Axel Downloader

If you download a lot of files and are frustrated at the slow speeds you get, you may benefit from a download manager.  Whilst there are many around, few are as lightweight and as handy as Axel.  It runs in the Terminal (command line) and downloads from various sources to speed things up.  If you’re young and impressionable and a fan of such movies as Die Hard 4, you will love how it makes your terminal scroll like crazy, making you look like one of those strangely cool hacker types from the movies.

It is available in the apt repositories, so all you need to do is open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install axel

To use it, all you have to do is type (in the command line)

axel http://theurlhere

There are other flags too, many infact, but you don’t need to use them.  If you want to find out what they are, just type

man axel

…in the command line.