This post lists the best download managers and accelerators available for Linux, both command line and GUI. Also I have rated them on the basis of speed of download and other features.
When it comes to downloading stuff from the Internet, all of us want it to be fast so that we can save our time. In Windows platform, there are a lot of download managers and accelerators available that gives you boosts in speed, which otherwise through normal download will take a lot of time. In Linux platform too, there are various download accelerators which do the same task. Single threaded and multi-threaded, interactive and non-interactive, command line and GUI, I have rated them based on the boost of speed using a calculation algorithm given below and created the following list of eight best download managers available. Note that all of them support resuming of downloads. The list is arranged in descending order, with the worst at the first and the best at the last.Note: For some reason I couldn’t compile the Download4X (d4x) download manager, also it seems that the software is not maintained anymore hence it is out of this list. Also this ratings are based on a rough calculation which is dependent on my ISP. Things may vary in your computer.
Calculation of Rating :
(Average speed of this download manager / Average speed of best download manager) * 10
Average speed is calculated by dividing the size of the file by seconds taken to complete a download. Same file, hosted on the same server is taken as a download sample. For calculating the time in commandline downloadmanagers, I wrapped them around in a time command, for GUIs, I used a stopwatch.
I used a wireless dialup (GPRS-EDGE) for carrying out this test. I purposely used a slow connection because ratings will be more accurate in it as download acceleration is more observeable.
#8 kget
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| KGet Download Manager |
Kget is a download manager that is available from the kdenetwork group. Its only plus point is its simplicity. Not a download accelerator, but its best feature is that it can integrate with the Konqueror browser and make your downloads easier.During my test, I faced several problems like downloads getting stalled and being paused sometimes, also things such as download speed, time remaining etc are not accurate. Hence this software is at number 8 in rankings.
Ratings : 4.0/10
GUI : Yes
Website: http://www.kde.org/applications/internet/kget/
Download : In most distros can be installed through your package manager.
#7 aria2
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| Aria2 Download Manager |
This is a download manager that dissapointed me a lot. In spite of being an advanced software with multi-threading support, it fails to download things fast. Some best features of it is that you can download torrents from bittorent protocool using it. Also it can be easily integrated into you package management application such as yum or pacman.
Ratings : 6.1/10
GUI : No
Website : http://aria2.sourceforge.net/ Download : Thorough your package manager.
#6 wget
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| wget download manager |
This is one of the best non-interactive and powerful downloaders ever created in the Linux world. Non-interactive because once you issue a command to it to download some stuff, it keeps on trying to download the file until full of it is retrieved, even if retrieval is broken in the middle.. So its actually the most trustworthy download manager you can get. There are cases when other download managers fail, but wget succeeds in downloading it. So it would be wise to keep it installed in your PC. It is at this spot because it doesn’t support multi-threading yet. One of it most advanced and useful features is that you can download all the files of an website using a single command in wget.
Rating : 6.5/10
GUI : Frontend available – gwget
Website : http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/
Download : Comes pre-installed in most distros.
#5 multiget
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| multiget download manager’s UI |
What I love about it is its wonderful GUI and classification of various downloads based on file type. Also as shown in the picture above, it can display a visual representation of the multi-threaded download progress. Much alike Free Download Manager in Windows. But the interface is a bit buggy and doesn’t work quite well in Gnome 3
Rating : 6.9/10
GUI : Yes
Website : http://multiget.sourceforge.net/
Download : Through you packange manager
#4 curl
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| downloading using curl |
A download manager based on the libcurl library. Not multi-threaded, but suprisingly it outdoes wget for its speed. Downpoint is that it hard to use commandline.
Rating : 7.0/10
GUI : No
Website : http://curl.haxx.se/
Download : Through you package manager.
#3 axel
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| axel download manager |
This is the download manager that impressed me a lot. Simply put it one word, it can really accelerate your download to upto 30 % more speed. Also multi-threaded and can also be integrated with package managers. If you dont have it the repos, you can compile it from source.
Rating : 8.7/10
GUI : Frontend availiable – gaxel
Website : http://axel.alioth.debian.org/.
Download : From repos or compile from source.
#2 DownThemAll Firefox add-on
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| downthemall firefox extension |
It is availiable in all platforms because it runs as an extension inside Firefox and can be integrated for downloads. Also a good accelerators and one of its most interesting features is that it can download all similar files such as images or music on a single page using wild cards. Nice GUI and for advanced features, DownThemAll is at number 2.
Rating : 8.8/10
GUI : Yes
Website : http://www.downthemall.net/.
Download : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/
#1 prozilla
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| prozilla download manager |
Its the best download manager you can get under Linux with speed acceleration that is comparable with IDM in Windows. A nice UI and advanced features puts it at number 1.
Rating : 10/10
GUI : Frontend – ProzGUI
Website : http://sourceforge.net/projects/prozilla/
Download : Through package manager in most cases, or compiling from source.
prozilla last updated is 2004, plus the prozilla’s sourceforge website does not contain any files.
you can download it from this link
Nice blog saurav..
Glad u like it. Do visit again for more such stuff
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Happy that you liked it. Do keep visiting and tell us how we can improve
You can try out flareGet, which is the fastest download manager for Linux.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/flareget/
Sure, will give that a try
flareget is just another download manager, it doesn’t accelerate anything…
try fatrat!
Will give that a try soon
Well jdownloader is quite a good tool. Wish it was not built in Java (eats up my CPU too much & takes a lot of time to start). Axel is quite good. But, I don’t think wget is a download accelerator. It does help in managing downloads but its not a DA.
Yes it isnt a download accelerator. But its the most reliable one out there. I can keep a download running in wget for over a day and still expect the download will be running when I get back. If a download fails, it goes on trying and trying until the whole download is complete. Very few download managers keep retrying when they get a error response from server.
hey i am trying to integrate prozgui into firefox using flashgot…when i try to do thatmflashgot asks me the path where the prozgui executable is..the executable is in /usr/bin…but flashgot wont let me browse there…i think this is a sudo problem or something???..iam new to linux and i am on linux mint 15…please help
run the command
whereis prozguilearned a lot from you
keep up the good work, man!
Best regards
and
Have a happy new year, stay healthy, lots of success!!!
Thomas
Happy new 2014 🙂
the prozilla link doesnt work =[
The project seems to have been abandoned 🙁
try Free rapid downloader
yeah thats right… prozilla rocks man..
Axel Download Manager does not actually accelerate downloads, contrary to popular belief. If you look at the code carefully, you will see that it opens multiple sockets using separate threads but only *one thread to process each socket*. So, while one socket is downloading, the others must wait — does not matter how many connections you open, Axel will not speed up anything.
Fro experience axel was the best download manger for Linux
I had reach 1500 KB downloading files comparing to 150kB using curl and wget even aria2c reach 214KB/s only
this is best option I tried
axel -o filename.gzip -n 30 URL
regards murad .