I have a router I’m running nord vpn but I use bitTorrent on windows and I’m looking to switch. Does anyone have a flavor of Linux and program they use?
Any advice would be helpful I’m getting nowhere on forums.
qbittorrent
Qbittorrent: you can bind the application with a network interface and ensure all the connexion will use your vpn.
bonus: you can use it as a server (without any graphical interface) and manage the torrent with your browser. This way, you can create a torrentbox on a dedicated computer.
This is what I use. Once you get it working, it’s a great setup. I have it running on my mini HTPC under the hood, and it really doesn’t use much in the way of resources.
It has a webui that I can use to search and add torrents, and you can choose an alternate UI for the page if you want (I used VueTorrent, it looks better on mobile).
And, like others have said, you can bind it so that if your VPN disconnects, torrents won’t just keep running in the background.
Just use qbittorrent
Asus WRT Router > Proton VPN
V
ProxMox EV
V
Debian 12 VM
V
Docker Compose
V
Docker Engine
- Unbound
- Pihole
- Prowlarr (for indexers)
- Radarr
- Sonarr
- Lidarr
- Readarr
- 4 Instances of QBit for each ‘Arr
- Jellyfin
- Jellyseerr
- Traefik for SSL/TLS
- Homepage
Kind of a crude way of putting my setup but I think it gets the point across.
Generally most people get recommended to start their Linux journey with Mint as it is noob friendly (while still having full functionality) other options to consider would be popOS Ubuntu & Fedora.
qBittorrent is the most recommended I’ve seen, although I use transmission.
Why do you use transmission? Genuinely curious. The times I tried to use it, it seemed so basic and lacking functionality
For me, I like that it isn’t overcomplicated and just works. It being basic is a big pro to me.
qBittorrent
I think it is even heavily used on Windows.
qbittorrent + mullvadvpn
(on debian 12)
Why Debian 12 specifically?
You can torrent easily on Linux using any distro and any client.
It’s very unlikely you’ll have any issues.
I would also look in to I2P. Their are a few clients that support it like qbittorrent.
Transmission. Simple, fast, efficient.
KTorrent (KDE) or Transmission (GNOME).
GNOME is the default on Ubuntu, Fedora and more. KDE is default on OpenSUSE, KDE Neon and Kubuntu.
Linux Mint OS, QBitTorrent for the client, Proton VPN for the VPN with qBitTorrent bound to only that interface and port to ensure no IP leaks.
Works Awesome.
Deluge and Surfshark VPN
Anybody got a nix config for binding qbittorrent to mullvad easily?
There are 2 methods:
First method is to open preferences in qbit, under Advanced > Network interface, select “wg0-mullvad” from the drop-down menu. The interface might be named something different for you, but it should stand out as pretty obvious which one to select.
Other method is in qbit > Preferences > Connection, under “Proxy Server” select “SOCKS5” from the drop-down, input 10.64.0.1 as the host and 1080 as the port.
You could even do both these options at the same time if you like, there is absolutely no downside. It’s like wearing 2 condoms except it feels the same as wearing nothing at all.
Ah, so, I should’ve been more clear, I have annoying requirements, I want qbittorrent to run through mullvad exclusively, and i want them to be intertwined and startup with eachother automatically. I don’t want any of my other apps to be running in mullvad, is there a good way to do that? I think the socks5 proxy requires me to have it open and running, and thus everything would run through it, but maybe that wireguard method works around that? not sure, just wondering
It’s like wearing 2 condoms except it feels the same as wearing nothing at all.
…I mean…
As far as flavors of Linux, I would honestly recommend using VirtualBox while on Windows. You can download a preconfigured VM of just about any Linux distro or download whatever iso you want and install in a VM. This gives you some freedom to play around and break things (and you probably will at least once) and get more familiar with the different desktop environments, software installation, command line, searching for how to do things etc.
