used to I'd type in linux and get a whole bunch and now i don't get many and no matter who I connect to (ultrapeers) I get nothing except for maybe 30m later 1 hit on one search..

What's strange is this seemed to all happen after blocking 2 ip ranges in my iptables firewall - RR central & ServiceCo LLC both using an RR range (techname was ServiceCo LLC) however I don't use RR.

However I'm just wondering is anybody else having problems doing a search on the gnutella network?

Have you tried temporarily removing those blocked ip ranges? I don't use Linux. May I ask which Gnutella p2p client you are using?

fileswire is a web based gnutella client. Its free and there are always loads of results available.