Are You Still Using Btsync 1.3.xx?


Journeyman

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Still on 1.3.109, mainly because of the reports of bugs in the first 1.4.x versions.  I'll upgrade eventually.

I'm on Linux, so I got the new UI early ... I still haven't warmed to it.  It was much easier to find things in the older UI.  I still haven't figured out how to view what files are syncing or are unsynced.

I've been waiting until 1.4 showed up on auto-update, because I assume that to be a sign of stability ... seeing that 1.4.92 just came out, I'm thinking of it.

The other big thing I'm waiting for is a more elegant handling of xattrs ... sync between OS X and linux systems is broken without hacking xattrs into .SyncIgnore, and I don't want to have to mess with that again until it's fixed for good.

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To contribute to the OP's poll...

 

Downgraded to BTSync 1.3.109 a few days ago because I simply had enough dealing with the 1.4 beta trainwrecks.

 

As for the 'why?':

 

- BTSync 1.3 (Windows) has the way saner, more sleek, more elegant, UI

 

- BTSync 1.3 (Windows) displays the UI _right away_ and doesn't make me wait till eternity for some moronic "index.html" to load up. Sorry to say BT devs, but waiting 5-6 seconds for the UI to load up, on a 8-core machine having 16GB RAM and running off a SSD, is simply unacceptable; even the 1.3 Linux web UI loads up faster than the trainwreck you call "Settings UI" on BTSync 1.4 Windows. Apart from that I don't like being forced having to have Internet Exploder enabled (first thing I do on Windows is to implement a Group Policy to send IE to hell).

 

- BTSync 1.3 at least works (didn't come across any oddities, which can't be really said about 1.4 ... non-sticking config parameters or dysfunctional functions - hint: "Listeing port" which wasn't fixed in the course of three subsequent releases - and such rather imply a "pre-Alpha" than a "Beta").

 

- I'll stick to this version for a few months until some other software, doing about the same thing and not forcing me to have some lousy _Browser_ installed/updated/enabled down my throat (simply because it needs it epically bad render engine), has matured a bit more (not going to drop a name here; may be considered 'advertising compeditors') to leave BTSync for good; I don't see it getting any better as it seems that "running with that LULZ HTML/AJAX UI" is to where the management suits want to take it (well, have luck with that).

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Sorry if it is a dumb question, but...

 

Why some of you says things like "I don't like being forced having to have Internet Exploder enabled"?

 

I use Firefox all day long, upgraded to 1.4.x and was not forced to use IExploder.

 

Am I losing something? IS there something important in btsync 1.4 wich is only visible on IE?

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Sorry if it is a dumb question, but...

 

Why some of you says things like "I don't like being forced having to have Internet Exploder enabled"?

 

I use Firefox all day long, upgraded to 1.4.x and was not forced to use IExploder.

 

Am I losing something? IS there something important in btsync 1.4 wich is only visible on IE?

 

What you're missing is that in order for BTSync 1.4's "fabulous" UI to actually display and work you _NEED_ to have at least IExplode 9.0 installed.

 

This means:

 

1. Disable Iploder, either through "Programs and Features" or via a System Group Policy, and BTSync will happily present you a empty page.

 

2. If you never update/d Imploder, simply because you can't care less about that Microsoft Malware, it will also refuse to work because Windows 7 ships with IE8 by default (update to IE9/10/11 are on Windows Update but they won't be installed if IE is turned off).

 

In short, you get forced to use/let enabled a particular component you may not even want to use in the first place or about which presence you can't be entirely sure (keep in mind that Microsoft left us with a configuration option to make it disappear, and it's still there even in Windows 10).

 

That being said, no matter how the suits around here try to defend their decision: it's only a sad display of bad coding skills and lacking mangementship to produce something that relies on something you can't take "for granted" just because it happens to be a part of the OS. They could implement Gecko or WebKit (both Free Open Source Software apart from them being levels of magnitudes better and more standard compliant than IE's dire excuse for a render engine) to have a embedded render engine, but ... obviously too far-fetched to be considered.

 

Sync started off as a great product, but at least for me it disqualified itself for further use with 1.4.

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I agree with most people here: the new UI is less clear, and some things are missing, like the list of connected computers or the list of transfers, for instance.

