How to: run uTorrent in Linux

Here’s a brief tutorial that was requested in our forum. uTorrent is a very lightweight and easy to use bittorrent client, that unfortunately is unmatched by some of the Linux clients out there today. You can still have functioning WebUI and Automated RSS Downloading with uTorrent running in Ubuntu Linux, so if let’s get started!

Install Wine (Windows Emulator) in Ubuntu Linux

Wine is an open source software that allows you to run Windows software under different operating systems. With Wine you can run Windows software applications in Linux similar to how you would run them in Windows.

Provided you are running Ubuntu Linux; Open up a terminal and run the following commands:

sudo apt-get install wine

This will install Wine from Ubuntu’s software repositories along with all of the packages required to run it.

Download uTorrent (uTorrent.exe)

Since installing Wine in Ubuntu Linux may take a few minutes, in the meantime you can grab a copy of uTorrent (for windows), I’d recommend a stable release, (at the time of writing this the newest stable release is 2.0).

Open up another terminal and enter the following commands:

cd ~

This should bring you to your home directory (if you aren’t already there).

sudo mkdir utorrrent

This creates a /utorrent/ directory

cd utorrent

Change into the uTorrent directory

sudo wget http://download.utorrent.com/2.0/utorrent.exe

This begins downloads the utorrent.exe file into the new directory you just created, you should see the progress bar on the download.

Run uTorrent using Wine under Linux

By now Wine should be fully installed, we’re going to create a launcher and then run uTorrent using it. On your desktop right click and goto Create Launcher…

A new window will popup asking you to fill in the details for your new launcher, fill in the fields as follows:

Type: Application
Name: uTorrent
Command: wine “/home/USERNAME/utorrent/utorrent.exe /NOINSTALL”

** NOTE **
Where it says USERNAME fill in your Linux username!
Where it says /NOINSTALL is because you don’t want to install uTorrent in Linux, you don’t need to! It still saves your settings

And that’s it! You should now have a new launcher for uTorrent on your desktop!

Need a uTorrent Icon for Your Shortcut?

Yep, we think of everything open up a Terminal again and jump to your ~/utorrent/ directory:

cd ~/utorrent

And download this image:

sudo wget http://tipst3r.com/download_images/utorrent_icon.png

Next just goto Properties for the Launcher shortcut you made and click on the current icon, and browse your way to the utorrent_icon.png and use this as your new icon.

Now it looks all pretty on your desktop.

Follow-up Configurations: Beef up your new uTorrent Linux Install!

Learn how to setup uTorrent WebUI and access your Torrents Anywhere!
Learn how to setup Automated RSS Downloading