When will someone write an actual good client?

[slow craig]

when you deal with gnutella, it doesn't matter which client you use--they all run the same protocol and thus form the same network. bickering over the various clients in pointless as long as everyone can find a client they like. that way, we *all* get access to their music

[ILovePie123]

What's with all this junk? BearShare and LimeWire are both terrible file sharing programs, neither of them are reliable for downloading (which I hear is due to the gnutella protocol, not the client), and they do not support chat, list browsing, or hot-lists (even for static IPs). All of these things are necessary to bring back the functionality of Napster.
I do know the features I've mentioned are possible, because I've heard authors of gnutella clients speak of implementing them. Though I don't see it, what's the hold up?

[Plutonium]

money

[lovemyboys!!]

Thanks for the recommendations...

I haven't tried KaZaa, because of stuff like this:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/08/02/parasite_capital/print.html

I don't fear my browsing habits being "secretly sent to servers"... but I do run NT, and I don't need these silly little programs bringing my OS down... I've rebuilt it enough ; ).

Similarily, I haven't tried MusicCity Morpheus.... I can't ignore the hundreds of reports by users of this one ruining their systems. The music isn't worth the risk. On top of that, the authors propose no response to user complaints.

This is what I find a real shame... the most popular file sharing applications out there are either malicious or riddled with garbage.

[Beach Blonde]

...has nothing to do with it

[omar g]

Haha, fflewddur, I knew that, honest ; ). I shouldn't have put that "look for the clients with the most users" there... that's my general rule for proprietary clients such as WinMX.

[sugarcraver]

...no? Then show me a good open source client.

[AJD13]

You people that insist that Gnutella servents should have this feature and that feature when such a feature would have to be protocol-based need to read the Gnutella protocol, which I coincidentally just finished reading like 15 minutes ago or so. There you will find that the only thing that the protocol concerns itself with is searching for files that match a search string, pure and simple (of course there are ways to connect to other servents and stuff like that, but I meant functionality-wise). Napster and every single last other non-Gnutella file-sharing program out there is a product, not an implementation of a protocol. As products, they are free to put whatever they want to in them, from chat rooms to buttons that will cause your toaster to automatically make breakfast for you. Gnutella, on the other hand, is a file-search protocol, pure and simple. If one wants to chat with people, one generally doesn't use the Gnutella protocol, although from what I've heard some servents seem to implement features like that, but which are certainly not standard. Gnutella isn't even a file-sharing protocol, strictly; it is a file-search system, because the sharing goes on through HTTP (which will give RIAA lawyers all kinds of fun if they ever decide they want a piece of this over here). So those that demand chatrooms built in to their file-sharing tools (yes, I am aware of what I just called it), the ability to look at other peoples' files in a list, whatever, while those aren't totally crazy things to want (especially looking through a list of what someone has), you will have to either look elsewhere or perhaps try to get the Gnutella protocol modified. The version I just read was version 0.4, but I know there are modifications to it and there is now a version 0.6. If you come up with good ideas that are reasonable and realistic, you have a chance of having them become part of the Gnutella protocol. However, that will almost certainly not happen if you do not write a Gnutella servent, so if you are that interested and really want to have a say in the protocol you should do that. The protocol isn't that hard, believe me. If you can program and use network connections, you can basically program a Gnutella servent. Well, that's enough for now.

[dom_bk]

In all honesty I like the current P2P programs better than Napster... we are beginnning to demand more and we don't realize how far they have come... I will admit that I do kinda miss the chat, but at the same time I don't... you would always get stupid people ranting about stupid things... it was annoying (yes I am aware that you could block it, but it was still annoying)... besides I have more luck finding the music I listen to on gnutella than I ever did on napster... (gnutella seems to hold more rarities than napster)... gnutella and fasttrack have come a long way...

[Due With #2 in September]

Morpheus (and Grokster) are essentially the same thing as Kazaa... they access the same network (just like the different Gnutella clients)... as for the spyware... I look at it as a nessecary evil... these companies need some revenue producing method... I personally don't use Kazaa all that often (once, twice a month, maybe)... I'm on Win2K and haven't had problems with Kazaa... when you install you get to choose which of these programs are installed with the exception of Bonzai Buddy...

fflewddur... I agree somewhat... some clients have been known to do bad things to the network (automated searches, dropping d/l's from dis-similar clients, sending bad messages, reporting bad network sizes, allowing large TTL's, etc) bickering is a nessecary evil in order to provide some forward momentum on the protocol... the clients need to maintain some semblance of order otherwise the whole thing could go to sh-t.

"Such a feature would have to be protocol based"

Not nessecarily... you can circumvent deficiencies in the protocol sometimes by using different methods... look at Limewire 1.7... it comes with a fully instant messaging utility built in... Gnucleus uses IRC for chat (although no one is ever on) ;-)... browsing hosts used to be common as essentially you have a web server running on your machine beacuse you need to upload via HTTP... I haven't used bearshare in a while but I know it used to have a browse host feature... Limewire also used to have a browse host feature... so all of these "features" are possible with the current protocol in place... modifications of the protocol to include these features would just make the network a tighter unit... I have read the protocol... it, like you said it really only covers the distributed search... so essentially all gnutella is, is a distributed search engine... but like so many developers have shown it is possible to get around these...

I mean a browse host feature would be as simple as every client simply keeping a HTML file on the computer... this would have a list of all the shared files... then you just make all of the files have URL's... I believe that's what bearshare does (or did)... most of these things are possible... and trust me I would love to help build the code for such things but I can't code to save my life... so that really limits me to simply suggesting things for the network...