New User

From PhexWiki

You are new to Phex and want to know the basics?

Be welcome to let this Guide lead you through the foxes den and show you the tricks and knacks of using Phex best for you.

This is a themed guide. If you want it short and technical, have a look at Getting Started. If you like it with style, though, please feel invited to read on and enjoy this technically correct themed guide.

Firstoff, you'll need to invite the Fox into your house and tell him, where to go, and how to keep away from your chickens. Don't worry, though: This one is shy and wouln't dare to touch anything without your explicit order.

To find your Phex, just check into the foxes den and choose the kit which suits you best.

In Windows Phex gets installed after you doubleclick it, and you can decide to let it into the open to find its skulk and get you interesting things (Start Phex). Maybe you'll have to get a recent Java Runtime to nourish your kit.

In MacOSX inviting the fox is straitforward, since which fox would reject the offer to get to know a new place. Just download it and doubleclick the file (If Safari is set to open safe files automatically, you might even be able to skip this second step, but it really shouldn't be (or would you put the button to open your bedroom-windows on the outside wall of your house?)). Afterwards you need to copy the unzipped Program to any place you want your newly grown kit to occupy. Now you can wake it to look around and begin to find its skulk.

If you utilize a GNU/Linux, you need to have a Java Runtime and run the phex.jar file.

Sometimes things get between your Phex and its Skulk, for example a firewall or a router, which doesn't allow the calls of other foxes to reach your cutie. Should that happen, you'll have to lend your pup a hand.

And now your Phex should be searching for its skulk, calling out to others and finding those, who wander between the skulks to carry its calls on to others.

But up to this step, your kit doesn't have anything to offer to others, and so your Phex might have problems to be accepted into the larger skulk of Gnutella. To help your kit acquire some status, you have to tell it, where to find things to trade for the things it gets you from others.

Don't worry now about losing anything. Foxes are cunning creatures, and nothing pleases this one more than sharing knowledge and crafting new things from ideas it gets from others. For nothing else it is, which Phex carries to others: Pieces and Bits of knowledge from which the receiver can craft an exact copy of the things you share.

So it is time now, to show your Phex around and to show it, which parts of your Library you want to offer others in return for the vast archives of knowledge they let you access. Be advised, though, that your pup doesn't know right from wrong or legal from illegal, so be careful in checking, that the parts of your library you wish to share don't contain anything your aren't allowed to pass on.

Then go into the Library Tab and click on the button at the bottom left: “Share Folder“.

Phex will then show you the view of your kit and you can roam your vast halls searching for the shelves you wish to share. Select one of the folders and share it, then you can show your kit the next shelve, until it knows your whole share, which contains all the things which you hold so dear, that you want others to know of them and all that you think others might find useful, but once again consider that a fox doesn't know right from wrong, so be certain that you truly want to share the shelves you show to your kit.

As your Phex now roams through those shared shelves, getting the scent of each file to present them to other foxes in the bigger skulk (In Tech-Speak: Hashing them), you can already send your kit on a search for the things, which interest you, and if others share them, your kit might carry their scent to you, along with the scent of those who share it, so that you can easily tell your little cutie to get them for you.

Now no more is left for this guide to do, than to wish you a nice time with your kit, and to ask you to let it in the open as long as possible, so that it can mature into a lovely tod or vixen.

And if you want to find other proud parents to Phex' to share experiences or to get you some help, just check into the Phex Forum or the Phex Wiki you are just browsing.

Still more information to make Phex work even better for you is avaible in the Wiki-Article Phex Optimization Tips written by Mike aka Weatherlite.

And if you want to know, how the foxes communicate, just check into GnuFU: Gnutella For Users, where you'll find information about Gnutella which doesn't dive into tech-speak or code-snippets, but explains its workings in easily comprehensive and yet accurate images and terms known from day to day life.

- Arne 19:50, 22 November 2005 (CET)