number of peers, the Minimal view shows only the name of the torrent. This allows a user to view more torrents at once. You still see the progress bar, of course, so you’ll have an idea of how far along a particular torrent is, but you won’t know exactly how long is left or how much remains to be downloaded, until hitting the Inspector button.
The one feature I wish Transmission would implement is enabling the downloading of partial torrents. If I want a single song from a concert, I am forced to download the whole show. This is not the case with other clients such as Azureus or KTorrent. But those are larger programs, taking up more hard drive space and memory, and as mentioned, for basic users, Transmission will be more than enough.
Transmission is a free, open-source program, available for Mac or Linux. It can be downloaded here and user forums can be found here. Give it a try… it’s a great program.
