Azureus is Dead, Vuze Goes Social
Written by Ernesto on June 16, 2008After 5 years, the popular BitTorrent client Azureus is no more. The Vuze team has officially abandoned the Azureus name and the new “social” BitTorrent client is now completely integrated into the Vuze content distribution platform.
The first version of the Java based BitTorrent client Azureus was released in June 2003, and soon became popular among the early adopters of BitTorrent. Over the years, Azureus turned into one of the most feature-rich clients, backed by a dedicated team of developers and an active community.
Things changed in 2006 when Azureus launched the content distribution platform it called ‘Vuze’ (aka Zudeo), backed up by a total of $34 million venture capital. For a while, they kept releasing a no-Vuze version of Azureus (when Vuze/Zudeo was in Beta), but Vuze CEO, Gilles BianRosa told TorrentFreak that this only caused confusion among their users.
“We started to change our name from Azureus to Vuze over a year ago, but we did not make the change in a clear or consistent manner,” Gilles said. “This has caused a great deal of confusion amongst our users. We want to rectify this situation by changing our name to Vuze consistently.”
“Whilst we recognize the strength of the Azureus name and the frog, it is only associated with our original BitTorrent application. As we move towards creating an all-in-one application for finding, playing and sharing great content, that goes beyond the realm of just a BitTorrent client, we wanted to change our name to reflect that, but bring with us the frog who is such a part of our heritage,” Gilles added.
Today, Vuze comes with a brand new release of their client (v3.1), introducing several new features. One of the most drastic changes is the new social layer that has been added to the client. Vuze users are now able to add friends, share torrents with friends, and give friends a speed boost when you are downloading the same torrent.
The new client also includes a meta-search engine that allows you to search across several popular BitTorrent sites, in addition to content from Vuze.com. The search functionality is completely customizable, so you can add you personal favorite if it’s not already included.
Unfortunately, there will not be a Vuze client available without the Vuze platform integrated. Gilles told TorrentFreak: “We are focusing our efforts on delivering against our vision of creating an all-in-one application that enables users to find, download, play and share in one streamlined application.”
“We have started on a path of creating an all-in-one application that enables users to find, play and share torrents. In particular, we believe that by enabling users to share content and bandwidth through the “Friends” feature we are adding a completely new dimension to peer-to-peer - a new social dimension, or what we call ’social P2P’,” Gilles said.
Azureus is no more, the name change is permanent. On the one hand this is a step forward, as the new interface and functionality will appeal to new users. However, it has also caused quite a heated debate among both developers and users who were happy with the classic UI. Although, it’s a bit hidden, the original interface still remains accessible with the UI switcher. Time will tell if it is the right move.
Previously: Survey Shows Huge Demand for Legal P2P
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196 Responses
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Gah I hate this Vuze shit, just give us the standard Azureus back.
While I wish Vuze success, the sad fact remains that many people do NOT want the features of the Vuze client — it’s a “whole other animal” as far as I’m concerned.
The last version of Azureus I used was 2.5.0.4 but I ditched it in favor of uTorrent. It’s a nice client (although it is lacking in many features) and works just great.
I’ve kept my original Azureus in case I ever want to go back. “Change” is good, but “choice” is better.
Not a big loss, the last good version of Azureus was 2.5.0.4 anyway and its the one i still use to this day.
So, I’ll be sticking with the last version of Azureus until I finally make the move to utorrent. This sucks.
I changed from azureus to utorrent over a year ago because it seemed to hog all my computers resources. Correct me if im wrong but although it looks great, wont this thing be even more demanding than azureus was…
Nooooo this is tragic!! I don’t want their garbage “social P2P” client, I just want my torrent downloaded :(
> Unfortunately, there will not be a
> Vuze client available without the
> Vuze platform integrated.
Err… well, nothing’s changed over the last year really. You can’t download a version of Azureus / Vuze without the Vuze part with it - but you can still use the classic interface (the one that’s in Azureus 2).
So you can still use the Azureus 2 interface if you want to (without all the Vuze UI wrapping around it), it’s just that the program is called Vuze.
deluge…..
