NEWS 04/22/2004
A better way to run Kazaa under UNIX-like systems.
Since this article was initially written, a number of advances have been made in terms of UNIX filesharing clients. There is now a filesharing system for Linux and FreeBSD called giFT, which supports multiple protocols, including Fasttrack, which powers the Kazaa network, as well as Gnutella, which is becoming increasingly popular. Using giFT with a graphical frontend like the excellent Apollon allows you to connect to these and other filesharing protocols simultaneously, maximizing the effectiveness of your searches.
Unfortunately, giFT is tricky to use unless a bit of preconfiguration is done. This set of configuration files should enable you to easily start Apollon without much trouble.
You'll need giftd, gift-fasttrack, gift-openft, gift-gnutella and apollon installed on your system (consult your package manager for these).
cd ~; tar xjvf giftconfig.tar.bz2
Unzip the giFT configuration files into your home directory.
Then run apollon, and enjoy!
A common requirement of those who switch from Windows to a free operating system such as FreeBSD is the requirement that some of their favorite applications function on the new platform.
Since WINE is an application to be configured by vendors and is not well suited to configuration by new users, I think a little assistance is in order to enhance the user experience. Included in this howto is a full configuration of WINE and a preinstalled copy of KazaaLite, as well as a wrapper which can be used to launch it.
Click here to download the WINE Config + KazaaLite distribution for Kazaa Lite 1.72
Click here to download the shell script wrapper for Kazaa Lite 1.72
-- Experimental --
Click here to download the WINE Config + KazaaLite distribution for Kazaa Lite 2.4
Click here to download the shell script wrapper for Kazaa Lite 2.4
On FreeBSD systems, all you'll need to use this HOWTO is the WINE package itself, installed from ports or downloaded in binary form.
cd /usr/ports/emulators/wine
Move to the WINE port's directory
make install
Install WINE.
This howto and distribution can also be used with a Linux system, although you'll need to ensure that 'bzip2' and 'bunzip2' are installed for this to work properly.
To install these, download both to your home directory or another convenient place. From a terminal window or a console, you will need to unzip the contents of the distribution into your home directory. The following assumes you have saved both the wine.tar.bz2 and the kazaa wrapper in your home directory.
cd ~
This will ensure that you're in your home directory.
rm -rf ~/.wine
Make sure there is no existing .wine directory, as conflicts have not yet been tested!
Note for advanced users: If you have a preconfigured WINE configuration, you can use this distribution as a guide to modifying your existing WINE configuration and DLL collection.
bunzip2 -c wine.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -
This will extract the contents of the distribution, into ~/.wine.
chmod +x kazaa
Make your kazaa wrapper script executable
su -m root
Switch to superuser privileges
cp kazaa /usr/local/bin
Place the kazaa wrapper in your path.
That's it! Run 'kazaa' from a terminal or run command and enjoy.
WindowMaker exhibits an unusual behaviour when running Kazaa, namely the window will have a case of the jitters until the titlebar is clicked. This has something to do with the WINE systray window, which gives Win32 applications access to the standard windows system tray.
The system tray under WindowMaker also appears in its own window, which is an annoyance. The following dock application solves both problems.
WMSwallow
Download mirror for the source of wmswallow
To compile this unzip it, cd into the wmswallow directory, and type gmake xfree. Linux users will want to type make xfree. Become the superuser, and copy the wmswallow binary you just made into /usr/local/bin as you did with the kazaa wrapper above.
wmswallow Wine-Systray kazaa
This will tell the 'wmswallow' program to launch the kazaa wrapper and make a dock application out of the WINE systray window.
Please direct all comments/feedback to brad@brad-x.com or sev@sevonline.org.
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