Use aria2 instead of wget to speed up downloads

[dacampsss]

For some reason, for example, to download Kdenlive from their servers right now is a real challenge here where I live. I think parallel downloading using aria2 would ofc increase this process.

Thanks in advance!

[ivan-hc]

I have never used this tool, but I'd like to test it before studying a way to implement it.

I already have an idea on how to implement this... but in first I'd like to know more about.

I use Debian. Please provide me some examples.

[dacampsss]

Unfortunately I've found some difficulties in encountering good benchmarks comparing wget to aria2, directly. However, I did some test myself download the latest Ubuntu 24.04 netbook from a mirror and those were the results, with a 300Mbit speed fiber connection:

With wget (11s) (~7mbps):

$ wget https://mirror.ufam.edu.br/releases/noble/ubuntu-24.04.2-netboot-amd64.tar.gz
--2025-04-24 22:38:53--  https://mirror.ufam.edu.br/releases/noble/ubuntu-24.04.2-netboot-amd64.tar.gz
Resolvendo mirror.ufam.edu.br (mirror.ufam.edu.br)... 2001:12f0:d1c::17, 200.129.163.17
Conectando-se a mirror.ufam.edu.br (mirror.ufam.edu.br)|2001:12f0:d1c::17|:443... conectado.
A requisição HTTP foi enviada, aguardando resposta... 200 OK
Tamanho: 86350246 (82M) [application/x-gzip]
Salvando em: “ubuntu-24.04.2-netboot-amd64.tar.gz”

ubuntu-24.04.2-netboot-amd6 100%[=========================================>]  82,35M  9,04MB/s    em 11s     

2025-04-24 22:39:07 (7,46 MB/s) - “ubuntu-24.04.2-netboot-amd64.tar.gz” salvo [86350246/86350246]

With aria2c (3s) (~29mbps):

$ aria2c https://mirror.ufam.edu.br/releases/noble/ubuntu-24.04.2-netboot-amd64.tar.gz

04/24 22:39:55 [NOTICE] Downloading 1 item(s)

04/24 22:39:55 [NOTICE] Arquivo já existe. Renomeado para /home/daxxx/ubuntu-24.04.2-netboot-amd64.tar.1.gz.
[#a2570a 77MiB/82MiB(94%) CN:1 DL:29MiB]                                                                     
04/24 22:39:58 [NOTICE] Download completo: /home/daxxx/ubuntu-24.04.2-netboot-amd64.tar.1.gz

Resultados do Download:
gid   |stat|avg speed  |path/URI
======+====+===========+=======================================================
a2570a|OK  |    29MiB/s|/home/daxxx/ubuntu-24.04.2-netboot-amd64.tar.1.gz

Legenda de estados:
(OK):download completo.

You can find a comparison between aria2 and curl too in this link. There is a script that theoretically can "translate" wget commands to proper aria2c ones here.

Ps.: I was wrong and streamrip have parallel downloading by default but idk if they use aria2 exactly.

[dacampsss]

Having an option to use as argument like "--max-conections {integer}" would be good too, given that not every server would allow a high number of parallel connections, while other servers would benefit from a big number of connections, on the other side. Now that I see it's all Shellscript, I may try implementing it later (and PR if I do so).

[Samueru-sama]

@dacampsss While I agree that the download speed could be improved, the real issue here is that kdenlive does not support AppImageUpdate

With that method updates only take a franction and you don't download the entire appimage over and over, we actually have a fork of appimageupdatetool where you can see a simple benchmark of me updating CPU-X and using only 2.65 MIB