eDonkey 1.0 Released
August 4, 2004
Thomas Mennecke
The eDonkey2000 network has long been a valued commodity in the P2P world. Its higher learning curve over Kazaa has ensured a network of computer savvy individuals, with far less in the way of leeching or other forms of lamership. Over the years, two clients, eMule and eDonkey, have emerged as the spearhead clients of this thriving community.
As eMule and eDonkey battle it out for supremacy in the eDonkey2000 community (a battle MetaMachine is struggling to reclaim), the ultimate victor is the end user. Similar to DirectConnect and the army of open source clones that followed, the eDonkey2000 community has benefited from the competition that has forced both sides to develop improved clients.
The most significant change to the MetaMachine client is the full integration of the Overnet and eDonkey clients. Instead of having two clients, only the hybrid will be available. From MetaMachine's point of view, it was originally hoped that the eDonkey2000 network would be phased out in favor of Overnet. However, this event never materialized, as the old adage "if it ain't broke..." applied well to the situation.
In addition, eDonkey 1.0 is Macintosh compatible. With the eDoneky2000 and FastTrack networks at a virtual tie for the P2P crown, it will be interesting to see whether an influx of Mac users will give this community the push it needs to overtake FastTrack.
So what has changed with the new eDonkey client?
- Combined Overnet and eDonkey2000 into one application.
- Switched from MFC to Qt.
- Mac OS X version now available.
- Better support for other protocols.
- Much improved graphing and statistics.
- Fake file detection.
- Many UI changes.
- Lower CPU load.
- Changed shared tab layout
- Now downloads first and last chunk first
- Can copy plain ed2k links
- More flexible skining
- Improved zlib server support
- RAM buffered uploads/downloads
- Improved plugin support
- Unicode support
- New media tab with user definable categories
What has stayed the same? Webhancer, GloPhone, TopRebates and New.net
Keep in mind that eDonkey is supported by third party software. However, in all fairness, the client does not force this software upon the user, and he/she is able to option out of its installation.
MetaMachine has brought many new and innovative concepts to the P2P community. In addition, they have tolerated open source projects such as eMule and Lugdunum, which has helped earn their network a tremendous amount of respect in the file-sharing community.