April 19, 2002

3:34 AM

Kazaa lite (read: "sans spyware"). An alternative for kazaa users concerned with recent findings, and don't want to bother with spyware sniffers.
hacked product? or justified option?
via wired
posted by RubiX^3 (26 comments total)

Justified option. That is, it works fine, and who cares about KaZaA (the company)? Oh, and Ad-aware is a stellar piece of software.
posted by gleemax at 4:03 AM on April 19, 2002

Been using it for a couple of weeks, and can also verify that it's clean and works fine as a replacement for Kazaa, Morpheus (the original, non-gnucleus one) or Grokster, all of which share the same network.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:06 AM on April 19, 2002

The program may be ad free, but the website seems to spawn it's share of pop-ups... Anyone know how it compares to gnucleus? Maybe I'll just try for myself.
posted by Rockames at 5:05 AM on April 19, 2002

I started using it last week and, knock on wood, it hasn't caused any problems. At least the things works, unlike Morpheus. FWIW, I found it fast, reliable and bug/ad-free.
posted by ashbury at 5:14 AM on April 19, 2002

I give it 10 days until Kazaa releases a "required" upgrade to its own software, and tweaks the network to make KazaaLite useless. Just as they did to Morpheus.
posted by jpoulos at 6:08 AM on April 19, 2002

thanks, RubiX^3 .
posted by rhizome23 at 6:23 AM on April 19, 2002

I just removed that spyware from my kazaa, and hacked the bpm limitation in my registry. is there any other difference that'll justify moving to kazaalite ?
posted by martz at 6:36 AM on April 19, 2002

I'm really frustrated with the filesharing networks right now. I had been a Kazaa user, but then found out how to download the X'd-songs on Audiogalaxy, a much faster, way more comprehensive network. Then as of last week AG seems to have closed that backdoor. Recently every download I start on Kazaa seems to come up "download failed," and their limit on search results to 100 is very irritating.
posted by luser at 6:48 AM on April 19, 2002

I also use the 'Lite' version. The problem now with Kazaa is the search limit of 100 (mentioned above) and the fact that anymore, anytime I get on, everything I want ends up 'remotely queued'. Nobody is sharing. They need to tie the Max Downloads to the Max Uploads setting. Too many people seem to be using it with Max Downloads set to 10 and Max Uploads set to 0. Leechers! :)
posted by eas98 at 7:02 AM on April 19, 2002

From eas98: They need to tie the Max Downloads to the Max Uploads setting.

This may very well be because, like me, bandwidth in the upstream direction is severely limited in comparison to the downstream. I can leech at an aggregate megabit and a half, but all uploads need to be well under 128kbit/second. To keep things flowing at their best, I usually have 10 or so download slots going and limit uploads to 2 or 3.

Unfortunately, while I and most other asymmetric DSL users would love to be able to share more generously, there simply isn't the upstream bandwidth.
posted by majick at 7:22 AM on April 19, 2002

i bet it has been said before, but for all you electronic music lovers out there, soulseek is a very nice alternative to the better known file sharing programs - but with a strong focus on house and techno music. the program itself is very easy to use, works well under win2000 and XP (but with some minor issues under win98). oh and yes, it is completely ad free.
posted by HeikoH at 7:23 AM on April 19, 2002

luser, backdoor in audiogalaxy? Could you tell me what that was? Those X'ed out songs drove me nuts and I'd like to know how easy it was (and how dumb I am) to get them.
posted by ashbury at 7:30 AM on April 19, 2002

Yes... I'm rather ashamed at my Internet Prowess at this moment, as I've heard nothing about the X'ed out audiogalaxy songs OR the bpm hack for kazaa... do tell, please.
posted by Hankins at 7:39 AM on April 19, 2002

I hadn't heard of soulseek, HeikoH. I'll check it out. Thanks.
posted by jpoulos at 7:40 AM on April 19, 2002

All the Gnutella based programs (note: gnucleus was originall gnutella based, morpheus wasn't) are driving me off the wall now...they alll worked fine untill the started to add this LAN option where you connect to a LAN connection...i'm at UGA, but nobody's got one out, so i don't connect via that LAN option, and i can never connect to the Gnutella network. Driving me up the wall. Only thing that works any more is LimeWire which sucks and WinMX. But, my theory is while these progs annoy someone b/c of their inability to work as luser noted, how much can one complain? After all these all are FREE. If i were paying money, yet i could (and would) complain, but it is a free service, free programs, free music, and even stealing software (warez) for free.
posted by jmd82 at 8:05 AM on April 19, 2002

