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What download managers are available for Ubuntu? Can you provide the link as well?

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    type in terminal, sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tahutek-team/prozilla, sudo apt-get update, sudo apt-get install prozilla. Sep 12, 2013 at 0:52

48 Answers 48

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Polipo is a local proxy that will sit between your browser and the internet and manage the connections. It is bundled with Tor setups as a way of avoiding the use of a socks proxy but maybe it can be used to optimize your internet connection, if you are technically inclined. If you do use it, it will likely be useful to enable pipelining and proxy pipelining in the Firefox registry (about:config) which will allow multiple connection requests to the server. You can then try to increase the maximum number of requests to 10 or so.

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You can use JDownloader.

It downloads almost from every sites, even from that that ask for captcha. It also boosts download speed if you rise "Max. Con." option.

PS: You can use this site to install JDownloader from a ppa and have unity integration

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The best download managers for Ubuntu 12.04 are suggested above by other users since the IDM is not available for Ubuntu. If you are looking to download youtube or flash videos from any other sites you should install 'flashgot' add-on for Mozilla Firefox. You can get 'Flashgot add-on from the firefox add-on search page. For your information 'Flashgot' is also used as a site grabber like IDM. So you don't need to worry about not having IDM for your ubuntu. I use Uget download manager and Flashon add-on for Mozilla firefox which works pretty well.

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You can try out flareGet (a recently released download manager for Linux). It is still in the beta stage but works pretty good. It is multi-threaded and supports up to 32 segments per download for download acceleration. For browser integration you can use flashgot.

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One download manager available you might want to take a look at is Steadyflow Download Manager. Steadyflow works as a Unity indicator applet so to speak.

  • A basic GNOME download manager, supporting all URL protocols known by GIO/GVFS. This includes, among others, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and SMB.

  • Pausing, resuming, and restarting downloads upon application restart.

  • An application indicator, or a notification area icon for platforms without Ayatana libraries.

  • An instant search/filter box.

  • Ability to add downloads via the command line and D-Bus, for browser extension writers.

  • Notification bubbles upon starting and finishing downloads (can be disabled).

To get Steadyflow, open a terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) and issue the following comands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sikon/steadyflow
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install steadyflow
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  • That mentioned PPA does not work for Trusty, currently!
    – mini
    Apr 28, 2014 at 17:52
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If you are using Firefox you can use downthemall plugin also.

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Aria2

Description: (copied from the website on Nov 2013)

aria2 is a light-weight multi-protocol & multi-source download utility operated in command-line. The supported protocols are HTTP(S), FTP, BitTorrent (DHT, PEX, MSE/PE), and Metalink.

aria2 can download a file from multiple sources/protocols and tries to utilize your maximum download bandwidth. It supports downloading a file from HTTP(S)/FTP and BitTorrent at the same time, while the data downloaded from HTTP(S)/FTP is uploaded to the BitTorrent swarm. Using Metalink's chunk checksums, aria2 automatically validates chunks of data while downloading a file like BitTorrent.

There are other alternatives, such as wget and curl, but aria2 has two distinctive features: (1) aria2 can download a file from several URIs(HTTP(S)/FTP/BitTorrent) and (2) If you give aria2 a list of URIs, aria2 downloads them concurrently. You don't have to wait for the current download queue to finish one file at a time anymore. aria2 tries to utilize your maximum download bandwidth and downloads files quickly.

There are also some applications that have the ability to do segmented downloading. Typically these applications split a file up by the number of threads and download them in parallel and wait for all threads to finish. In other words, they don't split unfinished segments adaptively. Normally, if things go well, this strategy works well, but if one thread is very slow (i.e. one of the server is very slow), then you have to wait for it to finish. aria2 can cope with this peculiar situation. aria2 can split segments adaptively all the way down to 1MiB. So you don't have to worry about the above problem. But you might complain: if a slow server is downloading at 1MiB, then one has to wait for that none the less. The answer is "no". Even in such a case, aria2 does the job quite well: aria2 cancels slow servers and use the faster server to finish the download. In other words, aria2 is very clever and reliable in many situations.

Unlike the original Aria, which has a GTK+ interface, aria2 provides only a command-line interface. And as a result, it has lower resource requirement. The physical memory usage is typically 4MiB (normal HTTP/FTP downloads) to 9MiB (BitTorrent downloads). CPU usage in BitTorrent with download speed of 2.8MiB/sec is around 6%.

