ok, sorry, edited my post above.
yes, I can enter all the information I want into the link_listbit setup now, but then the page looks really unorganized because there's no consistency (some have brief descriptions and some have long ones).
here's an example of what I mean using another downloads script (it doesn't have the other features, but is just an example of a template list that links to a file description/download link instead of right to the file).
http://www.troc.us/forum/downloads.php?do=cat&id=11
that's like the link_listbit template but if you click on a file name it doesn't start the download, it goes to a page with more info about the file.