I am a little irritated with all these programs at this point, I have used Limewire, bearshare, gnutella, morphous, kazza and soulseek on my windows machine in the past. Now that I have a mac running OS X how many options do I have? one, limewire

boo hoo, my life is so hard
posted by vincentmeanie at 11:21 AM on April 19, 2002

Hankins, Ashbury -- details are here.
posted by luser at 12:53 PM on April 19, 2002

Actually, Edonkey2000 is nice, if slow, forces people to share, and comes in Windows, Java, and Linux formats.
posted by Samizdata at 1:15 PM on April 19, 2002

I will pass on a couple other Kazaa tips, details can be found here. I haven't tried either one, proceed at your own risk. All I want in return is respectful silence next time I doublepost:

To see shared songs of quality greater than 128kbps: Search in Regedit for LimitBitrate, change the value 1 to 0.

Override the 100-song search limit: Search in Regedit for MaxSearchResults, hit Change, change current max to the hexidecimal equivalent of desired max. For instance, 100=64, 200=C8, 500=1F4.
posted by luser at 1:15 PM on April 19, 2002

The LimitBitrate one did work with Morpheus. Heven't tried it with Kazaa...
posted by Samizdata at 1:22 PM on April 19, 2002

EDonkey is REALLY nice...if you don't mind d/l'ing at 5k/sec. And navigating through an endless number of servers to find what you want.

Seriously, there are some great selections available there, but too much time and energy required to get them..
posted by eas98 at 1:30 PM on April 19, 2002

My client of choice (since Morpheus died) has been WinMX, which not only offers its own decentralized P2P network, but also allows you to add tons of OpenNap servers. The tough part is getting a connection to said OpenNap servers, considering they are frequently running at full user capacity. Once you do, however, the selection is great and you can generally get files to download (unlike most gnutella-based clients I've tried.)

Of course, you could always start your OpenNap server, which I will be doing as soon as the server I'm colo-ing is complete.
posted by Danelope at 2:43 PM on April 19, 2002

I primarily use the FastTrack network clients to find video (mostly TV shows unavailable where I live), rather than audio. It continues to work beautifully over here in Korea, regardless of the client.

jmd82 - small correction, if indeed that's what it is. Morpheus was originally a FastTrack network client, like Kazaa and Grokster. When the lockout autoupdate was distributed, as jpoulos describes, Morpheus panicked and released a rebadged Gnucleus as a new 'Morpheus' version, Gnucleus of course being a gnutella client. The gnutella network is a dog, at least over here in Korea.

jpoulos - As I understand it Kazaa (aka Sharman networks) won't be able to perform the same trick as they did with Morpheus (a Kazaa licensee, then a licensee of Sharman networks in Australia, who bought the Kazaa network outright), as the Kazaalite app is the actual Kazaa app, with the spyware ripped out. The network identifies it as the Kazaa app.

WinMx and Audiogalaxy, I agree, are still amongst the best choices for audio sharing.

For WinMx there is a small app called NapMX (google for it) which will go out, retrieve a long list of Opennap servers, then auto-update your WinMX Opennap server list for you. Very cool.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:59 PM on April 19, 2002

Well, just finally got around to seeing if there was a new version of LimeWire Pro (supports swarming and multiple connections) - and yes, I paid my 8.50 - as the previous version's installer wouldn't allow for you to have anything but J2SE 1.3.3 (now 1.4, I see - I have J2EE 1.4 installed - larger download, but faster execution). Anyway, just grabbed a 4 Mb test file at about 30 kbps average, and got searches VERY fast. Quite pleased.
posted by Samizdata at 9:47 PM on April 19, 2002

And, oh yes, KazaaLite (hate the funky capitals) is clean, even down to scrutinizing the router logs...
posted by Samizdata at 9:48 PM on April 19, 2002

Speaking of soulseek, it really is only useful if you like the electronic music. BUT, if you do its the BEST piece of file-swapping software around. Leechers not welcome though.
posted by ejoey at 8:13 AM on April 20, 2002