Download managers on Windows are one of the most needed tools that are missed by every newcomer to the Linux world, programs like Internet Download Manager Download Accelerator Plus and Free Download Manager are very wanted, but these tools are not available under Linux or Unix-like systems.
No, to worry, you will find several alternate download managers for Linux that can help you manage and accelerate your file downloads on a Linux desktop.
Best Linux Download Managers
In this article, we’re going to talk about the best download managers available for Linux distributions and these download managers are:
- XDM
- FireDM
- DownThemAll
- uGet
- FlareGet
- Persepolis
- MultiGet
- KGet
- Pyload
- Motrix
1. XDM – Xtreme Download Manager
As its developers say, “XDM can accelerate download speed up to 5 times faster due to its intelligent dynamic file segmentation technology. For sure, it’s one of the best download managers available on the Linux desktop that comes with an accelerated downloading feature, resume capability, and browser integration.
XDM flawlessly integrates with the most popular web browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi, and Chromium. It also captures download links from the browser and automatically adds them to the download queue.
It also comes with a built-in video converter that allows you to convert your downloaded videos to several formats so that you can watch them later on your mobile or TV (100+ devices are supported).
Features of XDM
- Download any streaming video.
- Supports pausing/resuming the downloaded files later.
- Supports 32 segments for every downloaded file which makes the downloading process even faster.
- Supports capturing multimedia files from famous websites like Youtube, MetaCafe, Vimeo, and others in many formats like WebM, MP4, AVI.. etc.
- Support for many protocols like HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP.
- Support for most Linux distributions besides Windows support.
- Support for taking URLs from the clipboard quickly.
- There’s an integration extension available for most web browsers like Firefox, Chrome / Chromium, and Safari.
- A very nice GUI, similar to Internet Download Manager.
- Many other features.
To install the most latest stable version of Xtreme Download Manager on Ubuntu or on other Linux distributions, download the XDM Linux installer tar file using the wget command, extract it, and run the installer script to install it.
$ wget https://github.com/subhra74/xdm/releases/download/7.2.11/xdm-setup-7.2.11.tar.xz $ tar -xvf xdm-setup-7.2.11.tar.xz $ sudo sh install.sh
2. FireDM [Discontinued]
FireDM is an open-source internet download manager that was developed using Python and based on “LibCurl”, and “youtube_dl” tools. It comes with multi-connections, a high-speed mechanism, and downloads files & videos from youtube and other various streaming websites.
Features of FireDM
- Multi-connection downloading “Multithreading”.
- Automatic file segmentation and refresh for dead links.
- Support for Youtube, and a lot of stream websites.
- Download the entire video playlist or selected videos.
- Watch videos with video subtitles while downloading.
FireDM is available to install using the Pip package installer on Ubuntu and other Ubuntu derivatives.
$ sudo apt install python3-pip $ sudo apt install ffmpeg libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev python3-pip python3-pil python3-pil.imagetk python3-tk python3-dbus $ sudo apt install fonts-symbola fonts-linuxlibertine fonts-inconsolata fonts-emojione $ python3 -m pip install firedm --user --upgrade --no-cache
3. DownThemAll
Unlike the other programs on this list, DownThemAll is not a program, in fact, it’s a Firefox plugin, but it’s very amazing at downloading multiple files and very effective in selecting what links to download and will keep note of your last decisions so that you can queue more downloads.
As I said, it is a browser plugin and can be installed on all available platforms like Windows, Linux, BSD, Mac OS X.. etc.
Features of DownThemAll
- As the developers say: “DownThemAll can speed your download speed up to 400%”.
- Support for downloading all the images & links on a web page.
- Support for downloading multiple files at once with support for setting the download speed for each one.
- Support for auto-grabbing downloaded links from the Firefox browser.
- Ability to customize a lot of settings for integration between Firefox and DownThemAll.
- Ability to check SHA1 and MD5 hashes automatically after downloading.
- A lot more.
The DownThemAll plugin is also available for Chrome as an extension.
4. uGet Download Manager
One of the most famous download managers out there, uGet is really a good download manager which was built using the GTK+ library, it’s available for both Windows & Linux.
Features of uGet
- Support for downloading many files at once with the ability to set the maximum download speed for all the files together or for each one of them.
