Bittorrent client Transmission 4.0 released with massive improvements

Transmission 4.0.0 has been released. The major version release for the open source Bittorrent client improves the program’s resource efficiency significantly, and introduces new features and other improvements.

The new Transmission 4.0.0 release is available for download on the official GitHub repository of the project. Existing users may install the new version over the current version; torrent information and settings are retained in the process.

Transmission 4.0: resource efficiency

One of the main improvements of the new Transmission version is that the new release uses less memory and fewer CPU cycles. The developers ran a stress test using a version with 25,000 torrents. This particular client used 50% fewer CPU cycles and 70% less memory than Transmission 3.0.0 during the test.

Mileage varies depending on the program’s configuration, operating system and torrents in the client, but most users should notice massive improvements in regards to resource usage of the application.

The application’s remote control graphical user interfaces, have been switched to using RPC API “table” mode, which resulted in smaller payloads and less bandwidth use.

Other improvements in Transmission 4.0

The developers have modernized the code of the project by migrating from C to C++ removing “thousands of lines of custom code” in the process. Core code is 18% smaller than before, and the entire codebase is “more testable and maintainable” as a result.

Community contributions to the project have picked up as well. The release notes highlight that the community has submitted over 350 commits and that new contributors have started to work on the project.

Transmission 4.0.0 is the first version of the Bittorrent client that supports Bittorent v2 and hybrid torrents. The current version loads these torrents but there is no support yet for creating these two torrent formats. The developers promise in the release notes that support for creating these torrent formats is planed for an upcoming release.

Transmission is a bit late when it comes to support, as other clients, such as qBittorrent, have added support last year already.

Apart from this, users may now also set a default racker in the application that is used to announce all public torrents.

Transmission 4.0.0 users may now also hide certain information, such as the user-agent, when creating torrents to improve privacy, and set custom piece sizes for torrents. There is also a new IPv6 blocklist available, and a rewritten web client that supports mobile use.

Full release notes are available here.

Closing Words

Transmission 4.0.0 is a big update for the open source Bittorrent client. Improving resource usage and support for Bittorrent v2 and hybrid torrents are probably the two main feature additions of the release.

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