Tribler, search and download torrents with less worry or censorship

In the next article we are going to take a look at Tribler. This is a research project of the Delft University of Technology. Tribler was created in April 2005 as an open source peer-to-peer file sharing program. This torrenting program is based on the TOR network. That is why it focuses on the privacy and security of users. But if there is something that can be interesting, it is that we will not need to search for torrents outside the program, if we do not want to. This makes content censorship more difficult.

As I said, Tribler Offers Privacy Using Tor-Inspired Onion Routing, seeking to offer anonymous downloads. Bittorrent is fast, but it has no privacy. This program does not use the normal Tor network, but creates an onion routing network similar to Tor, dedicated exclusively to downloading torrents.

Tribler closely follows the Tor wire protocol specification and hidden services specification, but has been improved so that it does not need a central server. This is the first client to continually improve the old protocol BitTorrent 2001 and fixes its faults. What it does is broaden it on streaming from magnetic links, keyword search for content, channels, and reputation management, among other things.

General characteristics of Tribler

• Tribler offers anonymous download. This program does not use the normal Tor network, but instead creates a Tor-like onion routing network, which is dedicated exclusively to torrenting. More information.
• Tribler's user interface is very basic and it focuses on ease of use, rather than diversity of features. More information.
• The program is available in multiple languages, although unfortunately the Spanish is not among them.
• This program is available for Gnu / Linux, Windows and OS X.

• In its interface we will find the possibility of searching. It will allow us to find many torrents without the need to interact with any website. Although we can also use the .torrent files that we find on other pages, or magnetic links.
• Tribler is Open Source. Its source code can be seen at GitHub.
• The program try to offer a good speed in the connections, although this will depend on different factors.

• Tribler will allow us to play our videos. It will allow us to watch the videos even before the download is finished.
• We can prioritize speed or anonymity. And it does this by allowing users to choose how much data they want to forward through their distributed network.

Install Tribler on Ubuntu

Via .deb package

The latest version of this program (7.10) can be installed in Ubuntu by opening a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and using wget to download the necessary .deb package which can be found in the releases page of the project. We will do this with the command:

wget https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/releases/download/v7.10.0/tribler_7.10.0_all.deb

After the download we only have install the package. To do so, in the same terminal the command that we must use is:

sudo apt-get install ./tribler_7.10.0_all.deb

After the installation, we only have find the program launcher in our team.

uninstall

If we want to remove this installed program with its .deb package, in a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) we will only have to launch the command:

sudo apt remove tribler

By snap

This program can be installed in its version 7.7.1 as snap pack (even though it is unstable). It will only be necessary to open a terminal (Ctrl Alt T) and execute the following installation command in it:

sudo snap install test-tribler --edge

If at any time a new version appears and we need update the program, we will only have to execute the command in the terminal:

sudo snap refresh test-tribler

After finishing the installation, we can start the program from the Applications menu or any other application launcher that we have in our distribution. We can also launch the program by typing in the terminal (Ctrl Alt T):

test-tribler.tribler

uninstall

For uninstall Tribler torrent browser via Snap, we will only need to open a terminal (Ctrl Alt T) and execute the command in it:

sudo snap remove test-tribler

To use Tribler, we will not need to enter any page, or register, or anything similar. It will simply be necessary to use the program, configure it if we want using the different parameters it offers and carry out searches. If what we are looking for is available, we can download it anonymously and easily. It can get more information about this program at your web page or Wiki of the project.