File swapping
 

I am interested in trading some files. Music, movies, and software. I was really into it in the Napster days but havent kept up with it so I could use a little guidance. What software do you guys use for the various file formats? Where can I go to read about this?

Well I will assume that you are only interested in sharing music, movies and software that you are legally entitled to do so. Piracy is not condoned on this board, and asking about such things will get a thread closed.

These days there are two main mays to share files; p2p and bittorrent. The two programs that I use for this are:
P2P: eMule - http://www.emule-project.net/
BitTorrent: Azureus - http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent for more information on how BitTorrent works.

Another option for a bittorrent client is

µTorrent - http://www.utorrent.com/

It's more lightweight than Azureus and still gets the job done.

Dumb question: what's a torrent?

<a href="http://computer.howstuffworks.com/bittorrent.htm">Here's<A> an excellent article on the basics of BitTorrent at howstuffworks.com.

A torrent is a file that directs bittorrent, which is a cool type of filesharing protocol. It is unique because the bittorent client/application/program breaks up the target files and sends pieces of them to all those connected in the "swarm". As you download a file, you get the necessary pieces to complete the puzzle from others connected to the swarm. This means you don't have to suck all the upload bandwidth of one server. The other thing is, you are also sending out bits and pieces at the same time :)

I disagree. I read that article and it actually got many facts about BitTorrent wrong! A better summation of BitTorrent would be the wikipedia article on it although it, too, is not without its flaws...

Personally, I use KCeasy, which is a giFT client. That means that it employs a generic interface to multiple P2P networks, supported by plugins. I have plugins for the OpenFT, FastTrack (KaZaA), Gnutella and Ares networks...

So I have utorrent and have tried btjunkie, are there sites out there?