- Support for downloading a torrent and Metalink files.
- Support for downloading files from anonymous FTP or by using a username and a password.
- Support for grabbing URLs list from local files to download them all.
- Support for downloading files via the command-line interface.
- Supports 16 segments for every downloaded file.
- Ability to grab URLs from the clipboard automatically.
- Ability to integrate with FlashGot add-on for Firefox.
- Many other features.
uGet is available to download from the official repositories for most Linux distributions, in Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, and elementary OS.
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:plushuang-tw/uget-stable $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install uget
In RHEL-based systems, you can easily install uGet from official repositories using yum or dnf commands.
$ sudo dnf install uget OR $ sudo yum install uget
On Arch and Manjaro Linux install uget with:
$ sudo pacman -S uget
On OpenSuse install uget with:
$ sudo zypper install uget
5. FlareGet Download Manager
FlareGet is another download manager, there are 2 versions of it, one is free and the other one is paid, but they are all closed-source, but they work on both Windows and Linux.
Features of FlareGet
- Multi-thread support.
- Support up to 4 segments per file (in the free version, in the paid version it can go up to 32).
- Support for most Linux distributions and support for integration with most web browsers.
- Support for HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP protocols.
- Support for auto-grabbing the URLs from the clipboard.
- Support for auto-grabbing videos from Youtube.
- The GUI is available in 18 different languages.
- Many other features.
To install FlareGet in Linux distributions, download FlareGet binary packages for your Linux distribution architecture and install it using your default package manager.
6. Persepolis Download Manager
Persepolis is a free, open-source, and cross-platform download manager and a GUI for aria2 (a command-line download manager). It is written in Python language and developed for GNU/Linux Distributions, BSDs, macOS, and Microsoft Windows.
- Multi-segment downloading
- Scheduling downloads
- Download queuing
- Searching and downloading videos from Youtube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, and more.
To install Persepolis download manager on Debian/Ubuntu and other Debian distributions, use the following commands.
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:persepolis/ppa $ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install persepolis
On Arch and other Arch-based Linux distributions.
$ sudo yaourt -S persepolis
On Fedora and other Fedora-based Linux distributions.
$ sudo dnf install persepolis
For openSUSE Tumbleweed run the following as root:
# zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:hayyan71/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/home:hayyan71.repo # zypper refresh # zypper install persepolis
7. MultiGet [Discontinued]
MultiGet is another free, open-source, and easy-to-use GUI (based on wxWidgets) file download manager for Linux, written in C++ programming language.
- Supports HTTP and FTP protocols
- Supports multi-task with multi-thread
- Supports resuming file downloads
- Clipboard monitoring – means copying a URL and prompt for download.
- Also support SOCKS 4,4a,5 proxy, FTP proxy, HTTP proxy
To install the MultiGet download manager on Debian/Ubuntu and other Debian distributions, use the following commands.
$ sudo apt-get install multiget
8. KGet Download Manager
KGet is a functional and user-friendly file download manager for Linux with support for FTP and HTTP(S) protocols, pausing and resuming of downloading files, Metalink support which includes multiple URLs for downloads, and more.
To install the KGet download manager on Debian/Ubuntu and other Debian distributions, use the following commands.
$ sudo apt-get install kget
On Fedora and Fedora-based distributions.
$ sudo dnf install kget
On Arch and other Arch-based Linux distributions.
$ sudo yaourt -S kget
9. PyLoad Download Manager
PyLoad is a free and open-source file download manager for Linux, written in Python programming language and created to be immensely lightweight, easily expandable, and fully manageable via the web.
To install the PyLoad download manager, you must have the Pip package manager installed on the system to install it as shown.
$ pip install pyload-ng
10. Motrix
Motrix is an open-source full-featured, clean, and easy-to-use download manager that comes with support for downloading files over HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent, Magnet, etc with up to 10 concurrent download tasks.
You can download the Motrix AppImage and run it directly on all Linux distributions or use Snap to install Motrix, see GitHub/release for more Linux installation package formats.
These are some of the best download managers available for Linux. Have you tried any one of them before? How did it go with you? Do you know any other download managers that should be added to this list? Share your comments with us.
