A download manager is a type of software that manages the downloading of files from the Internet. The best download managers help make the process easier and quicker.
If you often download multiple files, particularly large files such as ISOs and backups, a download manager can help streamline the process. Downloading files – such as music, video, programs, drivers, and more through a browser – is never the fastest. Besides maximising your bandwidth, a download manager also offers the ability to resume a download after a connection fails.
Motrix is billed as a full-featured download manager. It’s written mostly in JavaScript and offers cross-platform support.
Installation
Motrix was tested using Ubuntu 23.10. There are a number of ways to install Motrix in Ubuntu.
The project provides .deb packages for x64 as well as ARM architectures. As we’re using a Linux machine with a 13th generation Intel processor (i7-1360P), we download the x64 .deb package and install it with dpkg in the usual way. It installs with no issues.
There’s also a Snap package available. A snap is an application containerised with all its dependencies.
If you’re not running Ubuntu, there’s a package for Fedora, as well as a package in the Arch User Repository for Arch and Arch-based distros.
For other distros, there’s both an AppImage and a Flatpak available.
AppImage is a universal software format for distributing portable software on Linux without needing superuser permissions to install the application. AppImage doesn’t really install software. It’s a compressed image with all the dependencies and libraries needed to run the desired software. To run the software, you download the AppImage file, make it executable, and run the file.
For anyone new to Linux, Flatpak is an open source containerized package format similar to Snap. While Snap relies on a central repository for software, Flatpak can be installed from different sources. The primary source is Flathub.
Next page: Page 2 – In Operation and Summary
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Installation
Page 2 – In Operation and Summary