The Freenet Project - /download-old

Download Freenet 0.5

Note that Freenet 0.5 is no-longer well supported as development effort has shifted to Freenet 0.7, which you can download from here.

Important note for first time users

When you first start Freenet your node will know very little about the network, meaning that it could take several minutes or longer to retrieve a web page. Please be patient since Freenet will learn how to find information more effectively over time and its speed will gradually improve with use.

If you have a firewall or a NAT box click here for some info.

Windows

- Download and run freenet-java-webinstall.exe which includes Java or
- If you already have Java 5 update 4 or greater (strongly recommended for security, although v1.4.1 or greater works) freenet-webinstall.exe

It will automatically install Freenet and other required components for you. When done, double-click on the small blue rabbit icon in your system-tray.
(Freenet contains NO spyware or adware , it's Free Software! The source code is publicly available for review)

Freenet works best with Windows 2000, XP Professional or NT. Windows ME, 98 and 95 work less well.

Unix/Linux

You need to have a recent Java Runtime Environment. We have experienced best results with Sun's Java Runtime Environment which can be obtained from http://www.java.com/.
Java version 1.4.1 and later will work. However, be aware that there are applet security vulnerabilities in all versions prior to Java 5 update 4. Generally, we recommend using at least Java 1.4.2.

Currently Freenet does not run on Kaffe or GCJ, due to bugs in Classpath. This is being worked on.

Once Java is installed, download freenet-stable-latest.tgz. Get started by typing:

$ tar xzf freenet-stable-latest.tgz
$ cd freenet
$ sh start-freenet.sh

After you start Freenet wait a few seconds for it to start-up (on a slow computer, you may need to wait about 30 seconds), and visit http://127.0.0.1:8888/ in your web browser to access Freenet's user interface.

Hardware requirements

Minimum: 400MHz Pentium 2, with at least 192MB of RAM.
Recommended: 1GHz or more processor with 256MB RAM or more (especially if using Windows XP).

Upgrading

After installing Freenet, Windows users can upgrade to the latest daily Freenet "snapshot" release by clicking on "Update Snapshot" in the Freenet section of their Start menu.

Linux users may similarily upgrade by running the update.sh shell script in the freenet/ directory.

To see the latest changes of the builds in the stable branch, you can go to the Changelog.

Source Code

Our 0.5 changelog is reachable here. You can obtain the latest source code from SVN from http://freenet.googlecode.com/svn/branches/legacy/stable/, or you can download a daily snapshot:

Stable - current stable branch source code
Unstable - current unstable branch source code
Contrib - separate module needed to compile freenet-ext.jar; unpack this and one of the above in a common parent directory, and then run "ant distclean dist" to build everything.

Documentation

This page contains links to documentation that would mainly be of interest to developers of Freenet and Freenet-related tools. Those with a higher level interest in Freenet's operation should look here.