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Media (Apple) Businesses Media Apple

P2P Software for the Mac? 92

Posted by Cliff from the power-to-the-people dept.
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?
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P2P Software for the Mac? More

P2P Software for the Mac?

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  • Give Fern a try? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 2nd Post! ( 213333 ) <gundbear@p[ ]ell.net ['acb' in gap]> on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @02:52PM (#4953826) Homepage
    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/

  • Phex (Score:2)

    by brejc8 ( 223089 )
    Ther is also Phex [phex.kouk.de].
    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
    • Here is the link for Gtk Gnutella:
      http://gtk-gnutella.sourceforge.net/

      I think it can be run on OS X. The www page says some people have it running on Xdarwin. What exactly does that mean? What are peoples experiences with this client? Does Gtk use the same network as WinMX? If not, is there an OS X WinMX client?

  • My solution (Score:3, Insightful)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @02:56PM (#4953851) Journal
    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.

  • iSwipe (Score:5, Funny)

    by sydlexic ( 563791 ) on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @02:57PM (#4953857)
    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.

  • Acquisition (Score:5, Informative)

    by Randar the Lava Liza ( 562063 ) on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @03:03PM (#4953891) Homepage
    Acquisition [xlife.org] 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 [purdue.edu] 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.

    • Re:Acquisition (Score:5, Informative)

      by TiMac ( 621390 ) on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @03:55PM (#4954187)
      Ditto this. I use both Acquisition and Neo for P2P services. I still want a Blubster client and a REAL Kazaa client would be nice...but these two apps together serve the purposes very well.

      Also, there is a Hotline Client for OS X, and Carracho is exclusively Mac (but similar to Hotline), and there is now a NeoModus Direct Connect client for OS X--if you prefer this model of sharing.

    • Acquisition seems really cool, but I can't get it to connect to any servers. It just says Active: 0 no matter how long I leave it open. No firewalls or any other weirdness. Anyone else have this problem?

  • Try Neo, a kazaa shadow client (Score:3, Informative)

    by chadlong ( 528621 ) on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @03:07PM (#4953917)
    There is an interesting sourcefourge project called Neo [sourceforge.net] 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.

  • MacSlash just asked the same question (Score:5, Informative)

    by pikester ( 448955 ) on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @03:09PM (#4953935)
    Check the results of the article [macslash.org] there.

  • For legal to own and trade music, try Furthurnet (Score:3, Informative)

    by mactari ( 220786 ) <rufwork AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @03:13PM (#4953955) Homepage
    Furthurnet [furthurnet.com] 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 [softsound.com] 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.

    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. :^D

  • Google (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr_Person ( 162211 ) <mr_person AT mrperson DOT org> on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @03:19PM (#4953992) Journal
    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.

  • So many to choose from... (Score:5, Informative)

    by xenofalcon ( 605906 ) on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @04:13PM (#4954270)
    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.

  • Direct Connect (Score:5, Informative)

    by sebi ( 152185 ) on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @04:20PM (#4954315)

    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 [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.

    • In fact, there's two DirectConnect client on mac :
      the Official DirectConnect software from NeoModus. It's a Cocoa Application, nice to use but some features are missing. Sometimes it opens my browser to open a pop up on NeoModus Website. I don't like that.
      The Java Direct Connect project from Sourceforge works well on mac, has more features but it's somewhat ....slow

      • I disabled pop-ups on my browser, so all it does is usually open another empty browser window, which doesn't bother me too much. I never tried the java client, but I have to say, that infrequent pop-ups are a small price to pay for a really nice file sharing environement. Plus I have found that the people on the mac hubs are really helpfull if someone should choose to actually take advantage of the chat feature.

  • Xnap (Score:4, Informative)

    by dont_stand_so_close_ ( 626643 ) on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @04:39PM (#4954408)
    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/

    • Re:Xnap (Score:4, Informative)

      by usfGPM ( 235370 ) on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @05:08PM (#4954523)
      I second Xnap. I just started using it about a week ago and have been very happy with the results so far. Acquisition is still one of my favorites, too.

      I recently tried out the (new?) edonkey client for OS X called mldonkey. Check it out at http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/mldonkey/. There are some mac specific things for edonkey at http://homepage.mac.com/michelmoreau.

      good luck.

  • There's a thread on this at Mac Achaia (Score:3, Informative)

    by megabulk3000 ( 305530 ) on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @04:59PM (#4954483) Homepage
    People are discussing this over at Ars Technica, here [infopop.net].
  • I've had very good luck with mldonkey.

    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 /usr/local/lib/libdl.dylib -> /sw/lib/libdl.0.dylib)

  • DirectConnect. (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Asterax ( 522761 )
    Erm, think about trying DirectConnect [neo-modus.com], which sort of makes this whole thread sort of useless, though it's Mac OS 10.2.x or higher.
  • First of all, install Fink [sourceforge.net] if you have not yet. There are many good packages there that you should get.

    Mutella [sourceforge.net] is one of them. It has a fast commandline interface and can download stuff as it finds them, i often will have about 10 autogets running. It accesses only the gnutella network but i think it works fine.

  • Very useful! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Paladeen ( 8688 ) on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @07:48PM (#4955186)
    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.

    • Perhaps a silly question, but what is making Limewire so slow on the Mac? I'd been under the impression that Apple put a fair amount of work into making Java work well under OS X.

      By comparison, it takes ages to start up under NT/XP, but moves along fine once it's done with the initialization thingies.

