Best Download Manager for Linux

For years I have searched for best download manager on linux. I think I have found it. It has multithreading feature and many more. Yes, I am talking about aria2. Let’s setup aria2 and integrate it with linux. We are going to use podman and aria2 in container. It takes very little resources, 650 KB memory when idle. Let’s set it up.

We need podman for to run our container.

• Install podman according to your distro

  sudo apt install podman # debian/ubuntu/linux mint
  sudo dnf install podman # fedora
  sudo pacman -S podman # arch/manjaro
  

• Let’s pull the container

  podman pull docker.io/p3terx/aria2-pro:latest
  

• Setup podman container

  mkdir -p ~/Downloads/aria2
  mkdir -p ~/.config/containers/systemd
  mkdir -p ~/.config/aria2
  nano ~/.config/containers/systemd/aria2-pro.container
  

  copy paste the following in aria2-pro.container

[Unit]
Description=Podman aria2-pro.service
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Restart=on-failure
TimeoutStartSec=900

[Container]
ContainerName=aria2-pro
Environment=RPC_SECRET=123456 RPC_PORT=6800 LISTEN_PORT=6888
Image=docker.io/p3terx/aria2-pro:latest
AutoUpdate=registry
PublishPort=6800:6800
PublishPort=6888:6888
PublishPort=6888:6888/udp
Volume=%h/.config/aria2:/config:Z
Volume=%h/Downloads/aria2:/downloads:Z

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

• Let’s run the container using systemd.

  systemctl --user daemon-reload
  systemctl --user start aria2-pro.service
  

• Install browser extension. We are going to use Aria2 Integration Extension by zluo01
  Firefox: Aria2 Integration Extension for Firefox based browsers
  Chrome: Aria2 Integration Extension for Chromium based browsers

• Open the config menu of the extension, Set the Token field with the RPC_SECRET we have provided in the container config. Which is 123456.
  That’s about it. The best download manager on linux is ready.