Introduction to Linux command line downloading tools
To make the Windows console handle text formatting well for command line tools like Vim, Emacs and tmux, Creators Update has better support for the ANSI codes and VT Sequences that UNIX and Linux.
When we think about Linux, definitely a back and white terminal will come in the mind, a true Linux user always prefer to work from terminal even for downloading, a command line downloading tool can help user to download anything from internet more quickly, in comparison to some GUI tool. There are lots of downloading tools for general purpose and even for torrents also but only few tools like curl or wget are more popular in comparison to other tools. In this tutorial we will discuss top 10 command line tools for downloading in Linux. Let us discuss these cli tools one by one.
Wget
This is the most famous tool which is used for downloading via cli. It is very rich tool which can acts like some full fledged GUI download manager, it has all of the features required for some ideal download manager like it can resume download, it can download multiple files, it can retry downloading if some connectivity problem is there, you can even manage maximum download bandwidth.
Example
Download some sample file form internet
Sample output
Windows 10 Command Line Tools
Download file in background
Linux Command Line Tools For Windows
Resume download if internet connection got interrupted
Download file from some password protected ftp repo
2. Curl
Curl is another effective download tool, it can be use to upload or download file with giving a simple command, it supports pause or resume of downloaded package and supports maximum of web protocols, it can predict time left in download to be complete, progress is visible via progress bar. It comes as built in tools for all of the Linux distributions. A quick and effective tool, let us have a look
Example
Sample
with -o option provide a name, download file will be saved with that name, with -O (capital O) option, file will be saved by its original name.
Download multiple files with single curl command
3. Axal
A good alternative to wget, it is a lightweight download utility, it is actually a accelerator as it open multiple http connections which download separate file fragment and as a result the file get downloaded more quickly.
Installation
Example
Sample
4. Youtube-dl
A dedicated tool to download videos from YouTube via command line, a quick to install package, which can be used to download even a bulk list of files.
Installation
Change file permission
Example
Download some video, by adding video url with the command.
To download a video list, copy all of the url in a text file and run following command
Sample
5. Aria2
An open source command line download accelerator, support multiple ports, you can download files with maximum bandwidth, easy to install and easy to use tool.
Installation
For centOS
Example
# aria2c http://www.sample-videos.com/video/mp4/720/big_buck_bunny_720p_1mb.mp4
Sample
6. Movgrab
The another effective tool for video downloading, advantage of using movgrab it that it can download videos not only from YouTube but also from almost all of the famous websites like metacafe, dailiymotion, ehow, vobx etc. Very quick tool, movie format can be defined, you can resume download.
Installation
Download package from this link
Extract package
Use command to download package
Download a file with specific name
Define file format
Use maovgrab -h for more details
7. rtorrent
The famous command line torrent client, it comes with all Linux distributions, it require screen utility to work.
Instillation
Install screen
Install rtorrent
Example
8. ctorrent
C-torrent is a simplest commnd line torrent downloading tool, can be installed quickly, it is a good alternative of micro-torrent or utorrent.
Installation
Example
Let us download a copy of latest Ubuntu server 16.04
User ctorrent -h for more options.
9. Transmission-cli
The command line version of version of transmission, a very strong tool for torrenting. Easy to install, it require ‘screen’ as dependency.
Installation
Install screen
Example
10. vuze
A complete torrenting solution with minimum footprint, it is one of the most powerful torrent application, it require java to run on console, so make sure you have installed jre of open jdk on your system, it will also require ‘screen’ package.
Installation
It can be downloaded directly from this link , download and extract package
There are some dependencies which must be downloaded, grab required plugins from this link
Copy these .jar plugins to vuze directory
Run following command
After the above command is successful, run below command to launch
Use help command, add use add command along with path of .torrent file to start download.
Conclusion
Command line tools are more effective and fast in comparison of GUI based torrent or download managers, these tools can play a important role in head less servers and can control bandwidth consumption in slow internet connections. Have fun!!