great, now i'm not gonna be the only person who knows about this...

FezMan88

People still use Gnutella? I haven't used anything other than BitTorrent in nearly 6 years.

xxdesmus

Yeah, what's so special about it? Limewire does it too.

HarrisonHopkins

A reminder if you use Limewire and Frostwire: just be careful of the viruses and worms that plague the Gnutella Network.

Earl

Fezman88, my thoughts exactly. Nothing to see here people, keep moving, nothing to see here.

dwroth

Always did hate these kinds of p2p apps, just simply due to the shear amount of crap, viruses, mislabeled downloads, and lawfolk scouring these networks :(

It's sad to see these apps still in production! Please upgrade to bittorrent if you're still using these :P

x3r0

This is the samething as Limewire but open source right? I have not used this and some people have told me that this is not as good as Limewire, but I have not tried it myself so I wouldn't know. The interface & things looks the same, so why call it a different name? Also, I know a few other programs that do this but they somewhat integrate Limewire, Kazaa & a few other P2P clients into one program and you can download from all those sources from one place, but it is full of viruses & spyware based off what I heard, but I don't know that name of the program that has this. My dad had this program of what I am talking about on his computer but I forgot the name, but I like the idea of integrating all sources into one, but hate the idea of viruses & things.

TheVault

There you go. Two chances for the price of one to get busted by the RIAA.

dnthomps

You think BitTorrent has no crap, viruses, mislabeled downloads, or law enforcement? I'd love to know where you got that sort of information.

Every P2P application (even BitTorrent, go browse a public tracker like The Pirate Bay) has all of these problems. The trick is knowing what to download. Same with this. Even back in the days of Kazaa it was horribly easy to spot the fakes. All you have to do is not download an entire 10 kilobyte album.rar.exe and you're fine.

If I remember correctly, Frostwire was created when Limewire decided they'd implement copyrighted files blocking. When it was shown that all they were going to do was basically add a yes/no checkbox, Frostwire kept on going. More power to them, I say. Personally for that network, I prefer to use Cabos.

If you want a single song, it can be quicker to type it in and double click than trying to find a well seeded torrent... especially when it's rare.

bennyboy

Both Limewire (and to a lesser extent) Frostwire are lame.

If you're a Windows user, I recommend Shareaza. Just like Limewire/Frostwire, it accesses the Guntella network.

But there's much more. It also accesses Guntella II AND Fasttrack (the network used by Kazaa).

Oh yeah, it's a BitTorrent client too.

[shareaza.sf.net]

angrykeyboarder

+1 for the client cabos. Seriously. Best app in my book to grab a small file;)

phoood

I dunno, I've been looking for a new app to try. I've been stuck on eMule for a good long time now, and I haven't made the big switch to bittorrent unless I specifically needed something. Might be worthwhile to give it a try. :D

phoenix

Frostwire FTW!
I understand people bitching about Gnutella and all, but this is the PERFECT program to grab a small MP3 - looking for "Micheal Jackson - Killer"? you got it. It is better than Limewire because it does not contain ads and is free and has no filtering mechanism (Limewire was forced to put one in).

It's true with the viruses, even when you search for the "Micheal Jackson - Killer" thing, you still get like 10 times "Hacking program.exe"... but common sense!

moontear

Frostwire is perfect for that random file you must download. I've been using it for years and haven't downloaded a virus yet. Basic common sense should keep you virus-free anywhere on the net, unless you're the kind of person that downloads a 377 KB file called "George_Bush_phone_prank".

TunaFish

i use bittorrent alot but still use gnutella for individual tracks...its true that the gnutella network is full of viruses and spam so i would stick to bittorrent if you are running windoze.

emmetp

Can someone who uses bittorrent frequently go over the actual probability of running into legal trouble for downloading music and movies? I'm reluctant to do either at the moment though I read an article on ol' LH the other day stating that you're more likely to be struck by an asteroid than run into trouble over downloading....

Thoughts?

perchdogg

Don't forget that with most BitTorrent clients you don't have to download all of the files in an album. You can usually select only the files(individual tracks) that you want to download. Unless of course they put them all into one compressed file, then you have to download the whole album.

Will

I just like thinking of torrenting as a buy-in-bulk kinda thing, like a priceclub. It's easier to get the whole album then getting each file individually. Then again, what if you wanna get some Michael Jackson song? I wouldn't go searching for the album and checking just one song. I'd go on on the gnutella network to grab a song, like a convenience store.

I use soulseek which seems a lot more safer. But if I had to choose, I'd go open source with Frostwire.

Sketchaphone

@PERCHDOGG
You can always use programs like PeerGuardian to help protect yourself from RIAA IP sweepers. Also, the amount of lawsuits compared to the number of active users on Bittorrent users is somewhere around winning the lottery twice. Then again, you may just be that lucky =P.

oblivinated

Even running a mac this thing gave me the creeps, just like Limewire.

henry_the_dentist

Finally! Someone finally talked about FrostWire. Basically FrostWire is a fork of the original LimeWire, which is also Open Source. FrostWire was forked because LimeWire started 'selling out', especially by 'bowing down' to pressure from the RIAA and friends. FrostWire's developers consist of members of LimeWire's community, or ex-members at least. The fork explains why this is nearly identical cosmetically. Everyone always asks me, "Why FrostWire (Instead of LimeWire)", and since they don't notice the difference, I just tell them to use it anyways. FrostWire has better alternate Operating System support too, having readily available Ubuntu packages and the like, rather than just an RPM which has to be converted to a DEB Package using something like Alien.

FrostWire contains all of LimeWire's features, PLUS all of LimeWire Pro's features. Along with this, there is a chatroom (I believe to be IRC) integrated into the client.

For more information, view the Wikipedia page: [en.wikipedia.org]

BlaenkDenum

It's like Limewire Pro but open source. Unfortunately, it'll probably become pay for pro in a year or two.

Rezert

btw, I forgot to add +1 for Cabos!!

atomicrabbit

Like others have said above, the gnutella network is still useful when you need a single rare or even not-so-rare mp3. Bit Torrent has become like America's fast food industry -- easy to find and in unnecessarily large proportions. All you can find on Bit torrent are full albums and most ppl just download full albums even though they really only want one or two songs. Then they end of having hundreds upon hundreds of full albums that they rarely listen to and they just sit on unnecessarily large HDDs. Why? -- because we can. Very gluttonous!

Now, obviously I'm not speaking for everyone... there are actually ppl who listen to full albums all the time. But a lot of ppl really only want a couple songs from an album, bc that's really all that's good from albums now-a-days. THAT's what the gnutella network is good for!

atomicrabbit