This is my BASIC BASIC understanding of Bittorrent in linux.
note there is no GUI like Windows Bittorrent (that's what got me confused)
When you have downloaded Bittorrent, here's what you do:
1) download your *.torrent file and save it on your desktop, or whevever you want to save it at.
2) go to console mode
3) go to directory of the extracted Bittorrent directory
4) in console, type this: btdownloadheadless.py <path and location of file>.torrent
5) that's it! and hopefully it should show, text-based, the upload/download status.
This is what I did and Bittorrent works for me now. One less reason to use WIndows.