Soulseek is VERY good for music. It sucks for apps and such. If you are on cable you should have free access to usenet. You can find just about anything you want on usenet. If you don't try getting access to a private openap server. Most of them always has a VERY good selection of apps.
The only place I go for apps is usenet and a private Openap server. For music I use soulseek.
hmmm i don't think it's very wise to support warez on a public forum... but whatever floats your boat.
http://packetnews.com << very nice site for entire albums, videos, pron, apps. Gotta learn to use irc tho. They have a forum there (i believe) so if you get stuck they should be able to help.
knoppix is a good idea if you have A LOT of bandwidth and a lot of space on a ftp server. Plus they probably don't even keep the setup / installation stuff on their computers. read what furgy wrote.
at installation they'll give you the choice of installing some spyware program, i think its navhelper or something...just don't check the box by it. the downloads are really quick and its add free as well.
Why do you think that this program is spyware free? If it trys to install spyware through an option, don't you think that it probably installs spyware automatically?