HOW TO INSTALL µTORRENT TO WORK UNDER LINUX

Warning : As I write this I have been using Linux for a little under two weeks, so there is a good chance that you know more about this operating system than I do. (YES !! THIS GUIDE IS BEING WRITTEN BY A TOTAL NOOB , MUHAHAHA). When making this guide I used Ubuntu 6.06 and Wine 0.9.15, if you use another distro or emulator you will have to adapt the instructions accordingly. µtorrent MUST be 1.5.1 or later (as of this date this means the beta). I cannot garantee functionality with earlier versions of Wine and µtorrent.This being said, the following instructions will get µtorrent working.

INSTALLING WINE

Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs under Linux.

Goto http://www.winehq.org/site/download

Different versions are provided for installing wine under various distritutions, pick the one that fits and follow the instrctions

CONFIGURING WINE

1. Goto the Linux TERMINAL and type "winecfg". Wine will now create its own folder hierarchy in /home/username/.wine so window applications can install properly

2. Goto the LINUX /home/username/ folder, display the hidden files (in the display menu) and find the .wine folder, navigate your way to /home/username/.wine/drive_c/

3. Download the µtorrent program from the site and save it to the /home/username/.wine/drive_c/ folder.

4. If you are using the beta rename it to "utorrent.exe" (it will just make things easier later on)

5. Go back to the winecfg window, under the Application tab, add an application, navigate Your way to the utorrent.exe file and select it. utorrent.exe now appear in the applications list right under "default settings"

6. Highlight utorrent.exe from the list and change the window version to: Windows XP, APPLY

7. Goto the graphics tab uncheck everyting execpt "allow window manager to control the windows", APPLY & EXIT

LAUNCHING UTORRENT UNDER LINUX

(this procedure will work under Ubuntu, you'll need to figure out how to do it under other distros for yourself, however the command line should remain the same)

In order to launch a wine application you need to add the wine command to the command line. We are going to make the LINUX equivalent of a shortcut, a launcher

1. Rightclick on your desktop and select "make launcher" from the context menu

2. In the "create launcher" dialog box in the basic tab , under Name: put µtorrent

3. Under command use browse to navigate your way to /home/username/.wine/drive_c/ and select the utorrent.exe file (when you get to /home/username/ if you don't see /.wine/ just right click in the window and select display hidden files)

4. In the command field, add "wine " (no quotes) just before the /home/username/... (and don't forget the space). APPLY & EXIT

You now have a working launcher for utorrent on your desktop. So launch utorrent and go on to adjusting the utorrent featues so it will work under Linux properly.

THINGS THAT WORK UNDER WINDOWS THAT DON'T WORK THE SAME UNDER LINUX

Some features in µtorrent do not function well under Linux, the system tray icons for one aren't handled in the same way and cause problems when minimixing and re-opening the application. to turn them off.

Goto µTORRENT MENU > OPTIONS > PREFERENCES > GENERAL TAB : in the System Tray section, uncheck every item.

Linux doesn't actualy do file extentions (not in any releveant way) file associations are also irrelevent , and linux uses a boot manager to auto-start applications so those options need to be turned off as well to avoid conflicts :

Goto µTORRENT MENU > OPTIONS > PREFERENCES > GENERAL TAB : in the Window Integration , uncheck both items.

WORK AROUND FOR FILE ASSOCIATION

As we have just disabled the file association functions µtorrent will not automaticaly recognise the .torrent files to open them (or maybe I just haven't figured out a way to do it properly using Linux/firefox). An easy way around this is to use the funtion in utorrent that automaticaly grabs all .torrent files saved to a specific directory for download. ( as a bonus µtorrent removes the .torrent file from this folder and moves it to its own work location). So when downloading a torrent simply saving it to this location will get ut to start the torrent within a couple of second.

1. Goto LINUX 'S /home/users/ folder and create a folder named "Torrents" (this folder will be used as a save location for the .torrent files when the torrents are finished downloading)

2. Goto LINUX 'S /home/users/ folder and create a folder named "Downloads" (this folder will be used as a save location for the files in the torrent when the torrents are finished downloading)

3. Goto µTORRENT MENU > OPTIONS > PREFERENCES > OTHER in the Storage for torrent files sections : check " move torrents for finished jobs to" and navigate your way to the /home/users/Torrents/ folder you created earlier.