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  • What are you saying? My post starts with the reference link. Nov 26, 2013 at 4:06
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wget is not a download manager, it is a download utility. By default you cannot do these things

  • You can't pause downloads
  • You can't view history
  • You can't schedule downloads
  • You can't download multiple files at the same time
  • You can't download multiple files from 2 different URLs
  • You can't restart downloads

When you have all these things in one utility, then you're allowed to call it a manager. For example Calibre is an ebook manager. Just because Adobe reader reads PDF, it doesn't make it a manager. Wget is no better than Curl for downloading stuff, hell I find Curl much more useful, at least you can use it in programming.

Some geek might leave a comment, you can do all that if you edit .bashrc or write a bash command or something. A download manager should do all these things easily and by default. I could browse the web in Emacs, if I download a plugin or write a script, that does not make Emacs itself a web browser.

To answer the question, I personally use Uget, but many people mentioned it so I'll mention pyLoad which is another great downloader.

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  • I don't necessarily disagree, and I don't entirely agree either, so I will just say this. What features define or don't define a Download Manager is a matter of debate (not fitting on this site). I don't think there is an authoritative definition. For instance, if you look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download_manager, scroll to the very bottom and click on [Show] in the Download Managers box, you will see wget listed there, along with many other applications which do not all support all the features that you request of a download manager. And yet, people call them so. Feb 10, 2014 at 13:28
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    @MalteSkoruppa this is inevitably what we will get with that kind of question. I personally think that the question is the main problem here, not the answer.
    – Braiam
    Feb 10, 2014 at 14:30
  • @MalteSkoruppa I understand your point, and you do have a point, but even wget team does not seem to call it a manager, this is the main site gnu.org/software/wget and this is the wiki page for Wget en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wget they don't call it manager, it's not even here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_download_managers
    – Lynob
    Feb 10, 2014 at 14:50
  • @Braiam I totally agree with you, there was a discussion on area51 to create a software recommendation site on SE, everyone admired the idea but it didn't make it because they thought it would create problems
    – Lynob
    Feb 10, 2014 at 14:53
  • Please @MalteSkoruppa and Fischer further discussions drop it in Ask Ubuntu Meta
    – Braiam
    Feb 10, 2014 at 15:23
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I use aria2 which is a terminal based download manager utility. If you like UI then go for uGet.

This article might help you decide which one to install and help with installation.

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You can install prozilla with this by opening a terminal and typing:

wget http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/p/prozilla/prozilla_1.3.6-9_i386.deb 
sudo dpkg -i prozilla_1.3.6-9_i386.deb 

I also like kget, uget and fatrat.

kget is pre-installed on kde-plasma but if you wanna get it with Ubuntu desktop then you can with

sudo apt-get install kget 

In the same way you can install uget and fatrat, for example

sudo apt-get install fatrat 
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Here's a review of Best 8 Download Managers/Accelerators for Linux

Prozilla, which is rated as No.1 there, also has a GUI although it doesn't look very modern:

ProzGUI can be installed by entering these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alza/project
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install prozgui

Prozilla + Zenity

Those who would like a GUI and a really really fast and powerful Download Accelerator such as Prozilla but don't like prozgui due to its very outdated looks, numerous small windows, etc., can simply use a basic zenity-powered script like this:

#!/bin/bash
URL=`zenity --title='URL to Download' --text='Please enter URL of the file to be downloaded to ~/Downloads' --entry`
xterm -fa "Ubuntu Mono:size=10" -title 'Prozilla Downloading...' -e "proz -r -f --no-search --directory-prefix=/home/$USER/Downloads "$URL"" &

Some options which can be added/modified:

-k=n              Use n connections instead of the default(4)
--no-search       Do a direct download (no ftpsearch)
--ftpsearch       Do a ftpsearch for faster mirrors
--min-size=n      If a file is smaller than 'n'Kb, don't search, just download it

Of course you need to install prozilla, zenity and xterm as below before running this script:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tahutek-team/prozilla
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install prozilla xterm zenity

Further information about installing non-GUI version of Prozilla can be found here:

ProZilla Kaptain Launcher

And for those who would like a good-looking GUI launcher including more options:

Prozilla Kaptain Launcher

enter image description here

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  • The question is not outdated, this answer IS.
    – cipricus
    Mar 2, 2020 at 20:44
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Xtreme Download Manager

This question will not get outdated very soon, but most of the answers here are outdated. Beside uGet, few other applications mentioned thereunder are still alive. The best these days is probably XDG.

It can get the download link for multimedia and download the file with multi-fragment acceleration.

