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SKDownloader: Download Manager/Accelerator for Linux

by | Wednesday, 04th Nov 2009 | 3 Comments | Share

A good download accelerator for Linux with a GUI is really hard to come by.

Of all the ones I’ve gotten hold of, some were simple download managers with pause/resume options but did not offer any acceleration features, while others were completely command line based.

I recently came across this application SKDownloader, which is a free, although not Open Source, download manager as well as accelerator and is written in Java.

skdownloader

skdownloader

Like any other download accelerator, it has resume support and also gives a good amount of acceleration on downloads by using multiple simultaneous connections.

The features of SKDownloader are:

  • Multiple connections to files and download in parts speeding up transfer of files by using more bandwidth.
  • Resume support for downloads.
  • Redirection of download pages to download files.
  • Download over HTTP and FTP.
  • Proxy support.
  • Scheduling of downloads.
  • Firefox integration.
  • Automatic updates.

All these features make SKDownloader very handy software for Linux, specially for Ubuntu 9.10. The software is also available for Windows and needs the latest JRE.

For download and more information, visit the SKDownloader homepage.

Techie Buzz Verdict

Although not open source, this application has a smooth UI and runs without any snaps. Only, it gets a bit frozen at times with too many downloads. Otherwise, being the only download manager available currently with a GUI and this powerful a feature list, SKDownloader is cool software to have. It would have scored better had that big annoying ad not been there. I have never seen a software use more than 24% of the UI space for displaying an ad, that too an ad of its own website!

Techie Buzz Rating: 3.5/5 (Good)

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Author:

Chinmoy Kanjilal is a FOSS enthusiast and evangelist. He is passionate about Android. Security exploits turn him on and he loves to tinker with computer networks. He rants occasionally at Techarraz.com. You can connect with him on Twitter @ckandroid.

Chinmoy Kanjilal has written

The author of this post can be contacted at chinmoy@techie-buzz.com

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  1. Ujjwal Kanth on November 5th, 2009 at 2:18 am #

    I haven’t tested this download manager but there is a very good alternative to what other download managers provide …
    Flashgot (firefox addon) + Downloadthemall
    or
    Flashgot + Gwget….

  2. Dan Collyer on April 23rd, 2010 at 3:22 pm #

    The main reason I would not use Ubuntu in the past for all my premium rapidshare downloads, was I did not have enough knowledge of the software available. In fact I am still in the dark as to what is out there, so I decided to write a post on my blog UbuntuDan and get educated at the same time. I hope this helps someone.
    http://ubuntudan.blogspot.com/2010/04/ubuntu-rapi…

  3. Ming on July 13th, 2010 at 4:05 am #

    Seems SKDownloader guys have opted to remove the annoying ad. Looks cleaner now. Good one for linux….