Really, people should use deluge more, especially if you’re sandvined!
it’s still pre-alpha, but it has many of the features needed (minus being DHT tracker, but still) and only minimal bugs.
Beats using a client owned by BitTorrent Inc. on my book, but everyone has different tastes.
Sad to see Azureus go though. Used to use it (utorrent on the laptop cause my laptop wasn’t as powerful) before comcast started sandvining…..now use deluge.
Never going to use “vuze”
Now Joost I might, but Vuze, nah!
I just lost all my faith in bittorrent now, ima go cry….
@amc1
Thanks, I’ve updated the article to include this, I wasn’t really clear.
was azerius not open sourced anyway? if it was then someone can easily start a fork of the project just as a pure bittorrent client minus the vuze-ness
so the vuze free version may not be as dead as everyone assumes
vuze has old classic interface, so whats a problem? u can just disable vuze interface in settings.
the only reason I use vuze is you can stop sharing with leechers. utorrent makes you share with the leechers. Yes all the extras are annoying.
||||||| LONG LIFE TO AZUREUS |||||||
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/azureus/Azureus_2.5.0.4a_Win32.setup.exe?modtime=1170868577&big_mirror=0
Ditched azerius somehwere in version 1.x, and now the only way you can take utorrent from me is by prying it from my cold feking dead hands!
“For a while, they kept releasing a no-Vuze version of Azureus”
we never did, as amc1 pointed out we included the GUI-switcher and still do so. Except the brand nothing has changed.
Oh, and those who keep pointing to the 2.5.0.4 release, there have been a whole bunch of bug fixes, memory improvements and features added even if you don’t want to use the Vuze UI:
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/changelog.php
Same as many others….Even tho you can switch back to the classic UI….I switched to the less bloated Utorrent about 6 months ago myself….got tired of it eating all my resources up all the time…
Thank god I can never spell Azureus and Vuze is so much easier!
Azureus became too cluttered with Vuze and now it’s all or nothing? I’ll take the latter thanks.
Hopefully some developers pick it up open-source again. Venture Capitalism has no place in the real torrent world.
the no-vuze one’s released by some community person on TPB or something after googling.
As for why no Vuze: it used enough resources when it was Azureus to begin with (which I tolerated for the good UI and decent download speed performance) compared to other clients….now it probably uses more, and it’s still not [partially] resistant to sandvining (latest version)! Although that’s comcast’s fault….
Personally, I prefer Azureus Inc. to Bittorrent Inc. (don’t really trust BT I. to “do no evil”, in fact, expect them to), but until the sandvining issue is fixed (and maybe removing the unneeded plug-ins that I read about in the IRC chat log), I’m not switching back to Azureus/Vuze.
If you come up with your own alternative to BitTorrent Inc. DNA though (that isn’t force installed, but independent), I’d use it.
Btw, the gfx update for the little icon next to the torrent has some issues (apparently something that had a icon earlier now has a blank white box)
I was wondering what all the Vuze nonsense was that would occasionally update on my client– guess I had it stuck in classic mode. I don’t see the sense in having all that extra crap, personally– looks slick and dumb, like a BT version of RealPlayer.
I like Azureus, but I could learn uTorrent in a minute if I need to switch.
WTF is up with all this “social” crap. If we want to socialize on the internet, we don’t need a friggin Torrent client to do it with.
Azureus was so bloated already; this will just make it more difficult to use.
Josh wrote: “utorrent makes you share with the leechers.”
Yeah, that’s one of the main things I dislike about it. The reason they give is that people don’t use it properly. :/ Bullshit. When I see a client sucking up a huge percentage of a torrent I’m seeding while everyone else is still far below, that means they’re leeching and not sharing fully. Sometimes it’s a BitThief client masquerading as the original BitTorrent client (downloading without uploading). uTorrent needs kick and ban for leeching assholes like that.
As for Vuze having the original Azureus interface — who cares? The resource footprint is huge whether you use it or not. Azureus was once a great client but it slowly changed into something that appeared to be coded by Microsoft’s bloatware specialists. Apparently they can’t say “no” to any suggested “feature” and just shoehorned everything but the kitchen sink into the thing.
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