As for which are the better alternatives, depends on person's preference. Personally I primarily use Limewire Pirate Edition, with Phex as my 2nd program. I occasionally use the other clients.

LW re-designed the program from scratch for version 5 to improve the all round programming efficiency. However, until version 5.3 the program was so basic it was not worth using. They still had not implemented all they intended before LW's demise or fixed all the bugs, but LW 5.5 was starting to get there. L.P.E. 5.6.2 works well for some people. I like the size filter which was my first request for an improvement to be added 6-7 years ago. Took long enough lol. LW5/LPE can be used in two view modes, Classic view which is similar to LW 4, and List view, which has more of a browser look to it (yuk.) Just a pity they did not re-add some of the things which both LW 4 & FrostWire had (FW always maintained the LW 4 interface & tools, though dropped a couple tools.)