The most powerful download tool under Ubuntu - aria2

The most powerful download tool under Ubuntu - aria2

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aria2 is a new command-line download tool I learned today. Although I haven't studied it thoroughly, it is definitely better than wget.

aria2 is a good high-speed download tool for Linux . Since it has a segmented download engine, it supports downloading the same file from multiple addresses or multiple connections from one address. This naturally greatly speeds up the download speed of the file. aria2 also has a resume function, which allows you to resume interrupted file downloads at any time. In addition to supporting general http(s) and ftp protocols, aria2 also supports BitTorrent protocol. This means, you can also use aria2 to download torrent files.

Install aria2

aria2 is now included in many Linux distributions, so you can install it directly from your system. For example, in Debian/Ubuntu, you can execute the following command in the terminal to install aria2:

sudo apt-get install aria2

How to use aria2

aria2 is a command line program, very easy to use.

• Generally use aria2 to download files, just add the address after the command. For example, we download ubuntu such as:

  aria2c http://www.mirror.tw/pub/ubuntu/releases/jaunty/ubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso
  

• Partial download Using the part download function of aria2 can speed up the download speed of files, which is especially useful for downloading large files. In order to use the multipart download function of aria2, you need to specify the s option in the command. like:

  aria2c -s 2 http://www.mirror.tw/pub/ubuntu/releases/jaunty/ubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso
  

  This will use 2 connections to download the file. The parameter value behind s is between 1~5, you can choose according to the actual situation.

• Resume uploading from breakpoints Use the c option in the command to resume file transfers from breakpoints. like:

  aria2c -c http://www.mirror.tw/pub/ubuntu/releases/jaunty/ubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso
  

• Downloading torrent files You can also use aria2 to download BitTorrent files. like:

  aria2c -o gutsy.torrent http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/gutsy-desktop-i386.iso.torrent
  

For more usage of aria2, you can refer to man aria2c.