LimeWire has released the beta version of LimeWire 1.9b, available at:

http://www.limewire.com/index.jsp/download_beta

This is primarily a maintenance release, although it includes important improvements over the LimeWire 1.9 beta. The changes include:

<ul>
<li>Significant performance improvements, both in terms of CPU and memory.
<li>Prevents spurious disconnects from UltraPeers after conducting searches that return a lot of results.
<li>Ads in non-Windows versions! Seriously, they are there. Don't worry too much, though -- we did the ads ourselves, so they're a bit less annoying than the Windows ones. If you click on the Amazon link to do late Christmas shopping, a portion of the proceeds goes to support LimeWire and the open source project.
<li>Minor bugs fixes with swarm downloading.
<li>Improved logic for grouping similar results for swarm downloading and smart downloading.
<li>Improved the UltraPeer election process, so you will not get elected as an UltraPeer if you are a modem user.
<li>As many of you have noticed, we are having problems with the Linux and Solaris installers. The betas for both versions will be delayed until Monday.
</ul>

The most important change is really in performance. You should see significant performance improvements, especially as an UltraPeer, over the previous version.

Thanks very much for everyone's feedback on 1.9. Your assistance has been invaluable, and we have fixed many bugs in this version that we likely would not have found without the help of all you forum readers out there!