FROM OFFICIAL WEBSITE
http://xdman.sourceforge.net/

https://sourceforge.net/projects/xdman/

"""" Features

*** Download any streaming video

XDM can download video and audio files from popular sites like YouTube, MySpaceTV, Google Video and many others. It is maybe the best way of downloading webpage embedded videos and such. "Download This Video" button pops up in most cases you are watching a video on the Internet. Just click on the button to start downloading clips.

enter image description here

*** Download 32 time faster (but you don't need that, let's be reasonable)

XDM can accelerate downloads by up to 32 times due to its intelligent dynamic file segmentation technology. XDM segments downloaded files dynamically during download process and reuses available connections without additional connect and login stages to achieve best acceleration performance.

enter image description here

**** Works with all browsers!

enter image description here

"""

for your ubuntu

Linux 64 bit:

$wget https://sourceforge.net/projects/xdman/files/xdm-2018-x64.tar.xz/download

Linux 32 bit:

$wget https://sourceforge.net/projects/xdman/files/xdm-2018-x86.tar.xz/download

$tar -xvf yourFile.xz

--------------------------------/

FROM README FILE:

Installation instruction

  1. Open terminal
  2. Switch to the directory where you have extracted tar compressed file, there should be a file named install.sh
  3. Execute the file as root. a. In Ubuntu/Mint/Elementary OS or other Debian based Linux, use: sudo ./install.sh

  4. If installation is successfull, you can start xdm from Start Menu or by typing xdman interminal as non root user

  5. To uninstall run /opt/xdman/uninstall.sh as root

--------------------------------/ NB :

Pre-requisites : None

    ENJOY  !!!
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  • While it is unique in its ability to get various multimedia source links, sometimes, with some multimedia sources it will report lost/reset connection, but copying the link into uGet or other downloader would result in successful download.
    – cipricus
    Mar 2, 2020 at 21:02
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Use prozgui

I know download accelerators use multi thread type processes to achieve faster download speeds and from this I just found the ninja download accelerator for Ubuntu.

Yesterday my download took about 4 hours and still not complete for 2 GB and then failed.

Now Today I am using prozgui which I just downloaded and then in the preferences I updated the connections limit to 10 threads, currently I am at 15% of the download in under 3 min this product is unbelievably fast (the best)

Prozgui allows you to select the number of connection threads which allows you to use your full connection without no limits. I now have 10 threads downloading my file

And by the time I finished writing this message the download is already at 40%

I am using Ubuntu 13.04 and it works perfectly fine

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  • Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.
    – Braiam
    Sep 11, 2013 at 14:42
  • Blatantly OUTDATED.
    – cipricus
    Mar 2, 2020 at 20:43
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Most of the answers here are outdated. But not those about XDM and uGet. — With these two I don't need others, but one that is working fairly easily as I speak is worth mentioning: AWGG(aka Advanced Wget GUI)

Download the 0.6 version - the older ones are outdated - and run the executable — it's "portable". It is very similar to IDM of Windows, a lot of settings.

enter image description here

enter image description here

It states it has browser integration with the Download with Wget addon (for Firefox, here).

enter image description here

But I don't see that integration, as the context menu that addon brings will take the download to a terminal wget download (not the AWGG). The link (captured with other tool, probably XDM) can be copied and pasted (after selecting "+" New download), or can be dragged & dropped onto a "drop box" floating button. It doesn't have a "download" button like XDM and IDM, but has clipboard monitoring (just like uGet). Also, only aria2 tool if selected seems to provide multi-source download, and that limited to 5, which results in somewhat lower speeds than the competition aforementioned.

enter image description here

enter image description here

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I like Flashget alot. Although it is only available for Windows but it runs fine with Wine and I use it for all my video/audio/torrent download tasks. You should give it a try. There are 2 versions of flashget available from their site. I would recommend that you use 1.9.6 instead of 3.3. Download speeds of both versions is same but 1.9.6 has a simple and less cluttered interface. You can install Wine with command

sudo apt-get install wine

After Wine is installed, download flashget196en.exe from flashget.com and install it. Then you can run Flashget from Wine programs.

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FlashGot firefox extension has an option to use DownThemAll Turbo (abbreviated to DTA Turbo there) as a downloader. It's a fastest Linux downloader I've ever used.

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uGet is a great solution and is the closest linux/ubuntu app to IDM available.

http://uget.visuex.com

Disclaimer: I may be a bit biased as I am a uGet project member.

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Try Flashget with Wine. I have been using it on Windows and Ubuntu (with wine) and its an excellent application. If you decide to give it a try, I would suggest installing version 1.9.6

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  • Nah ! I hate flashget. I used it on windows and found it less satisfactory than Orbit. (Orbit is also free). May 2, 2012 at 7:31
  • @CuriousApprentice Have you tried installing Orbit with Wine on Ubuntu?
    – binW
    May 2, 2012 at 7:39
  • Flashget also has a "call home" problem with sending user data to the Flashget servers as well as a lot of built-in adware. Jan 25, 2014 at 20:56
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