When I first started using GNU/Linux some years ago, there were very few download managers and most of them were less capable when compared to those present for windows based operating systems like FDM, IDA, DAP, etc. So I was forced to use them on WINE for all http downloads. But now the Linux world has seen some drastic changes, you name it they have it or will start developing one (There are a few exceptions to these though). Of course Firefox is a great alternative for download managers but not always reliable. So here are few good download managers,
- Wget: GNU wget is a free software tool to download files using HTTP/HTTPS/FTP protocols and has no GUI but a commandline tool. This is very powerful and supports some very good features. Some features include,
- Can use wild-card url’s and recursively mirror directories.
- Supports cookies & proxies
- Can convert absolute links in downloaded documents to relative, so that downloaded documents may link to each other locally
- Gwget: Gwget is a very simple download manager from gnome projects. Though there are no advanced features like some others but does its job to perfection. It can be installed from most distributions repositories. Some catchy features include,
- Recursivity: Gwget detects when you put a html, php, asp or a web page dir in the url to download, and ask you to only download certain files (multimedia, only the index, and so on).
- Drag & Drop: You can d&d a url to the main gwget window or the notification area icon to add a new download.
- Multiget: Multiget is a powerful GUI download manager, which is a sourceforge project written in C++. The interface looks similar to some of the popular advanced windows download managers and works well.
- Jigdo: A very simple download manager with simplest features and interface. There are no options other than adding new urls, stop, suspend, delete resume. But it worked amazing and good speeds compared to others on my system.
- d4x: d4x/Downloader for X is a very powerful graphical download manager supports http/ftp protocals.
Some good features include- Different speed levels: This feature can help you to browse as well as download on slow internet connections.
- Save List: You can easily save the list of downloads into file and import later.
- Filters: To apply filters, so that a particular website downloads can be blocked and so on.
- Scheduler: This can help you schedule your downloads.
- Powerful options windows: Provides very good control over your downloads.
