LimeWire 3.3.3 Beta
 

We've just released the LimeWire 3.3.3 beta. You may have noticed that we also released 3.3.1 and 3.3.2. LimeWire 3.3.1 included several minor bug fixes over 3.3.0, and 3.3.2 was a short-lived version that I posted to our web site for about an hour today but never linked to, as it included a minor but very aggravating bug.

Gettting back to 3.3.3, though, this is a significant release for only a minor version change. 3.3.3 completely overhauls the XML query processing code, improving its performance tremendously. With this version, you should see a significant performance improvement if you're sharing a lot of files. We've got several more nice changes coming along as well, such as important changes to the download mesh, but we're trying to keep churning out new code to everyone as quickly as possible so you can immediately see the benefits of new features.

In our profiling, XML query processing takes up about 95% less CPU, which becomes increasingly significant the more files you share.

As always, thanks for everyone's help with the beta.

-LimeWire Team

Thanks for the explanation and the developments. For those of us running Jens-Uwe Mager's CVS build, would you like our observations posted here, or would you rather the comments were based on the official beta?

Cheers

Just a little mention.

Kudos to all you. Running the JUM 3.3.0 build, I found that that update was the best LW version in a long time. Generally, I cannot run as an ultrapeer for more than two days without a crash, but this version did. This version, at least to me, was the most stable one in a while.

Yup, 3.3.3 shows a noticeable reduction in CPU usage on a 1.7GHz XP box sharing 7000 files, well done guys.

Sharing more files on the same box still produces 'out of memory' errors.

Salut les mecs! 3.3.3 is a great version number and is the greatest version of LW yet IMO. But what I like the most is the RAPID pace you guys are improving LW since the last three months. I followed reactions on the 'net about LW and it seems that the number 1 complain beside awaiting sources is the gui. Is it a priority at LW? I think LW could improve the look of the application, maybe your website designer could find something eye pleasing as limewire.com is a beautiful site. Just a suggestion though, themes are making me meanwhile more patient in that area...

À+

Do the out of memory errors appear while loading or after running for a short while, topbanana?

On my local box I believe the errors happen when attempting to starting an upload with > 7000 files in the library, but I could be mistaken - they might arise from searches or starting downloads. They're sporadic, with frequency increasing with number of files in the library. ~10000 files generates 10-20 such errors/minute, crashing the application within a few hours.

Not a startup problem, files are all indexed and shared and stable connections established.

This isn't a new 3.3.3 problem, nor does it appear to be a regression, I mention it only as I'd assumed the problems to be related to 100% CPU load with >7000 files previously.

There'll be a few dozen examples in bugs@, or shout if you'd like more specific tests, reports or setup info.

Thanks everyone. It's fine to post about the JUM build here -- it's almost identical, so the issues should be very similar.

Iteresting that you're getting more out of memory problems sharing a lot of files -- that's a good clue. We've had reports from users getting them when they're not sharing many files, but there may be multiple problems if you're seeing this consistently.

Sam and I recently identified another place where we can heavily optimize CPU and memory use for large sharers, so we should be able to improve things significantly further in this area, although not as significantly as the 3.3.3 change.

Just to let everyone know, 3.3.4 only includes very minor bug fixes over 3.3.3. 3.3.5 will likely be the same -- minor bug fixes for 3.3.4.

Thanks again.

+1

from what I read, the java libraries LW relies on make it hard to fundamentally change the GUI.

I am curious whether there is any alternatives that would allow those changes and how much the hassle would be to use them.

I stopped using Limewire for a few months - after having problems with the unexpected quitting bug that was mentioned on the OSX boards - and used Shareaza and Kazaa Lite on VPC instead (Acquisition hasn't convinced me altogether). But the recent 3.x versions appear to have fixed this and I've noticed much better network and GUI performance in general. I still miss the halcyon days of 1000+ search hits though (and yes, I've read the posts on this subject).

I'm glad the Limewire team has decided to concentrate on general stability and network performance rather than bells and whistles. After a few months of problems (especially on OSX) the work seems to have paid off.

Incidentally, I would like to thank the RIAA / MPAA for motivating me to upgrade to cable which means I now devote 35k/s of upload bandwidth and the best part of an 80 gig external firewire drive to sharing on the Gnutella/G2/edonkey/Fastrack networks 24 hours a day.


Finally, a quick question for the marketing buffs out there:

Which of these is the best way to encourage consumers to buy your products:
A. Offer them a quality product for a reasonable price
B. Grossly overcharge them and force a mediocre, cloned product down their throats
C. Sue them or send them to jail?

Please e-mail answers to Sony, EMI, Universal, Virgin, Warner etc.