LottaNZB 0.6 released
Written for LottaNZB by Severin H on 2011-02-13
Today marks an important point in the history of LottaNZB: I’m proud to announce the release of LottaNZB 0.6! The work on this new version has started more than 1 year and 8 months ago. Countless hours were spent in order to lift LottaNZB to a new level of usability and improve it substantially from a technical point of view. Let me present you the most important changes:
LottaNZB 0.6 makes use of a new backend software called SABnzbd, replacing HellaNZB, which was used in previous versions of LottaNZB. In comparison to HellaNZB, SABnzbd is actively being developed, offers a more complete and stable API to third-party applications like LottaNZB and provides much more features, such as a web interface, a history of completed downloads, support for RSS feeds, and so on.
SABnzbd has proved to be a perfectly reliable foundation to build LottaNZB on, which aims to provide the smoothest user experience and best desktop integration for both novice and advanced Linux users seeking to download from the Usenet. In LottaNZB 0.6, only a small subset of SABnzbd’s features can be accessed. This will certainly change in the future.
The main window has undergone a redesign, making it slicker and more customizable. The new buttons on the left can be used to reorder the download queue, in addition to the already existing drag-and-drop support. The information bar at the bottom not only makes it possible to monitor and quickly limit the download speed, but also monitor the amount of free space in the download folder.
Also other parts of the user interface have been considerably improved, such as the server dialog, always doing the best to adhere to the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines.
Thanks to SABnzbd, LottaNZB 0.6 provides more information about the state of downloads, especially if something unexpected happens. For instance, LottaNZB displays the progress of verification and extraction operations and allows users to open a dialog that provides more detailed information about a download, such as its age.
The user is given more control over downloads taking place by making it possible to pause and rename individual downloads and to select what kind of post-processing should be done. Also, users are informed when the requried tools are missing. Operations on the list of downloads are applied instantly, making the interface feel snappy.
The setup process of LottaNZB has been greatly simplified. The user can choose to either download to the current computer or monitor the downloads of another computer. In either case, nearly all capabilities for managing downloads and preferences are available. LottaNZB even offers assistance if SABnzbd is not installed on a Debian-based system.
Both the configuration and incomplete downloads of existing LottaNZB users can be imported, making the transition to LottaNZB 0.6 as smooth as possible.
The whole help content has been rewritten using Mallard. It aims to be an easy-to-understand introduction for users new to LottaNZB and the Usenet, but also useful for people who are interested in more advanced or less-known features of LottaNZB. Specific help topics can be accessed directly through various Help buttons added to the user interface. In addition, the whole help content is available online.
Please be aware that even though LottaNZB 0.6 has been tested by both the developers and people who have used the daily builds in the past months, the software is still not perfect and crashes or bugs might be encountered. For instance, some users are reporting frequent crashes due to segmentation faults, which is still being investigated. As always, you’re encouraged to report any bugs you find and help translate LottaNZB, as well as SABnzbd.
