Best FOSS torrent app?

I use torrents once in a blue moon for downloading distros so I just grab the nearest thing in the Debian repo but a friend of mine who uses it a lot is asking for a recommendation. I’d rather give him a community approved recommendation than some random top 5 I got from a search.

He’s happy with Fopnu which is by the same guys who did Tixati but while it’s free it’s not open source (from what I can tell), i’m looking for the “best” FOSS app with ethical devs that preferably has a Windows version because he’s still transitioning.

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I used to use Vuze, because of all the options, but it was also bit sluggish and slow.

Now I use KTorrent. Fast, nice looking, has all the options I missed in Transmission.

Being lazy I tend to just download a .torrent file, double click on that file and see what opens by default. That’s usually Transmission, but occasionally KTorrent, both seem to work for my simple needs. I think I prefer Transmission because it’s the more common default I come across so it’s what I used the most. 99 out of 100 .torrent files I download are Linux .iso files.

Deluge is a good FOSS option. It’s similar to qBittorrent, but written in GTK and Python.

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I have another vote for Deluge. Looks the best out of all of them and works really well!

I generally use qBittorrent.

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Transmission is familiar, has low resource requirements, and just works.

I prefer qbittorrent because it has a ton of features and flexibility

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Thank you for all the recommendations, I built on that a bit below. It’s down to choosing between Deluge and qBittorrent. KTorrent gets honorable mention but isn’t cross platform.

Deluge

https://www.deluge-torrent.org/
Deluge (software) - Wikipedia
GitHub - deluge-torrent/deluge: Deluge BitTorrent client - Git mirror, PRs only
Written in: Python
Supports: Linux, BSD, Mac OS, Windows XP+
License(s): GPLv3+
Released: Sep 2006
Security:
December 2015, forum compromised and user database dumped: Hackers Grab Deluge and qBitTorrent User Databases * TorrentFreak
CVEs (4): CVE - Search Results

Transmission

https://transmissionbt.com/
Transmission (BitTorrent client) - Wikipedia
GitHub - transmission/transmission: Official Transmission BitTorrent client repository
Written in: C, Objective-C
Supports: Linux, Mac OS X+, Windows 7+
License(s): GPLv2+, MIT
Released: Sep 2005
Security:
March 2016, official website wacompromised and tainted .dmg files uploaded: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-ransomware-idUSKCN0W80VX
CVEs (7): Transmissionbt : Products and vulnerabilities

Vuze

https://www.vuze.com/
Vuze - Wikipedia
Vuze Subversion: public - Revision 44261: /client
Free and non-FOSS versions
Written in: Java
Supports: Linux, Mac, Windows
License(s): GPLv2
Released: Jun 2003
Security:
(Can’t confirm) Vuze was originally categorized as adware by Softpedia due to a bundled toolbar and offer to change search: Vuze - Wikipedia
CVEs (2): CVE - Search Results

KTorrent

https://apps.kde.org/ktorrent/
KTorrent - Wikipedia
GitHub - KDE/ktorrent: Powerful BitTorrent client
Written in: C++
Supports: Linux
License(s): GPLv2
Released: ?
Security:
CVEs (5): CVE - Search Results

qBittorrent

https://www.qbittorrent.org/
qBittorrent - Wikipedia
GitHub - qbittorrent/qBittorrent: qBittorrent BitTorrent client
Written in: C++, Python
Supports: Linux, BSD, Mac OS, OS/2, Windows
License(s): GPLv2+
Released: May 2006
Security:
December 2015, forum compromised and user database dumped: Hackers Grab Deluge and qBitTorrent User Databases * TorrentFreak
CVEs (6): CVE - Search Results

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Great summary. Myself, I’ve never had a problem with good ol’ Transmission.