trying ubunto now
A. I see part of your issue. It's an external .deb file, and Ubuntu, since they moved to their own package system (snap) has been buggy as fuck with debs. You can try unpacking the tarball and see if the standalone works better than trying the deb, but there's a reason I hate Ubuntu, and am very vocal about it.
B. Have you tried the "transmission" program for torrenting?
trying it now, I guess I really need to use linux more before committing to it.
With all due respect: PLEASE STOP FUCKING USING UBUNTU OR ANY OF IT'S CHILDREN. You'll wind up HATING Linux if you use it. Try a Debian distro like MX Linux, or better yet, an Arch based distro, like Manjaro. I'd suggest manjaro for the simple reason that any and all programs that exist for linux exist in the AUR
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