 

In an analysis there are many tables. Showing them separately, like in the 1.3, is the thing to do if one wants the user to have a clear and transparent perception of the analysis and an intuitive appropriation of it. Trying to show all tables in a single synthetic view can be some time really accurate, but certainly not at the price of hiding the elementary tables, not even talking about the too wide to be practical mono view and others difficulties that didn’t exist before that other peoples are explaining in this thread. That (removing the detailed tabs) clearly is the mistake done here in the 1.4 UI which finally, even if it looks more “pro” than before, is a regression despite the clever work that have been done, unfortunately turning it to inappropriate.

 

I’m sorry to tell the developers that I’m going to reverse my installations, even to the price of declaring again all my paths.

 

Another reason to me to go back to 1.3 is that things are not functioning like before. Some clients are not seen by some others, some folders are indefinitely waiting for a sync with a 0% progression status (55 years), some others seems forever unsynced, etc.

 

I also have been surprised (irritated) by a (stupid) regression in the Android version which prevents a basic user to make a so simple declaration before. I have the impression Bit Torrent Sync lives a crisis in choosing its clients. Being quite the only private syncing solution, the risk of significant client loss is minor but must be considered. I’m supposing there will be a step backward in a future version of BTSync. I’ll be waiting for this (and not only me).

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Still on 1.3.109. 1.4.93 still needs a lot of work in terms of screen readers. It also from what I'm hearing been bloated a ton and now uses a lot more ram and resources. On iPhone it is completely unusable with voiceover now.  If and when 1.3.109 fails to function, and 1.4 or 1.5 or whatever iteration is released without fixes to the UI and accessibility I will be looking at alternatives.

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What you're missing is that in order for BTSync 1.4's "fabulous" UI to actually display and work you _NEED_ to have at least IExplode 9.0 installed.

That's not quite correct - this only applies to Windows builds, and only for Win7 (or later). Non-Windows OS's don't require IE9, nor do WinXP/2k3.

...and as the developers have indicated, the dependance on IE9 for later Windows builds won't persist.

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...and as the developers have indicated, the dependance on IE9 for later Windows builds won't persist.

 

The BitTorrent stuff and Sync has been fantastic. And from the outside we don't know who's responsible for these decisions. And thank God some of us have started other projects to compete which is what drives to improvements. But the lesson I hope is learned is that you can't release something with such a crutch with the disclaimer that "we'll remove it later".  More time should have been taken to release without the crutch. For one thing, you certainly lose credibility and trust from users who never wanted to be crippled.

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I tried the 1.4 alpha and found it basically useless and unusable.

 

It also trashed my testing filesystem by creating files with infinite extensions ".conflict".

Never, ever, ever, for any reason, created duplicates in a filesystem - unless I explicitly ask for it.

BTsync 1.4 created 5TB of duplicate data in .conflict files.

 

I'm on 1.3109 on my desktops and I had to force restore my Android versions as the app auto updated to 1.4 and virtually destroyed in production systems because 1.3 and 1.4 don't play well.

It should have been released as a separate app so that this conflict didn't happen.

It took a week of cleaning up to fix that mess and now I have to make sure that the app is frozen at that version in the play store (which screws up some other things btw).

The Android version of 1.4 is also a giant battery drain and doesn't work properly with the media manager, so when a new file is synchronised it won't turn up in anything but a filemanager. This makes it worthless on mobile. 

It's an easy fix to hook the media intent through, but this hasn't been done.

 

The move to a web based manager is a good one, the 1.3 linux interface is great and I use it on a 'master' file server. 

The decision to use IE and force it just shows how bad the evaluation process is internally.

It really should have been a self contained Chrome client or internal web server that lets the user choose a browser from the start, but obviously someone has an opinion they want forced.

They could have written a whole QT interface and not have it as bad as IE (even though it would still be rubbish). Qt is actually cross platform too!

 

I want to explicitly state that the feedback is not falling on deaf ears. Every bit of it gets pushed up, quantified, prioritized and tackled by the appropriate team

 

The feedback may not be falling on deaf ears, but it's clear that there are people not listening or refusing to understand the nature of the product they have created.

The backup functions are the LEAST useful part of the tool, yet that seems to be the focus in 1.4.

