QBittorrent

Last updated
qBittorrent
Original author(s) Christophe Dumez [1]
Developer(s) Sledgehammer999, Chocobo1, glassez, pmzqla and others [2]
Initial releaseMay 16, 2006;17 years ago (2006-05-16) [3]
Stable release
4.6.0 [4]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 22 October 2023;21 days ago (22 October 2023)
Repository
Written in C++ (Qt), [5] Python
Operating system Cross-platform: FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, OS/2, Windows
Platform ARM, x86, x64
Available in≈70 languages [6]
List of languages
Default UI: English

≥ 99% translated: Basque, Catalan, Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Galician, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian

Contents

≥ 50% translated: Belarusian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Chinese (Hong Kong), Finnish, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian (Latvia), Malay (Malaysia), Norwegian Bokmål, Occitan (post 1500), Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish

≥ 10% translated: Croatian, Esperanto, Arabic, Armenian, English (Australia), English (United Kingdom), Georgian, Hindi (India), Icelandic, Latgalian, Uzbek (Latin), Vietnamese
Type BitTorrent client
License GPLv3+ [7] with OpenSSL linking exception
Website www.qbittorrent.org OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

qBittorrent is a cross-platform free and open-source BitTorrent client written in native C++. It relies on Boost, OpenSSL, zlib, Qt 6 toolkit and the libtorrent-rasterbar library (for the torrent back-end), with an optional search engine written in Python. [8] [9]

History

qBittorrent was originally developed in March 2006 by Christophe Dumez, [1] from the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard (UTBM).

It is currently developed by contributors worldwide and is funded through donations, [10] led by Sledgehammer999 from Greece, who became project maintainer in June 2013. [11]

Along with the 4.0.0 release a new logo for the project was unveiled. [12] [13]

In February 2023, a security vulnerability affecting versions 4.5.0 and 4.5.1 was discovered in the Web UI running on Windows systems. This vulnerability enabled unauthenticated access to all files on the host computer via a path traversal bug. [14] This issue has been patched in version 4.5.2, which was released to the public on February 23, 2023. [15]

Features

Some of the features present in qBittorrent include:

Versions

qBittorrent is cross-platform, available on many operating systems, including: FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, OS/2 (including ArcaOS and eComStation), [16] Windows.

As of July 2017, SourceForge statistics indicate that the most popular qBittorrent version of all supported platforms, 81% of downloads were for Windows computers. [17]

As of May 2020, FossHub statistics indicate qBittorrent as the second most downloaded software with over 75 million downloads. [18]

Packages for different Linux distributions are available, though most are provided through official channels via various distributions. [15]

qBittorrent Enhanced is a fork of qBittorrent intended for blocking leeching clients such as Xunlei. It is hosted on GitHub.[ citation needed ]

Reception

In 2012, Ghacks suggested qBittorrent as a great alternative to μTorrent, for those put off by its controversial adware and bundleware changes. [19]

See also

Related Research Articles

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BitTorrent, also referred to as simply torrent, is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner. The protocol is developed and maintained by Rainberry, Inc., and was first released in 2001.

The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is an anonymous network layer that allows for censorship-resistant, peer-to-peer communication. Anonymous connections are achieved by encrypting the user's traffic, and sending it through a volunteer-run network of roughly 55,000 computers distributed around the world. Given the high number of possible paths the traffic can transit, a third party watching a full connection is unlikely. The software that implements this layer is called an "I2P router", and a computer running I2P is called an "I2P node". I2P is free and open sourced, and is published under multiple licenses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BitComet</span> BitTorrent, FTP and HTTP client

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magnet URI scheme</span> Scheme that defines the format of magnet links

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Protocol encryption (PE), message stream encryption (MSE) or protocol header encrypt (PHE) are related features of some peer-to-peer file-sharing clients, including BitTorrent clients. They attempt to enhance privacy and confidentiality. In addition, they attempt to make traffic harder to identify by third parties including internet service providers (ISPs). However, encryption will not protect one from DMCA notices from sharing not legal content, as one is still uploading material and the monitoring firms can merely connect to the swarm.

Peer exchange or PEX is a communications protocol that augments the BitTorrent file sharing protocol. It allows a group of users that are collaborating to share a given file to do so more swiftly and efficiently.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metalink</span> File format that describes one or more computer files available for download

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libtorrent

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The following is a list of notable software for running a BitTorrent tracker.

