Very very few hosts...
 

I'm using LW 2.5.4 for linux, but instead of the thousands of hosts that the limewire webpage says they have...I've only got 12 showing on my client. Any thoughts?

you're connected to gnucleus or morpheus ultrapeers i suppose. both cannot relay correct host information.
and everyone blames it on musiccity's cloned gnucleus client :)

You don't connect to every host on the network; you connect to 4-12 UltraPeers which serve as "search servers" for you.

That's why you see 12 connections.

Click Tools/Statistics and look at the Total Hosts number to see the number of machines you are actually able to search.