Transmission 3.0 Released, Here’s How to Install it on Ubuntu

A new version of open-source torrent client Transmission is available to download. In this post I share details on what’s changed and show you how to install the update on your system using the official Transmission PPA.

Transmission 3.0 is the first major major update to this much-loved cross-platform torrent client for over 2 years so (naturally) ships with a batch of overdue bug fixes, feature enhancements, and compatibility improvements as a result.

Among these is improved support for IPv6 addresses in the RPC server as well as throughout the app in general. Verification is turned on by default for curl fetches, and the client reverts to using a torrent’s hash as the base name for torrent resumes (which will fix any “Error: Unable to save resume file: File name too long” error when re-adding a Magnet link).

Other notable changes in Transmission 3.0 include:

• Handle “fields” argument in “session-get” RPC request
• Limit number of incorrect authentication attempts in embedded web server
• Set idle seed limit range to 4 weeks in all clients
• Add Peer ID for torrent and download clients
• Better handling of Amazon S3 trackers
• Add TCP_FASTOPEN support
• Abort handshake if establishing DH shared secret fails
• Don’t switch trackers while announcing
• Better detect when a session is local or remote
• Ability to change torrent location even if no data move is needed
• Support CIDR-notated blocklists
• Parse session-id header case-insensitively
• Sanitize suspicious path components
• Add support for mbedtls, wolfssl and LibreSSL
• Misc memory leaks plugged

The GTK version of Transmission 3.0 also has a new new app icon on Linux desktops, including a symbolic icon variant to indicate its presence in the GNOME top bar (though you won’t see these on Ubuntu as the Yaru icon set overrides it); adds queue up/down hotkeys; and refreshes the bundled AppData.

Install Transmission 3.0 on Ubuntu

All versions of Ubuntu ship with an older stable release of Transmission (GTK) installed by default. If you want to install Transmission 3.0 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or above to take advantage of new features and enhanced protocol support then you can do so in two ways.

1. Build Transmission 3.0 from source using the code release available from GitHub.
2. Add the official Transmission PPA

The latter of these options is the one I’d recommend. Not only is it much less effort but it lets you upgrade to Transmission 3.0 on Ubuntu 18.04 through 20.10 (as well as Linux Mint and other Ubuntu-based distros) and score subsequent updates as/when/if released.

To add the PPA for Transmission to your system just open a new Terminal window and run this command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:transmissionbt/ppa

After this is added you will be able to upgrade to Transmission 3.0 via the Software Updater tool or by running:

sudo apt install transmission-gtk

We’ve shown you how to remove a PPA before should you decide you want to remove this version of Transmission and ‘downgrade’ to the repo-provided one.

h/t breaking news