4. Goto µTORRENT MENU > OPTIONS > PREFERENCES > OTHER : in the Auto-load torrent : Check both boxes and select the auto-load folder by navigating your way to your /home/users/ folder in linux.

5. Goto µTORRENT MENU > OTPIONS > PREFERENCES > DOWNLOADS : in the Location of Downloaded files section : Check "Move completed downloads to: " and browse your way to the /home/username/Downloads/ folder. Check "only move from the default download directory" and also check "append the torrent's label to the directory name"

6. Goto µTORRENT MENU > OPTIONS > PREFERENCES > DOWNLOADS : in the "Other settings" secion check "pre-allocate all files. Click Ok and exit the preference dialog.

µtorrent is now ready to work.

NOTE: you will still need to configure µtorrent for you're connection speed , refer to the connection guide in the guide section of the µtorrent site (the connection guide was made for people running windows, some of the commands may not work under Linux, you will need to make your own adjustments).

AUTO-STARTING µTORRENT ON BOOT

Linux distributons come with their own manager to automaticaly load programs on startup.

Simply copy the command line from the launcher to the appropirate place in the startup manager

1. In ubuntu 6.06 , goto LINUX MENU > SYSTEM > PREFERENCES > SESSIONS > STARUP PROGRAMS TAB : ADD, and copy/paste the command from the launcher. APPLY & EXIT

2. Restart Linux and µtorrent will load automatically

WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN RUNNING µTORRENT IN LINUX

Since µtorrent was made to run in a windows environment and since it is highly integrated with this environmet to reduce it's size , there are some things that will not work under other operating systems.

• µtorrent will flicker when refreshing informations such as donwload speed and completion % and such things. (the file tab is the worst)

• The right-click options to quick change the download and upload speed from the status bar ( bottom right) do not work.

• Lanching a file to exectute from the file tab will not work

• Open containing folder just looks freaky and you can't launch files from it.

• Tab icons do not show, so you might just as well turn them off anyway to keep µtorrent from trying to make them work.

• Title bar icon does not apear.

• Reduce to system tray does not work and having it enabled causes conflict with the way linux does things ( that's why we turned it off earlier)

• I would avoid using TORRENT > RIGHT-CLICK> ADVANCED : "Set Download Location" to change file locations, since windows and Linux handle their folders and file management differently , (mind you I haven't tried it, and I am not going to)

There might be other features that do not work under Linux but those are the main ones I have found. Nothing that seems to interfere with the proper downloading and seeding of torrents.

THEMES AND SKINS

So you now have µtorrent working but it looks like crap , that dark blue-grey win95 theme is clashing with your nice gnome and ludde's choice of default tool icons isn't to your liking (join the club).

SKINS

You can get alternate tool bars , status icons and program icons (tab icons don't work) from the the skins page on the µtorrent site

1. Stop µtorrent

2. Download your selected skins to the /home/username/.wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/username/Applications Data/uTorrent/ folder.

3. Start µtorrent again and your new toolbars/status icons, should appear.

For me it wasn't that easy, toolbar icons transparencies didn't work properly, if you have this problem try downloading the preview pic from the skins page and using an image editor ( like gimp) to replace the wite background with the proper colour (you can take a screen shot of your desktop and sample the right colour from that). Rename the file toolbar.bmp and save it to the proper location.

THEMES

For some reason Wine does not automatically default to the OS's current theme. I found an easy way around that.

1. Goto our nice friends at DeviantArt and find yourself a visual style that matches your Linux theme closely (mind you this is a windows theme we need).

2. Save the file to your desktop and unpack it

3. Move the unpacked files to /home/username/.wine/drive_c/windows/resources/themes/ (you will need to make the /Resources/Themes/ folders).

4. Goto the Linux TERMINAL and type "winecfg"

5. In the Wine congifuration applet goto the desktop integration tab : Intall a new theme : navigate your way to the /home/username/.wine/drive_c/windows/resources/Themes/ folders and select the .msstyles your theme's folder.

6. Select your new theme from the dropdown menu and APPLY.

7. At this point if µtorrent is opened it will start to freak , because, the theme thing doesn't actualy seem to work properly, don't panic.

8. From the Wine configuration applet go back to Desktop Integration and select "no theme" from the the dropdown menu and APPLY. This causes Wine to reset to the OS default theme properly and now µtorrent will look like it belongs. (you may need to xkill utorrent and start it again).