Download Freenet 0.7
Important note for first time users
In an ideal world, all Freenet users would only connect to people they trust (see your Friends page once your node is installed). In practice, if you don't know anyone already on Freenet you will have to enable promiscuous mode so your node automatically connects to other nodes (this is less secure). It may take several minutes for your node to connect to enough nodes for Freenet to be usable, and performance will likely improve over time after that. You will get best performance if you can leave your node running 24x7.
If you have a firewall or a NAT box click here for some info.
Installation Instructions
Clicking the Install Freenet 0.7 link should start the installer up. If it doesn't work for some reason, you can try the platform specific instructions (Windows instructions, Mac OSX instructions, Linux and Unix-like instructions).Windows
- Download and run freenet webinstall (3MB)It will automatically install Freenet and other required components for you. When done, your default browser will automatically open up to Freenet's web-based user interface.
(Freenet contains NO spyware or adware , it's Free Software! The source code is publicly available for review)
Freenet works best with
- Windows XP Professional or
- Windows 2000 Professional
If the installer doesn't work (something seriously wrong) then please let us know, install Java, and try the Linux instructions below.
Mac OSX
Install Freenet 0.7 using JavaWebStart.If this doesn't work, try the linux instructions below.
Linux and other Unix-like systems
You need to have a recent Java Runtime Environment (JRE). We have experienced best results with Sun's Java Runtime Environment which can be obtained via your package manager or from http://www.java.com/.Java version 1.4.2 and later will work. However, be aware that there are applet security vulnerabilities in all versions prior to Java 1.5 update 4. Generally, we recommend using latest.
Open a terminal and type:
wget http://downloads.freenetproject.org/alpha/installer/new_installer.jar java -jar new_installer.jar
Alternatively, downloading the installer and then clicking on the file may work on some systems, but if there are problems we recommend the above command lines.
Or do the following on a headless system:
wget http://downloads.freenetproject.org/alpha/installer/freenet07.tar.gz cat freenet07.tar.gz | gzip -d | tar xv cd freenet ./run.sh start
Read the FAQ on how to enable web-access from a remote computer.
After installing
Afer 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/wizard/
in your web browser to access Freenet's user interface. Freenet will ask you a few questions and then go to the node homepage,
http://127.0.0.1:8888/
from which you can access freesites, add friends etc. Hopefully the installer will open the page for you, so you won't be reading this.
Offline installation
Some people might encounter difficulties connecting to our server because of censorship. We do have an offline version of the installer available : Freenet 0.7 offline installer. You shouldn't use it unless you have to (it's bigger to download and might not be as up to date as the online one).So it's running, what do I do?
You need to get connected. The wizard will ask you whether to enable insecure mode. If you do, your Freenet node should automatically announce itself and start working within a few minutes. If not, Freenet will not work until you add some friends on the Friends page.
If you know anyone running Freenet, even if you have enabled insecure mode, you can improve your security and help to build the network by connecting to their node. Ask them for their reference, and give them yours. If you visit
http://127.0.0.1:8888/friends/
in your browser, you can see your reference at the bottom and you can add other people's references, either by cutting and pasting the reference itself, or by pointing Freenet to a URL or a file containing their reference.
Note: You need to add their reference and they need to add yours before your nodes can communicate.
If you don't know anyone running Freenet, enable insecure mode (also known as opennet; the first time wizard will ask you), and wait a few minutes for the node to announce itself, and Freenet will start working by itself.
So I'm connected, what do I do?
You can find links to some pages in the index on the FProxy homepage at:
http://127.0.0.1:8888/
You can find links to some third party applications for freenet.
It doesn't work, now what?
If you have problems installing or running Freenet, please contact us on the support list (subscribe here), or join us on IRC on #freenet on irc.freenode.net.
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
Freenet provides now an update-over-freenet mechanism ; We recommend people to use it in favour of the updating scripts. However, you may also update your node manually:
- Windows users can upgrade to the latest-stable Freenet release by clicking on "update.cmd" in the Freenet directory.
- Linux users may similarly upgrade by running the update.sh shell script in the freenet/bin/ directory.
Source Code
You can obtain the latest source code from SVN:
svn co --ignore-externals http://freenet.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/freenet/
Note: You can still find the download page for Freenet 0.5 here, however 0.5 is no longer officially maintained or supported and 0.7 has many radical improvements not least being that it is significantly faster.