  • Mac P2P Software List (Score:5, Informative)

    by Genesishep ( 549359 ) <sshep@a[ ]phia.net ['del' in gap]> on Tuesday December 24, 2002 @08:05PM (#4955228) Homepage
    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^=
    • "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."

      I forgot to mention that all of these programs can be found at:

      [versiontracker.com]
    • Good list. And what amazes me is that it needs a /. thread to come up with that list.

      Most of those apps could be found at google without much effort. And if all fails this [hyperjeff.net] page has sorted lists with all Software that runs under Mac OS X.

    • try versiontracker.com or macupdate.com to download.
    • Repeat after me:

      Carracho, Hotline and KDX are NOT p2p. They are client/server. I wish people would STOP using "p2p" as a catchall term, it's wholly innacurate and only manages to confuse people looking for certain solutions.
      • Actually, they are person to person. They are client/server combos which happen to be separated into two apps which focus on wither managing files on your cmoputer, or accessing those on others. Other P2P software such as Gnutella, WinMX, Kazaa and others are just combined client/server apps, but they work the same way, except that you can search for files on all servers on the network, as their is no authentication control. These are all 'P2P', but just work in different ways, all person to person; from the person running the server to you being a client on that server, or vice-versa. P2P usually refers to the clients and servers being end-users on the internet, vs. commercial servers hosted on guaranteed bandwidth.
        • They are client/server combos which happen to be separated into two apps which focus on wither managing files on your cmoputer, or accessing those on others. Other P2P software such as Gnutella, WinMX, Kazaa and others are just combined client/server apps, but they work the same way, except that you can search for files on all servers on the network, as their is no authentication control. These are all 'P2P', but just work in different ways, all person to person; from the person running the server to you being a client on that server, or vice-versa. P2P usually refers to the clients and servers being end-users on the internet, vs. commercial servers hosted on guaranteed bandwidth.
          OK, great. Mind you, your explanation is complete bullshit -- but I'll play along. Here, I'll give you one, too: RAM and hard drive space are all "memory," it's just that one is inside your computer and the other isn't. Sounds good to me, what about you?
  • I use Acquisition. I have found it to be the best P2P software out there. Plus it's only for OSX... definitley a plus.
  • I bet you can run XDarwin + wine + KazaaLite. I've been running KazaaLite undr linux w/ wine for a long time and it's great.
    • uhm... no. XDarwin is an xserver for Darwin wich is the open source part of Mac OS X. And if your Mac doesn't have a Pentium processor or you run Darwin on a (IBM-compatible) PC it should be difficult to get wine running.
  • I used to work at a place with Macs and what I would do is get the fastest mac I could find and install Connectix Virtual PC and install Kazaa on Virtual PC. It worked like a charm. Virtual PC is kind of slow, but it doesn't seem to effect the download speed much.
  • 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.
  • is Usenet. There is a wide selection of stuff, and you can often post requests and find them filled. Your speed should generally be consistent as you're either connecting to a server at your ISP or to a high-bandwidth paid Usenet provider, there's a community with regulars and chat, and (when using a good server with decent retention) the items posted stick around for days or even weeks.

    Unfortunately, Charter (at least when I stopped using them) both throttles and limits Usenet connections (IIRC, 2 connections totalling ~20k); on Roadrunner I can have unlimited connections and speeds totalling 200-300k.

    Since I'm one of those weirdos who doesn't like to steal (what can I say-the RIAA and MPAA stink nearly as much as most of the crud they release, but I wouldn't want some guy to drive off in my car because he doesn't approve of used car salesmen), I particularly like the availability of groups dedicated to bootlegs/promo-only material. You can also investigate Old-Time Radio, which is great for commutes/long trips.
  • http://www.sensi.org/~ak/pyslsk/ it's written in python, so it takes a couple other components to install and run, but it works well once installed and a user is created... warning: will crash if you click on a tab with no content...when first run go to options and put in a username and pw and it will create it for you. ran by: dragging pyslsk python file to python.app
  • I haven't used anything since Napster. So, after following a link in this thread, I was somewhat shocked to read the following on Acquisition's boards:
    I am having some trouble in using aquisition, i select the files i wish to download and say i select 10 files to download, i will rarely everget any of them downloading they virtually always say waiting any help would be appreciated.


    (And the reply...)

    This is how Gnutella works. On a good day, you might successfully download one out of every 100 files attempted. On a good day.

    Be patient, make sure you are connected to lots of hosts sharing large numbers of files, and only attempt downloads from quality (3-star) hosts.
    Accurate? Exaggerrated? Is the post-Napster landscape this hit-and-miss?

    Also, isn't it the case that P2P is much monitored by the entertainment industry these days, or have the news media been presenting a false picture of its level of intrusion/intimidation?
  • fink python, wxpython, wxunix, then download pyslsk from http://www.sensi.org/~ak/pyslsk/ [sensi.org]. 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 [slsk.org], 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.

  • Overnet (Score:2, Informative)

    by humina ( 603463 )
    Overnet [overnet.com] released their command line client for the mac [overnet.com]. 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 [sharereactor.com]. 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 [zeropaid.com]. 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.
  • I use it on my windows box (its only for os x, so no classic :( ) and its fantastic actually.. the more you share the more you can find.
  • 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.

  • Myster (Score:1)

    by Pinky ( 738 )
    Try Myster. It's opensource free and easy as hell to use.

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