Every bit of official communication has shown the complete disregard the team has for the thoughts of the people who actually use the product and a clear push has been made to move BTSync away from a synchroniser and towards a "Backup" tool [removed - please avoid insulting comparisons on forums]

Seriously GUI team - your redesign is an insult not an improvement.

 

When I saw the first 1.4 alpha I realised that the team at BT wanted to move the product away from what I thought were it's most valuable features. ie; encrypted, server less, native to the file-system, real-time file synchronisation.

BTsync 1.3 was almost something I'd be willing to actually buy.

 

I'm now very actively testing Syncthing and I plan to deploy it as a primary system (even though it's miles behind BTSync1.3) because the devs of that product haven't assumed I have the intellect of a dead fish.

 

I can see that something has happened that has gutted a strong product and turned it into something I would expect from management instead of developers.

Edited by RomanZ
insulting comparisons
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now I have to make sure that the app is frozen at that version in the play store (which screws up some other things btw).

 

To ensure that Android apps don't update themselves, I use the app 3c Toolbox Pro to unlink such apps from the Play Store. The Play Store's auto update settings don't always seem to work as expected, perhaps when the Play Store updates or as the result of  updating my ROM. Once unlinked, they continue to run normally, but Play Store has no idea that they're installed. I think the link gets restored, though, after a ROM update.

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everything I read here in the forums seems to suggest 1.4.x is a bad upgrade from 1.3.x   At the moment the only feature I'm missing that I'd like is inter-folder moves, which I believe is in 1.4.x but the bad reports about the GUI and other bugs make me want to hold off.

 

I guess I'd ask - is there going to be a retraction for the GUI? or are you sticking with this web interface ?

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Have 1.4 on all devices although I complained loudly about the ridiculous interface. But as this is beta, and definitely has rough edges and probably some data-eating corner-cases I guess those will be fixed addressed in the 1.4 branch. Also I use Macs and Linux (xattr. issues)

 

What is most unnerving are the "A HTML GUI makes multi-platform easier" argument: No Sirs, it does not. Everyone who builds websites that need to run on multiple renderers knows it. And in the end, the result will, well, look like the BTSync GUI. But I think bitching about this doesn't change anything, as it depends on the team developing it and their preferences. Theory: For example, maybe they only have a few developer they need to work on the code, and then a bunch of web developers. So the © developers can focus on the core and the web guys (JS) can take some burden away baking the prototype GUI. Maybe it makes development faster...

 

I do keep an eye on SyncThing, but jumping from one beta product to another beta (alpha?) product just because I have anger issues with the GUI probably is not the wised decision. I will wait and observe....

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What is most unnerving are the "A HTML GUI makes multi-platform easier" argument: No Sirs, it does not. Everyone who builds websites that need to run on multiple renderers knows it.

 

The key word is "easier". Not "effortless". And it definitely is easier than building fat clients for every major OS (which probably is why they didn't bother to try with anything but Windows in the first place).

 

I do keep an eye on SyncThing, but jumping from one beta product to another beta (alpha?) product just because I have anger issues with the GUI probably is not the wised decision. I will wait and observe....

 

For me it's not the GUI in itself so much, it is the mindset behind it. And I don't blame the developers, I blame (product) managers - until proven otherwise.

I definitely will switch to SyncThing/Pulse as soon as it has all the features I need, unless BTSync does a radical change (like going open source and/or really letting the users decide what features to concentrate on).

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I was still using 1.3.109 until a few days ago.

 

My use case:

1 always-on Linux box as private cloud

2 Mac desktops

2 Mac laptops

1 folder shared with all, only a couple of dozen MBs in a few hundred files

1 folder shared with all, approx. 50k files in a bit over 2GB

2 folders each shared with Linux box, 1 desktop and 1 laptop, a few hundred MB

physical access to all devices

 

My story:

I was early to the party on 1.4.x and it was a bad experience. I did an in-place upgrade on one device and ran into lots of problems, even though the sync core is billed as compatible. Failed connections, no progress on syncs, many hours spent watching debug logs trying to figure out what was going on, lots of emails exchanged with support. One common factor seemed to be problems related to xattrs, which were in my .SyncIgnore files on 1.3.x but are handled differently in 1.4.x. In the end I removed all trace of 1.4.x and started fresh with 1.3.109. I still saw occasional problems with xattrs, but nothing I couldn't resolve with some tinkering.

