If you want to accelerate your Windows downloads, there are a lot of free and premium software all around the web. Most of them (Like Internet Download Manager) does a great job in speeding up the downloads. But, what about Linux? Do we have good download accelerators for Linux? Can they really speed up our downloads?
For Linux also we have several download managers which we can list. uGet is a feature rich download manager for Linux. Even though we have to use a separate plug-in (Flash Got) to make it work with Firfox, it have some good features like grabbing the download link from the clipboard, set speed limits, set the program to shut down the machine after the downloads complete, etc. But, when it comes to speed, for me, it gave me the half of Firefox’s speed. So, it does not accelerate our downloads!
These days we got a new download manager called Steady Flow. It’s a very lightweight download manager which doesn’t have many features. Actually, their target is to be simple as possible. Like uGet, it also rely on Flash Got to integrate with Firefox. It also did not accelerate my downloads.
We also have our old Axel! A very old download manager. We haven’t got any updates since 2009! I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to use out of date software. For new systems they are unstable and might cause security issues. But when I tested, Axel was a bit faster than uGet, Steady Flow and Fat Rat. But still way lower than the normal Firefox download speed. Again, Axel also wants us to install Flash Got to work with Firefox.
Next we have Fat Rat. A popular download manager which have more features than uGet like Torrent downloading, Rapid Share downloads and the Web interface. But again it depends on Flash Got. When it comes to speed, it didn’t gave a steady speed. Once its lower than all the others. Once it bypassed everyone and hit a higher speed. But those high speeds didn’t last long. Still, it failed to beat the Firefox inbuilt downloader.
Wget is the most famous command line downloader. Open the terminal, type wget, space, the url of the file. You can also use Flash Got to download with wget. When I checked wget, I was surprised… Its faster than all the above download managers! A very simple download manager and the best thing is, it comes with almost all the Linux distribution by default!
Finally we have Down Them All plugin for Firefox. Because it’s a plug-in built into the browser, we don’t have to use Flash Got. Speaking about download speeds, it really broke the records! Its faster than Firefox and all the above download manager. But still its slower than the Internet Download Manager (Windows). Very lightweight and speedy!
When going through this list, the are two major points which Linux download managers need to improve :
- Browser support : Most of them relied on third-party plugins to integrate with Firefox. Then what about the other browsers? That’s a very big question.
- The speed : Only one download manager (From the list I checked) really did some accelerating. Others really slowed down the downloads! (Wget’s speed is normal)
What do you think? Don’t you think they should improve these download managers soon? The Linux world is growing everyday and if we need to grab more fans to our community, we must think about these essential apps. So, I hope the developers see this post and improve their software!
So, whats your favourite Download manager? Do you know about a good download manager which really speeds up the downloads? If so, please let us know… Leave a comment!
