Building a dedicated download system with rTorrent
Playing Fetch
© Victoria Moody, 123RF
Your old computer might still be useful as a dedicated download box.
Before you throw away the old PC in your basement, you might be wondering whether you can find another use for it. An out-of-date computer that is too light for today's GUI universe still has value – if you can find the right job for it. I put my old PC to work as a BitTorrent-ready download slave that spends its cycles on fetching large files so my production systems can worry about other tasks.
All you need is a light Linux distribution that fits on your old computer, a torrent client, and a few other tools to control and manage the system.
Which Tools?
The computer I am using as my download slave (remote computer) is a Pentium 2 with a clock speed of 500MHz and 96MB of SDRAM. For the example in this article, I will use Debian Linux, but you can use any Linux distribution supported by the hardware.
[...]
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Dash to Panel Maintainer Quits
Charles Gagnon has stepped away as maintainer of the popular Dash to Panel Gnome extension.
-
CIQ Releases Security-Hardened Version of Rocky Linux
If you're looking for an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that is hardened for business use, there's a new version of Rocky Linux that's sure to make you and your company happy.
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.