No Linux operating system is complete without a download manager. For many years, Linux-based distributions have used wget as the default download manager. It's a great little program that works from the command line, and if you need to install stuff, download stuff, run shell scripts, etc., you can sort of do it all in wget. Over the years we've found that wget lacks some advanced features, and its replacement, aria2, has gained the attention of many users for satisfying the cravings of advanced Linux users. In this article we'll review the aria2 installation process and the differences between wget and aria2, so you can decide which download manager best suits your needs.
install aria2
To install aria2 in Ubuntu/Debian:
sudo apt-get install aria2
Install aria2 in Fedora/RHEL/Centos:
sudo yum install aria2
Install aria2 in Arch Linux:
sudo pacman -Sy aria2
Important features of aria2
Let's discuss the important features in aria2 that make it so popular:
- Make the most of available bandwidth by downloading files using multiple connections.
- Simultaneous download of multiple files and the ability to download simultaneously.
- All the functionality offered by a torrent client can be found in this small program.
- It provides meta link download.
- Remote procedure calls using the JSON-RPC and XML-RPC protocols are supported.
- Easily batch download files without waiting for the current download to complete.
Some side effects of aria2:
The multi-threading mechanism of aria2 may overload the target server. In comparison, wget is much more lightweight, and wget consumes 20% less resources than aria2. aria2 hasn't been tested on the same scale of usage as wget, so it's probably quite ready to be the default download manager.
Important Features of wget
- Certainly it is the most widely used and tested download manager.
- It's a simple program with fewer features, but has worked steadily for decades.
- It is available by default on all Linux distributions and does not require heavy installation.
- More lightweight compared to aria2.
Summarize
Although wget is not feature rich, it still works quite well, however, advanced users will definitely prefer aria2, as it caters for faster and concurrent downloads. It may take a long time for aria2 to replace wget as the default download manager, which is currently used in the installer scripts of almost all linux distributions.