14 DAY TRIAL // There are many ways to share files with other people. Gnutella is a big and popular file sharing network, where you can find a lot of things if you connect. Moreover, it is a true peer to peer network because files are transfered directly between users and there is no central server. The search queries are passed in a round robin fashion from one node to another.
LimeWire is a client for the Gnutella network, which claims to be the "The Fastest File Sharing Program on the Planet". It is a free and open-source program written in Java so it runs on computers which have the Java Virtual machine installed. Download an rpm package and install it but remember you need Java. If you don't have it installed get it and install it before Lime. One the installation is complete run it by typing limewire in the command line. The program will ask you what folder to use for saving files. To search for something type in the name in the search box. You can choose to search only images, documents, programs and video or audio files and the search results come in pretty quickly.
To change something about LimeWire go to the Tools menu and choose Option. The main configuration window will appear. Here you can set your connection speed and the percentage of your bandwidth used for download so that Limewire can optimize performance. You can also specify the number of simultaneous downloads. LimeWire will automatically share the files you've downloaded. Lime also has another interesting and useful option. If you want to download all the music files in the same place or all the movies in a folder named "movies", you can specify a download location for each media file. This will keep downloaded files more organized on your hard disk.
If there are files in the queue for many days or weeks and they don't seem to make any progress, you can specify a number of days after which LimeWire will automatically delete old incomplete download files.
Set Lime to automatically connect at start up if you want to use it daily. You can also configure the shutdown behavior. If you do not want to download other files then the ones which are already up for download you can have LimeWire to shutdown after transfers are complete.
The possibility to configure searches can be handy. For example if you want a file right away, you can set it to only show results with the speed of T1 line. The Search Result Quality setting refines results even more. You can choose to show only four star results. This means that only users which are not behind a firewall and have free slots will be shown.
Lime has a nice look and feel to it. One of the cool stuff is that it has an integrated media player. I tried it and it works. If this player isn't enough for you, Lime can use your system's default player. If you're a geeky kind of guy and you are interested in seeing some technical info, Lime can show you some statistics. You can see stuff like the total number of incoming upload requests or the total of outgoing responses.
If you are now wondering "Why do some files take so long to download?" remember that this has nothing to do with LimeWire. The speed at which downloads take place depends on your bandwidth and on the bandwidth of the unloader. In addition to this, some users may impose limits on the speed at which they will upload files for the sake of saving bandwidth.
LimeWire allows you to search for multiple files in the same time. If you use a client for DC (the direct connect protocol) and do a search, then immediately a new one, you will not get result because hubs have a search limit. For example, you can search after a time period of 30 or 60 seconds. Lime does not have this limitation so you can search all you want.
The program works fine behind firewalls. I used it in this situation with the default settings and I had no problem downloading files or uploading them. LimeWire can use UPnp (Universal Plug'n Play) to configure your router if the router supports this. If there are conflicts change the port LimeWire uses for incoming connections.
The Good
This is one of the best peer to peer clients you can find. Its interface is easy to use, and it's quite a good thing the fact that it's made in Java, this makes implementing it much easier in different OS platforms.
The Bad
Maybe it takes a little too long to load. It crashed once, but besides this there are no major problems.
The Truth
Limewire is one of the most used Gnutella clients. Its network is big and getting bigger, so you will surely find what you are looking for.
View some screenshots below:
