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P2P Software for the Mac?
NeptalTim asks: "I've recently started using the Mac as my primary computer again after a hiatus of several years. All 'switch' jokes aside, I'm liking it very much, except for the decided lack of good P2P software. I always used Kazaa on Windows, but the best app I've found for the Mac is Limewire, which is a tad slow to say the least. What do Slashdot readers in the Mac community use for P2P?" I've been using iSwipe for a short amount of time and have found it useful. It's no WinMX, but it works. What other P2P programs have you found that you like?
Sure, it's a derivative of Limewire, on the other hand it's written in Cocoa/Java, so it at least looks prettier :)
http://www.kapsi.de/software/fern/
GPL Deconstructed
Ther is also Phex.
Gtk Gnutella is my favorite and I believe you can compile it for MacosX. If not the there will be a proper version of GTK for macos very soon. to let you
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
I have a server running WinMX that I use my iBook with terminal services client to control.
All my media content (all copyright free, naturally) is centrally held on the server.
Does it matter what platform ones software runs on so long as it works? You use the best tool for the job. The Mac isn't it when it comes to P2P.
seriously. I love this name. it says, "hey, lawyers, come and get me! nya nya nya!" it also sounds like "asswipe" if your from the right geography.
And also every time you steal a song you make baby jesus cry.
So there.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Don't steal music. Its wrong and it hurts musicians and people in the industry.
Just because he asked about guns doesn't mean he's going to go out and shoot people.
----- rL
Yes I agree, those poor musicians won't get their .0001% cut of the cd you steal.
Hacker Media
Acquisition is great! Supports all the new gnutella updates such as ultrapeers. Much faster than Limewire, much nicer looking, and I've had better results with it as well.
Neo is a shadow client to Kazaa. It unfortunately doesn't actually log you into Kazaa, but rather is used to query ranges of IP's looking for Kazaa clients. It then sends searches to these clients directly, rather than to the nodes. Still, it can be very useful.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin
There is an interesting sourcefourge project called Neo that is a kazaa shadow client. From the homepage:
What exactly is Neo? Neo is a Cocoa shadow client for the Kazaa network, written exclusively for MacOS X. Neo is not a real Kazaa client, and never will be; the company in charge of the FastTrack (Kazaa) network won't allow third parties access to their encrypted protocol. So what is a shadow client then? Instead of connecting to the nextwork, Neo scans through IP ranges looking for Kazaa hosts, indexes their file list, and stores them locally on your hard drive. Then, when you search for files, only the files that you have indexed on your hard drive will be searched.
I've used it a couple of times and it seems to work well once you download a sufficiently large number of host from the master list.
Check the results of the article there.
Furthurnet is probably my favorite that runs on OS X. Bands that allow taping (and they're more numerous than you'd think. Phish, The Dead, and The Black Crowes are there, but so is everything from Louis Armstrong to the Beasties) are traded freely on this app, and I've grabbed more than 35 gigs of tunes. Most serious traders use Shorten format (.shn), which is a lossless compression format that brings that patch from the soundboard right down onto your Mac's hard drive, no questions asked. You can translate these into aiff or wav files pretty easily, and burn CDs right from iTunes.
:^D
Furthurnet's UI and search protocol (borrowed originally from Gnutella, I believe) could use a little spiffing up, but it's a GPL'd, ad-free application that works great once you're used to it. I haven't gotten online yet and failed to find at least one show within a few minutes of searching for whatever artist strikes my fancy (though admittedly Doc Watson is about as esoteric as I get).
Course if you're just looking for warez, I haven't helped at all, but if you want some great tunes for free via your new-found love of the Mac, you can't get any better than Furthurnet.
"PS" If Limewire is running too slowly, it might be a "Java problem". Make sure your app has an Aqua look & feel to take advantage of Apple's JVM's hardware accelerated GUI widgets. Having a video card that supports Quartz Extreme would help a bit as well.
"PPSS" In what little spare time I find I have (when I'm not writing this post), I've been trying to port Furthurnet to Mac OS 9-. Had some luck, but nothing to release just yet. So if you're not using OS X, upgrade.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
This doesn't have to do with Macs, but I hadn't heard of the WinMX program before, so I did a Google search on it, and the first Paid Ad that came up was:
Winmx - Downloading unauthorized files is illegal.
www.MusicUnited.org Find Legal Digital Music Services HERE!
Thought that was kinda interesting.
I've found LimeWire to be way too unstable--it can't handle too many files, and it's slow. However, it does manage to connect to other peers better than other software that I've sampled.
Acquisition is a neat idea, but it doesn't work too well. Not much of an interface, either.
MacPhex is cool, and I like its interface. It crashes on me whenever I try to change the port that it listens on, and it hasn't been able to hold a connection well.
iSwipe is okay if you're searching, but I wasn't able to download some songs from OpenNap when I tried--I don't think it has a very good grasp of the protocol. It also limits you to sharing only 100 files on Gnutella.
I do like Drumbeat X, although that's OpenNap-only, and you have to pay for it. It's kind of slow (only when you're sharing many files), but it works well.
It seems like this one has been out on the windows side of the computing world for quite some time. The OSX client is pretty new, but it is really nice. You connect to a chat room or hub and can then search download from the other participants in that room. There are not to many mac rooms at the moment, but media content is plattform agnostic anyway. Get it at www.neo-modus.com
And I know that you shouldn't steal music. Up until now I never did. But I happen to own an iPod and it really pisses me off, when I can't put the music from a legally obtained cd on it just because some record companies think that they are funny. Copy protection won't stop me from stealing music - it will me get started.
Hank! White!
Like WinMX but Mac OS X..
Written in Java, and Fast, But not the most stable.
You can find it here:
http://xnap.sourceforge.net/
Silence Bossy Meat Creatures!
Nevermind.....Yeah, we are stealing music....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
People are discussing this over at Ars Technica, here.
I've had very good luck with mldonkey.
/usr/local/lib/libdl.dylib -> /sw/lib/libdl.0.dylib)
It has a lot of files that are not on limewire and it downloads very reliably. It downloads from multiple clients at the same time. If the remote side disconnects it saves state and picks up later when the file reappears somewhere else - this is perhaps it's best feature.
Sometimes (if a large/rare file) it takes a long time to download, like days, but after seeing this work you get used to it and consider it as a real background activity. Check back in a couple days, it's magically there.
There are several interfaces. I'm using the web interface, which is fine but took some figuring out.
It also requires a bit of unix skills to install (first install fink, then symbolically link
Its wrong and it hurts musicians and people in the industry.
Hell, man, I would *LOVE* it if my band started getting traded on P2P software. We're an underexposed, underbooked multi-genre band from Delaware, and we just want an audience beyond our friends and friends' friends...
(fz.os.us.eu.org if you're curious)
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
The responses to this topic have been a lifesaver for me...ah, to be free from the wiles of Gnutella and the oh-so-slow-I-want-to-die LimeWire!
There really should be more topics of this kind for other spheres of Mac tools. Finding good software isn't always easy, even with Versiontracker, especially since a lot of OS X software is open-source and isn't particularly well promoted.
There is no shortage of P2P file sharing clients for the Mac. In fact one of the first clients was Mac only for some time (Hotline). This is a short OS X only list.
Gnutella Clients: MacPhex, Mactella, Limewire, Fern, Acquisition (one of my favorites). iSwipe
Kazaa client: Neo (not a full client but it works)
Napster/OpenNap clients: XNap, also iSwipe
Hotline Clients: Frogblast, HotCocoa, Pitbull Pro, Zombie, FineLine, Heidrun, iSwipe(again), Ripcord.
Others:
KDX (a new and really very nice Mac/Win compatible P2P server/client. Great if you can ignore the immaturity of it's developers.
Carracho: A Mac only P2P client/server. Works very well.
Direct Connect: DirectConnect, Java DirectConnect
There are a ton of other options that I'm not listing but to be honest I could be here for a lot longer and "It's a Wonderful Life" is on....so Happy Holidays and happy downloading.
=^Genesis^=
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
While my experience with LimeWire on OS X has been less than favorable, the latest itteration of their WAY TOO OFTEN UPDATED software is very good. Although it is frustrating that a new version comes out every two or three days, Limewire supports excellent queueing of downloads as well as resuming when your host goes off line and comes back.
I have heard Kazaa is making an OS X client, but then again, I have also heard things about Kazaa "spyware" etc. Don't know if either rumor is true.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
That could actually happen if the website you linked said anything about you other than 'the website is shut down while being overhauled'. How hard is it to put a single mp3?
Here's some MP3's: http://fz.os.us.eu.org/songs.htm
Sorry, Fraser's been a little busy, most of the new site is ready but he probably hasn't had time to touch it... It was only supposed to display that message while he was uploading the new files, but I don't think he ever finished =)
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
Yes steal software. free the hard work of others.
No I'm not trying to be a troll. I just find it absurd that people dont think it costs money to produce music, and that file trading is not stealing someone elses copyright. While many slashdot readers do infact want you to share their open source software, many many others earn their living making software and would be hurt if people just shared it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
So why is your music not wanted? Because there is no need created for it by marketing, my airplay, my feature stories, by high profile touring. And why dont you have these things? because they cost money
that's right, slash dotters, it costs money to create valuable marketing. So maybe you don t like marketing or the music industry telling you what to listen to. Here is what you do.
First ask your self why do I want to download this piece of music, why do I feel the need for it, and why am upset that they want to charge me 17$ for the CD in the store? Its because you feel the need for it. You dont feel the need for this poor no-name band that wants you to steel their music. You feel the meed for that metallica Cd, an Metallica wants you to to pay not steal.
So the bottom line is this, there is lots of free music from bands that want you to take trade P2P. But you dont want it. THe music you do want cost money. Since you wan tit has value, and they are entitled to sell it you for as much as they like. You dont have to pay, but it is stealing to just take it.
So dont steal, just take the music bands want for free. If you haven't heard of them by marketing well that's tought, that's part of what you were paying for when you bought the CD.
But please dont say you are trying to crush and oppressive music industry. That's crap. if you really wanted to crush them then trade P2p with this unknow bands work. if you aren't then your just a hypocrite. No better than a looter in a riot. You cant get caught but it does not make it right. Stop listening to bands that use marketing and charge money and you will have made your point ethically.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
They don't want to have to change the name. Especially not to "OSX MX."
fink python, wxpython, wxunix, then download pyslsk from http://www.sensi.org/~ak/pyslsk/. It runs in X Windows. Supposedly it works in wxmac, but only an older version or something.
It's got most of the features I desire. It's much faster than other clients, but I can't tell if it does swarm downloading. Since most of the users seem to rip their own full albums, swarm downloading might be difficult anyway.
It also has a really interesting business model. If you "donate" $5 per month to SoulSeek, you get to skip to the front of queues. It makes it very tempting to give them money, but it doesn't threaten to kill the community by closing it to non-paying users.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Overnet released their command line client for the mac. It is great. If you do not fear the terminal, then use Overnet. Overnet is compatible with the edonkey dllinks. You can find the available files with their corresponding links at Sharereactor. Just type "dllink" in overnet and paste the link from sharereactor to download the file. There is no fancy GUI yet, but I'm sure that when this gets bigger, it will have one. I highly recomend this application, but be warned of it's lack of gui. For other file sharing information I recomend zeropaid. Although they don't have the latest mac software, and they are mainly M$ users, they can give you a general idea of the programs available for download.
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
Breakfast served all day!
As others have said, don't. Not only is there the issue of it being theft, which is debatable, but it's also just a bad situation. Software makers and most of the media creation industry are in an arms race replete with deception and dirty practices. It's not worth the aggravation, much like e-mail is becoming with the continued proliferation of spam.