from Hacker News

Show HN: PicoTorrent, a tiny BitTorrent client for Windows

by viktorelofsson on 11/11/15, 8:46 AM with 21 comments

  • by jzelinskie on 11/12/15, 12:43 AM

    This looks pretty neat. I've been using qBittorrent on Windows, but it doesn't really support bulk operations, so I've been writing Python scripts[0] to accomplish what I need. Please, cater to the users that need to idle with tons of torrents open all the time and make it easy to import/export the current state of the torrents loaded into client.

    Also, shameless plug -- I work on an open source BitTorrent tracker[1] that was adopted by Facebook for deploying their server software and have been playing around with a framework for writing tracker logic via middleware[2]. If you want to talk about any of the client <> tracker interactions, I'm totally down for discussion.

    [0]: https://github.com/jzelinskie/move_torrents.py

    [1]: https://github.com/chihaya/chihaya

    [2]: https://github.com/jzelinskie/otoshi

  • by quanticle on 11/12/15, 12:46 AM

    I don't see the github repository for Picotorrent linked on the blog, so I'm linking it here, in case anyone else is interested: https://github.com/picotorrent/picotorrent

  • by 15charlimit on 11/11/15, 2:15 PM

    How does this compare, featurewise/speedwise, to popular (yet simple and powerful) clients like Deluge?

    I ask because I'm not seeing an FAQ, list of features or User Manual documentation on the linked page.

  • by cmdrfred on 11/12/15, 1:48 AM

    Very nice. μTorrent has long been riddled with ad's (with sound for gates sake!) and Deluge feels a little slow and bulky on my machine. This looks like a lighter alternative.

  • by butz on 11/12/15, 6:17 PM

    Installer 5,55MB, installed size: 20,6MB. That's not pico, more like mili- or centi- as compared to uTorrent. For comparison, another open source bit-torrent client Halite (https://github.com/Eoinocal/Halite) weighs at 2,34MB (installer) and 12MB installed.

    Installer didn't even ask where I want to install it and did not display any success message, informing about successful installation. Needs more install options for power users. Also portable (zip) version would be a big plus.

    More comments more, maybe, because PicoTorrent fails to work in Sandboxie.

  • by tuananh on 11/12/15, 2:41 AM

    For those who use private trackers, it would take awhile for this to get whitelisted.

  • by rilut on 11/12/15, 11:52 AM

    Looks promising, I'm using it. Keep up your good work!

  • by wnevets on 11/12/15, 12:21 AM

    how does it compare to uTorrent 2.2?