Limewire in Ubuntu

Limewire is a popular P2P file-sharing application used to download songs, movies, images and other files. It works fast and is known to be relatively free of malware and spyware. Here's a Limewire install how-to.

1. For the stable version, click this link: http://download.limewire.com/download/LimeWireLinux.deb
2. For the development version, use this link instead: http://www9.limewire.com/beta/LimeWireLinux.deb

3. A popup dialog will open, asking what you'd like to do with the file, save or open. There's really no need to save, so just select open and follow the direction.

4. Done.

There's not much to installing Limewire in Ubuntu, it's a .deb file, so the package manager will handle the installation, ie check dependencies, etc.
A note here; Java is one of the requirements and you'll have to install it before the package-manager can do its thing. Ubuntu comes with OpenJava installed, but I couldn't get Limewire to install with the default java-runtime-environment – it required sun-java, and here's a link to a forum post, (it's straight-forward, just follow the instructions in the first reply). In brief;

In a terminal, (Applications>>Accessories>>Terminal), execute these commands:
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner"
then:
sudo apt-get update
then:
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts
Source: ubuntuforum.org

Limewire is file-sharing and search software. As it installs, you'll have to confirm acceptance of the license agreement, and it'll be pointed out to you that some types of file-sharing is illegal in places, (copyrighted material). Be sure you know what your local statutes are concerning file-sharing. - In some places there are big fines attached to the sharing of copyrighted materials. – Beware! – Information about you and who you are is visible to other users on the internet, so don't go tinkin' no one knows. Check out my articles about Panopticlick and Flash-Cookies to see how visible you are, and how you're being tracked.

Once Lime wire is installed you can start searching for music, videos, images and even software. It's a very handy application that does a good job of locating and downloading files, (ie songs and movies).

On a standard connection you can download a full-length movie in less than an hour, depending on the number of peers seeding the files. That's not bad. In some cases it's even faster, the speed of the downloads is dependent on your connection speed as well as the number of P2P peers seeding the file being downloaded, so it really pays to choose files with more peer-connections. (A peer is another computer connected to the network that is downloading/uploading the file in question).

Again, I'll remind you that some file-sharing is illegal. Use at you own risk.

Here is a link to a P2P software list. Not all of these work in Linux, and on the list you'll notice that Limewire is considered to be one of the best.
http://www.freebielist.com/reviews/category/free-peer-to-peer-p2p-file-s...

And for interesting reading/info about P2P file-sharing, try these links:
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer
Gigaom blog (interesting facts about p2p networks): http://gigaom.com/2008/04/22/shocking-new-facts-about-p2p-and-broadband-...
Educause - 7 things you should know about p2p: http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutP2P/163809