Many of the old file-sharing networks are still around and actively in use. MuWire has a lot of interesting books and recordings. EMule is a good place to find music, including obscure remixes. Gnutella is mostly porn, including child porn that's so open I feel like it might be part of a law enforcement operation.

Retroshare seems like a p2p Facebook rather than a file-sharing network. I've always wanted to get into it, but I don't know anyone else using it.

[–] florencia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 hours ago

Retroshare seems like a p2p Facebook rather than a file-sharing network

It suffers from the (need to be a nerd) barrier. Getting people off Facebook requires the minimum amount of friction possible.

If we're talking friends or family then build and host a mastodon or matrix server. Call it "Tommy's Bistro" friends/family only. Even with all of this effort you're competing against a facebook setting to keep a post restricted to friends/family only.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

MuWire? I thought that was dead. The main dev blew a gasket over something and archived it. I see it's out of archival now, but I do wonder what brought him back.

I didn't expect eMule and Gnutella to still be active, but probably didn't know because I'm on Linux and their clients are Windows only. Others have pointed out linux builds that I somehow hadn't found until now.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 3 points 21 hours ago

By MuWire, I meant the network, not the software. I wasn't aware it was being developed again, actually. Maybe the current political climate made the dev feel like his work was needed again. The network never died. I use Linux too. eMule and Gnutella both have Linux clients, but availability might vary from one distro to another. On openSuse Tumbleweed, we have aMule and GTK-Gnutella. Based on the IP addresses I see, they seem more popular in Europe than in the US.

[–] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The dev shut down the github page in 2023 and later came back and re-activated it in 2024. Development is not overly active but there have been commits since then.

https://github.com/zlatinb/muwire/commits/master/

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 3 points 21 hours ago

So that's where people are getting these beta versions newer than mine. I've seen them on the network but I didn't know it they were legit.

[–] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago

When I got into Retroshare, it was all filesharing, but that was several years ago.