The Freenet Project

Install Freenet

To install Freenet might not be as difficult as you might have heard. There are two ways to install Freenet:

If you want to install the Freenet software on a computer which lacks a GUI, see the Headless install instructions. Otherwise, continue reading.

Graphical install

For a graphical installation you have to have:

You should save the new_installer.jar file somewhere were you can find it again. Your home-directory should be a good place. The next step requires you to know where you stored the file (the path to it), so it is quite important that you do that step thouroghly.

To start the installation, open a command line interface/terminal/shell window. Exchange the /path/to to the real path (for example: /home/username/download/new_installer.jar) to the new_installer.jar-file and type:

$ java -jar /path/to/new_installer.jar

The first window you should see is the one below, which allows you to select your preferred language for the installation program.

Next is shown an about-box, some information about the version of Freenet and authors. Just click Next to proceed.




Then comes the License Agreement to the GNU General Public License. After you've read the text, click I accept the terms of this license agreement and press Next .




The next step is to choose the directory in which to install Freenet. The default location on Linux operating systems is /home/username/Freenet as shown below. Change it to something appropriate or leave "as is". Click Next when you are finished.




Select the packages that you want to install with your Freenet software. Since it takes up virtually no extra disk-space, it is recommended that you leave all packages selected and press Next.




In the next stage, the packages are installed, and a progress meter runs across the window. When it is finished, press Next to continue to the next step.




After that, the Freenet software is installed and/or upgraded, plugins are enabled and the environment is started. When completed, press Next to proceed.




For some graphical environments, shortcuts in the menu-structure can be created. This is not the case for all of the platforms that Freenet run on. However, there should be created shortcuts on the desktop in all supported environments. Change the application group according to your needs and press Next when finished.




After that, the installation is finished. Click Done to close the window.




If all has gone well, a browser window should have opened in the background, showing the following page:

It is a page showing a number of ways to proceed with your Freenet quest. Among other things, it shows how you could go about exchanging node references to add peer-nodes to yours, in order to communicate on Freenet. But more on that later.




Clicking the Fproxy web interface link in the image above, opens up Freenets main interface, where peer-nodes are added and configuration for your Freenet node is done. When newly started, it also displays some helpful error messages, as can be seen below.




The first thing you should do, is to change your node name. This can be done by either writing the node name directly in the main window under the caption Node name for darknet, or by clicking the Configuration menu item and looking for the same caption there. When finished, press Apply to save the new settings.

Send spam to catchme@freenetproject.org ! :)