Am I missing something? I open it up and there are no gnutellaNET connections. Am I supposed to add these in manually? What are they? Where would I find the settings?

It's version 0.12-5mdk for Mandrake on Mandrake 8.1. That's the latest rpm I found for Mandrake on rpmfind.net.

well you REALLY should compile from source, they're on version 0.85 now.... it's REALLY easy to compile it. as for hosts, take my current hosts file:

http://cakenet.dynu.com/hosts

there are host caches that you could hook up to, but they can generate small world networks, which is the death of gnutella.

Wow, 0.85 - that's quite a difference. I'll look into compiling it. And thanks for the host files!!

well.. admitedly it went 0.18, 0.80, 0.85... but there are VERY substantial changes and improvements

I was looking at the host list. Now, those are individual computer IPs you've hooked up to over the years? Or how does that work? So if I want to allow other users to share my files, how would I get my IP onto everyone's list?

That's why I thought there was one central area that gnutella kept a list of hosts. I guess I don't know alot about how this works.

if you're interested in network theory i'd strongly recommend looking at an oreilly book called "peer to peer, harnessing the power of disruptive technology" as its SO damn interesting, and exaplin in great detail about hosts files and such. basically tho, the more random the better, so taking a hosts file that's been in use for over 6 months is a much more reliable way to get string conenctions all over the newtork, and not just centered in one place, which can result from standard host finders.

Ok, I got 0.85 up and running. This time it had 3 or 4 preset host numbers in there so I'm downloading some songs right now (must be the "standard" host finders you're talking about)! I appreciate all your help so far, just a couple of quick questions and I should be happy:

I configured, compiled, installed, etc. and then went into xterm and started it. Now while I'm running qtk-gnutella, I just leave that terminal running in the background? Also it keeps giving me warnings like the following. Is this normal?

**WARNING**: search request (hops=7, ttl=1) has 143 extra bytes after NUL

It looks like it is giving me these constantly. Anyway, my first file is done and I'm going to go listen to it!! Thanks!

oh yeah all that stuff is fine. the one thing i would mention abuot the newer versions is that they do have a few slightly odd default configuration values in ~/.gtk-gnutella/config if you choose a bunch of files and they just sooo don't seem interested in downloading, look at the config file and change the relative timeouts. as yet there's no way to do it via GUI.