LimeWire 3.0.0 Beta
 

Well, - since the LimeWire developers obviously haven't announced it yet, I'm going to do that.

Changelog:
* server-side out-of-band replies (reducing the load on ultrapeers once the client-side is implemented, too).
* finally support for themes
* more statistics
* some optmizations
* some bug fixes

http://www3.limewire.com/beta/3.0.0/

BEFORE YOU INSTALL IT, READ THIS:
The bad news is, - somebody seems to have added the wrong version of some library named xerces.jar, - so ... it doesn't work - unless you copy this xerces.jar file into your LimeWire folder and overwrite the old version.

Here's the new version of the xerces.jar file
http://mitglied.lycos.de/mdsgeist/xerces.jar

Size: 1,812,019 bytes

Edit:
You can also get the file in a zip with other xml stuff from apache.org.
http://xml.apache.org/dist/xerces-j/...-bin.1.4.4.zip

EDIT2:
My favourite new feature: LimeWire now completely ignores the upload bandwidth limit...

Thanks--I couldn't get the OSX version to start up (sent in 3 bug reports).
No change in the installer err.txt reports or the installlog.log.

trap_jaw, do you know why 3.0 still reports using java 1.3 on OSX? I'd expected 3.0 would use 1.4.1.

Partial File Sharing? Resume button?

If anything as big as partial file sharing or the resume button had been implemented, I would have mentioned it.

Sometimes I have my doubts that the LimeWire developers are actually using their own software. - I mean you would expect them to notice that the resume button has been completely useless for ages and that it would be fairly trivial to make him actually resume the download, - oh well...

re pfs: I wondered if modesty was a factor, or if someone else wrote the tests.

BTW, thanks for the xerces.jar link--that worked to get 3.0 running, but now only the Windows installer shows on the beta pro page.

I tried your Turner magnet again; no changes noted.

The text beside the buttons for search type is missing, but searches and downloads still work.

LW is maintaining connections to 4 UP's as a leaf. Has this number been changed? Connections seem to be crisper.

Limewire might be the best gnutella client around protocol wise (core), but it lacks consistency for users (gui). One version has a new feature is enabled, the other has it malfunctionning ie "resume". This is disapointing to say the least. While I know developpers have fun improving the protocol and doing network researches that benefit to an open source protocol, they are losing users by not showing support. They might not be in difficulty financially, but hiring a dedicated programmer for user "confort" would pay many times his salary easily. And more users would help the current ones in search results. Another thing is the ****ing installer that "sucks" very much, it might be normal for windows users, but a stand alone application would be much better, especially when Jeans-Uwe (an open soure LW dev, does it for os X). Also the about LW should have for a long time included the history of changes since the last version, many people would appreciate, including me.

Pour résumer, please hire someone dedicated with users in his mind LW!
(Yes I know there is also ACQX for OSx but you can't specify the search type and the developper is making money of open source software, instead of helping by hacking and adding features to LW. He's also very afraid of bad reactions of its users, I told him many times to lower the number of ultrappers connection while being a leaf, but he's scared....and hurting the network).

Sam Berlin is now going to implement PFS, he has already contacted me but my patch is not really compatible to the cvs and my approach may have been a little too simplistic too be of much help, I fear. In addition I don't have time for LimeWire at the moment.

My Turner magnet will not work unless my LimeWire is running. It's not running very often these days because there are networks with more content than Gnutella. I use Gnutella occasionally for music, but for movies, etc. eDonkey is my network of choice at the moment. (With mldonkey I can even access eDonkey and Fasttrack at the same time). For music, Gnutella is a lot faster than Fasttrack (not to mention eDonkey) but the other networks have much more content.

Are you sure the text next to the radio-buttons for the search type is missing? Or is it just not visible because it has the same color as the background? Can you try another theme (if that is possible on OSX)?

The ultrapeers return even less results now (distributing the load reducing traffic peaks for ultrapeers when a leaf issues a search). The consequence is that leafs have to maintain more ultrapeer connections to get the same number of results.

I agree with et voilà that some more communication with the users (like BearShare does) would be nice. But as a developer you really have to define your priorities. A couple of months ago it was most important to improve the state of the network before concentrating on the GUI. And the network core is not really something that you can discuss with the users.

As for the installer: It's a java installer and as far as I know the only one that is more or less decent. You can't expect LimeWire to write or license installers for every platform they are supporting when all the installer really has to do is copy some files into a folder. For windows there is also a native installer, by the way.

Any idea when 3.0.0 will release normally? I feel a tad suspicious about installing beta software when LW is so quirky some of the time. Can you sooth my fears, or tell me that 3.0.0 is coming out soon?

3.0.0 won't be released 'normally' because LimeWire increments the version number when they create a new installer.

My guess is that a stable version will be released at the end of the next week.

I can wait until then. Thank you.

+1 that. Limewire seems to grossly underestimate the power of a nice and easy to read GUI. Human factors are essential for the succes of a product.

• the progress bars are a joke and source of tons of misunderstandings. when are we finally going to have progress bars that show which chunk of a file is being downloaded (like in BearShare and Shareaza)?
• The dropped I/O and Uploads colums are also a constant source of misunderstanding, with users thinking that 90% dropped means Limewire is not working propperly and stuff like that

the new themes are a good idea, but frankly, the way they have been implemented leaves much to be desired. we now have three ugly interfaces to choose from instead of one.

As much as I hate the arrogant snobbish missionary behaviour of their zealot-users, take a look at Shareaza for a second and you will realize that limewire looks like a C64 in comparision. the soviet union robotron-trabant dusty kinda charm does not appeal to the masses.

[edit] sorry... i din't know i was that angry, but i think the issue must have been bugging me for longer than i thought... no offense to anybody