Torrent is a great way to transfer large files very quickly. However most torrent clients are gui based and have quite some impact on system resources (e.g. Azureus). rTorrent is a lightweight client running from the terminal.

I talk big about rtorrent a lot, and it’s for a good reason. I still prefer it to any other torrent client, and yes, occasionally, I do try others. Usually my motivation is to isolate “torrent slave” as a role for underpowered or out-of-date hardware. But what about something with a little more guts?

There are quite a few applications in linux that has the ability to download torrent from the terminal. rtorrent is perhaps the easiest to use and widely configurable out of all of them.

On my post entitled "How to use BitTorrent in Linux" I've taught you the basics of downloading torrent files using Transmission, a popular BitTorrent client with GUI (Graphical User Interface). This time, I will show you how to use an ultra-lightweight text-based ncurses BitTorrent client --rTorrent.

This can be achieved by using the ultra-lightweight text-based BitTorrent client "rTorrent".
If you are using Ubuntu, you can install

The reason I am writing this post is because I tried many howto's which didn't work and I eventually ended up combining some to get both rtorrent and wtorrent to install and run on my Debian 5 Lenny VPN. In case you don't know: wtorrent is a WebUI for rtorrent, a command line Bittorrent client. Be aware, there are quite a few steps on doing this, so you need a lot of patience and time.

I have played a lot with rTorrent and wTorrent (which I've already posted how to set up) and also ruTorrent and various Web UIs for rTorrent but I've came to the conclusion that the best way (for me at least) for remote Bittorrent download is Transmission Remote GUI - I've been using it for a few days now and love it.

TED Torrent Episode Downloader is a program that allows you to download the latest episodes of your favorite TV series thanks to a perfect combination of RSS and BitTorrent technology.

Utorrent has been indisputably the best Bit-Torrent client for Windows due to it's light-weight resource friendly interface and simple usability almost since the 1.5.0 release, or perhaps since even much before. When it comes to linux, selecting the "best" Bit-Torrent client has always been a n-sided affair.