Flush

Flush is an open source piece of software that provides users with a uTorrent-like torrent/magnet downloader application that is specifically designed to be under GNU/Linux operating systems where the native GTK+ toolkit is available.

Features at a glance

Key features include ability to view torrent details before downloading it, start the torrent when it is added, move finished torrents to a different location, automatically load torrent files from a specific directory, as well as to set custom download locations for each torrent.

Support for UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), DHT (Distributed Hash Table), PEX (Peer Exchange), LSD (Local Service Discovery), as well as for NAT-PMP (NAT Port Mapping Protocol) is also included. In addition, it supports Smart Ban, which will automatically ban peers who send bad packages with very high accuracy.

It is also possible to control the application via the command-line interface (CLI), pause and resume torrents, view statistics about the current session of the entire activity, choose character encoding for a torrent file, filter IPs, and run multiple instances with different configuration files.

Under the hood and supported platforms

The application is written entirely in the C++ programming language and its graphical user interface has been written with the GTK+ GUI toolkit. It works only on GNU/Linux OSes and provides users with binary packages for the Ubuntu distribution.

A source archive is also available for those who want to configure, compile and install the application in any other Linux-based operating system. It is based on Rasterbar's libtorrent library and supports both 32-bit and 64-bit instruction set architectures.

Bottom line

Summing up, Flush is a decent torrent downloader for the GNU/Linux ecosystem, especially for those who are migrating from the Windows XP operating system and are looking for an alternative to the well known uTorrent application.

Unfortunately, some very important features are misising from this application, such as encryption, blocklist, scheduler and remote control. Therefore, we strongly suggest to try the Transmission BitTorrent client if you are using GNOME, Xfce, Cinnamon or MATE desktop environments, as well as KTorrent on the KDE and Razor-qt DEs.

What is new in this release:

• "Random port" setting in the Daemon::Network::Misc settings tab.
• "Next announce" and "Announce interval" elements in the torrent's details
• tab.
• "Max announce interval" setting in the Daemon::Network::Misc settings tab.
• More compact torrent's details tab.
• Deleting torrents by Delete key and deleting torrents with data by Shift +
• Delete keys.
• Some small GUI and internal enhancements.
• Torrent's categories sidebar (all, paused, seeding, etc.).
• Fixed bug, due to which GUI could freeze and do not to response.
• Fixed bug, due to which GUI could be iconified to non-existent tray.

What is new in version 0.6:

• Ability to choose torrent file's character set encoding in the open
• torrent dialog.
• "Publisher URL" line in the details tab.
• "Tracker status" line in the details tab.
• "Tracker" column in the torrents list.
• Tracker errors indication by grayscaling torrent's status icon.
• Recheck option in the torrent right-button-menu.
• Torrents temporary pausing and resuming .
• Libtorrent 0.14.4 (for bundle version).
• Ubuntu Hardy backport.
• Fixed some small command line options processing bug.
• Fixed GTK locking bug.

What is new in version 0.5:

• Added toolbar.
• Tooltip over tray icon.
• Current Download/Upload speed in window title.
• Short "Torrents view" and "Torrent peers view" columns names.
• Treeview's headers and some settings window options tooltips.
• Updated boost configure macros.
• Automatic torrents removing by share ratio.
• Automatic torrents loading from specified directory.
• Libtorrent 0.14.3 (for bundle version).
• "Hide main window to tray at startup", "Minimize to tray" and "Close to tray" settings.
• IP filter.
• From this moment all new GUI interfaces will be created using Glade.
• "Show zero values in torrents info columns" setting.
• Ability to choose action (pause, remove, remove with data), that Flush
• must do, when one of the following events are occur: max seeding time limit
• has been reached, max share ratio limit has been reached, maximum seeding torrents limit has been reached.
• Status icon column in the torrents list.
• Some small GUI enhancements.
• Removed debian directory. Packages are now available at the launchpad.net.
• If directory, setted in the Settings window, already is not exists,
• Settings window will show user warning message instead of silently changing directory to parent directory, as it was in previous version.
• Fixed small bug, due to which total download, total payload download,
• total upload and total payload upload counters are grow, when user resume not paused torrent.

What is new in version 0.4.1:

• Fixed bug which caused program terminating on x86-64 architectures with following output: terminate called after throwing an instance of 'libconfig::SettingTypeException' what(): SettingTypeException Aborted
• Fixed compatibility bug, due to which program compilation fails under glibmm-2.16.
• Fixed compatibility bug, due to which program compilation fails under boost >= 1.35.
• Fixed small bug in torrent options tab: "Copy when finished to" CheckButton was not updated when it was toggled at that time, when it can't be toggled (when "Copy when finished to" Gtk::Entry is empty).

What is new in version 0.4:

• Torrent creating feature.
• Torrent renaming in add torrent dialog.
• Torrent options tab (setting sequential download, setting directory for finished torrent files copying and editing torrent trackers list).
• Restoring DHT state from previous session.
• Added man pages (en, ru).
• Now source package is building in two versions: ordinary and bundle. Bundle version include libconfig and libtorrent-rasterbar libraries that makes building binary package more simple if this libraries is not exists in user distributive.
• Some other small enhancements.
• Small bugs fixes.
• configure.ac fixes for supporting custom boost libraries.

Requirements:

• gtk+
• libtorrent