In the BitTorrent file distribution system, a torrent file or meta-info file is a computer file that contains metadata about files and folders to be distributed, and usually also a list of the network locations of trackers, which are computers that help participants in the system find each other and form efficient distribution groups called swarms. Torrent files are normally named with the extension .torrent.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">BTDigg</span> Search engine

BTDigg is the first Mainline DHT search engine. It participated in the BitTorrent DHT network, supporting the network and making correspondence between magnet links and a few torrent attributes which are indexed and inserted into a database. For end users, BTDigg provides a full-text database search via a Web interface. The web part of its search system retrieved proper information by a user's text query. The Web search supported queries in European and Asian languages. The project name was an acronym of BitTorrent Digger. It went offline in June 2016, reportedly due to index spam. The site returned later in 2016 at a dot-com domain, went offline again, and is now online. The btdig.com site has its torrent crawler's source code listed on GitHub, dhtcrawler2.

μTorrent Proprietary adware BitTorrent client

μTorrent, or uTorrent, is a proprietary adware BitTorrent client owned and developed by Rainberry, Inc. The "μ" in its name comes from the SI prefix "micro-", referring to the program's small memory footprint: the program was designed to use minimal computer resources while offering functionality comparable to larger BitTorrent clients such as Vuze or BitComet. μTorrent became controversial in 2015 when many users unknowingly accepted a default option during installation which also installed a cryptocurrency miner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tixati</span> BitTorrent client

Tixati is a proprietary Linux and Windows BitTorrent client written in C++. It has standalone and portable versions with each new client version.

References

  1. 1 2 "Authors file". qBittorrent.org. Archived from the original on 2019-02-17. Retrieved 2012-08-26.
  2. ↑ "Contributors to qbittorrent/QBittorrent". GitHub . Archived from the original on 2020-06-21. Retrieved 2019-07-01.
  3. ↑ "Oldest available changelog". GitHub . Archived from the original on 2019-02-17. Retrieved 2016-02-17.
  4. ↑ "release-4.6.0". 22 October 2023. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
  5. ↑ "qBittorrent", Analysis Summary, Ohloh, archived from the original on 2014-02-25, retrieved 2012-08-23
  6. 1 2 "Localization of qBittorrent". qBittorrent.org. Archived from the original on 2013-08-14. Retrieved 2012-08-23.
  7. ↑ "Copying file", qBittorrent.org, archived from the original on 2019-02-17, retrieved 2012-08-26
  8. ↑ qbittorrent/qBittorrent, qBittorrent project, 2022-05-22, archived from the original on 2022-05-22, retrieved 2022-05-22
  9. ↑ "qBittorrent/CONTRIBUTING.md". GitHub . 13 August 2022. Archived from the original on 22 May 2022. Retrieved 22 May 2022. Make sure you have python installed correctly (remember the search functionality requires a working python installation).
  10. ↑ "Team members", qBittorrent.org, archived from the original on 2013-08-19, retrieved 2012-09-25
  11. ↑ "qBittorrent is under a new maintainer". qBittorrent official forums. Archived from the original on 2019-06-09. Retrieved 2013-06-26.
  12. ↑ "Change qbittorrent logo. Issue #6467. by sledgehammer999 · Pull Request #6484 · qbittorrent/qBittorrent". GitHub. Archived from the original on 25 May 2021. Retrieved 4 October 2020.
  13. ↑ "New Icon/Logo Proposal · Issue #6467 · qbittorrent/qBittorrent". GitHub. Archived from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 4 October 2020.
  14. ↑ "Web UI - apparent path traversal vulnerability · Issue #18618 · qbittorrent/qBittorrent". GitHub. Archived from the original on 2023-02-28. Retrieved 2023-02-28.
  15. 1 2 3 "News Releases". www.qbittorrent.org. Archived from the original on 2019-12-13. Retrieved 2023-11-13.
  16. ↑ "Network / Networking / Internet applications". Archived from the original on 2020-09-18. Retrieved 2020-09-03.
  17. ↑ "Download Statistics: All Files". SourceForge. Archived from the original on 2016-10-11. Retrieved 2014-03-01.
  18. ↑ "FossHub Download Statistics: All Files". FossHub. Archived from the original on 2019-03-01. Retrieved 2019-02-10.
  19. ↑ Brinkmann, Martin (21 February 2012). "Looking For A uTorrent Alternative? Try qBittorrent". Ghacks . Archived from the original on 10 January 2017. Retrieved 17 December 2014.
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