 

In the meantime I continued evaluating alternatives, including Seafile, ownCloud, Syncthing/Pulse and AeroFS. Nothing else I tried could match the combination of simplicity, flexibility and performance I found in BTSync. I resigned myself to sticking with BTSync for a while, which meant I would inevitably be upgrading at some point.

 

A few days ago I took the plunge again with 1.4.93. However, instead of an in-place upgrade, I removed all traces of 1.3.109, including hidden folders, preferences, firewall rules etc, then did a completely clean install of 1.4.93 (AppCleaner is helpful here on OS X).

 

I don't know if the clean install is causal, but everything went very smoothly and I've seen minimal issues with the new version. I no longer have to think about xattrs (I left .sync/StreamsList at default and only added my specific needs to .sync/SyncIgnore), and the new UI doesn't bother me. It's less compact than the old, but I reason that the more I trust BTSync, the less time I'll spend checking the UI anyway.

 

The clean install process was tedious and I'd be unhappy having to do it with fully released commercial software, but I can live with it with a free product that's still in public beta. Of course, it helps that I have a simple use case - YMMV.

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I was still using 1.3.109 until a few days ago.

 

My use case:

1 always-on Linux box as private cloud

Having run into problems the first time, I was also planning to do a clean install when I upgrade to 1.4. One issue I had with 1.4 was higher CPU usage on my Linux box while btsync was between sync times. What kind of CPU usage are you seeing on your Linux box as compared to 1.3.109?

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Contrarily to what I said some days ago, I did not came back to the previous version. 

 

I like this version (1.4) especially for the new efficiency of the renaming. This version is a good one, and I feel more sure with BT than before, even though I had no special problems !

 
The 1.4 UI gives a good synthetic view of what happens, but I still think it is preferable to show elementary entities, like the list of computers connected, etc. 
 
But in reality, this is not a so strong wish, for some reasons :
- I felt a bit lost without them,
- l don't like to lose some possibilities,
- I needed to feel confident about the product,
- It is a tool one forgets when it works !
 
Some other problems I had where linked to conflicts between files that I have solved by deleting and restoring them. In this case I prefer this comportment than the discreet deleting or overwriting of the problematic files, so, a it was mostly a good point to BTS !
 
I also had another curious problem, solved by updating the Android BTS version of my phone. 
 
Since then I have nothing to say and I say it!
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 It also from what I'm hearing been bloated a ton and now uses a lot more ram and resources.

 

This is now the official reason why I haven't upgraded.  I've now tried 1.4 (since it fixes xattrs), but 1.4 crashes with an out of memory error on my main system.  My main system has 16GB RAM.  That's not small.  And 1.3 has been working fine without hogging resources.

 

Wolfman:  Can you point me in the direction of other reports of this issue?  I haven't found much that gives solid info.

Also, I've now seen the 1.4 interface in detail.  I don't hate it.  I wish there was a way to see more info about what files are specifically out of sync.

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I'm seeing some increased RAM usage, but nothing extreme. I didn't make a note of the before numbers, but in the use case I described above, the 1.4.93 OS X client is using about 75MB.

 

I wish there was a way to see more info about what files are specifically out of sync.

 

With the GUI open and the Peers column displayed, this takes 2 clicks:

1. Click the Peers link for the folder.

2. Click the disclosure next to the peer you're interested in.

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Yes, still on 1.3.109. The UI in 1.4 is horrible.

+1 . I am still on 1.3. Moreover, 1.4 is not available on some old devices (sony xperia x8).

The bad news is that after upgrading 1.3 -> 1.4, I can't go back. I did that once and I was so disappointed. Forcing 1.4 -> 1.3 will cause btsync go into an infinite loop lolz

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@icymatter

1.4 for WinPhone requires WP8.1 and won't run on WP8. So if it is possible to upgrade your sony xperia OS - you can get Sync 1.4 running on it.

 

The database format of 1.4 and 1.3 is not compatible, therefore downgrade is not possible. If there are any issues we can help you to deal with  - please share to syncapp@bittorrent.com

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