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Free Download Manager site redirected Linux users to malware for years
(www.bleepingcomputer.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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It's still my favorite download manager on Windows. It often downloads file significantly faster than the download manager built into browsers. Luckily I never installed it on Linux, since I have a habit of only installing from package managers.
Do you know of a good download manager for Linux?
Right? I've not thought about download speeds since the 2000's.
FDM does some clever things to boost download speeds. It splits up a download into different chuncks, and somehow downloads them concurrently. It makes a big difference for large files (for example, Linux ISOs).
I guess many servers are capping speeds them. Makes sense since I almost never see downloads actually take advantage of my Gigabit internet speeds.
It could make multiple requests to the server, asking each request to resume starting at a certain byte.
The key thing to know is that a client can do an HTTP
HEADrequest to get just theContent-Lengthof the file, and then performGETrequests with theRangerequest header to fetch a specific chunk of a file.This mechanism was introduced in HTTP 1.1 (byte-serving).
just grabbed a gig file - it would take about 8 minutes with a standard download in Firefox. Use a manager or axel and it will be 30 seconds. Then again speed isnt everything, its also nice to be able to have auto retry and completion.
JDownloader, XDM, FileCentipede (this one is the closest to IDM, although it uses closed source libraries), kGet, etc.
And JDownloader is the more useful one for easier download from file hosters.
axel. use axel -n8 to make 8 connections/segments which it will assemble when it is done
Even with wget, wget -c can resume some downloads.