uGet download Manager updates to 1.8.0

One of the things that makes Linux so powerful is the terminal, and the level of control over the operating system it provides, I like to use terminal for most of the activities, from searching for files to finding out essential information about the system or for that matter downloading using wget or alex. However, using terminal is difficult for Linux newbies, and thus we have many graphical utilities/frontends to make life simpler, there are bunch of graphical download manager on GNU/Linux platform like d4x, kget, uget etc.

uGet is a cross-platform graphical Download Manager available for both GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows platform. Recently, uGet updated to 1.8 stable version, I had tried uGet couple of months back, I wasn't impressed much back then, I decided to give uGet another try and test the new updated version.

To install uGet on Ubuntu 11.04 based system, issue the following command in the terminal window to add stable PPA, and then install uGet onto the system.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:plushuang-tw/uget-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install uget
Once you are done with installing repository and subsequently uGet download manager you can launch uGet from ( Applications -> Internet -> uGet ).


uGet as such has clean interface, however, the dialog boxes, the menus are cluttered with too many options, which can potentially overwhelm a Linux newbie, these could very well be hidden or be put under Advanced tab to make user interface much more user/newbie friendly.uGet has many interesting features, in addition to allowing you to download files, which I would discuss here.

One of the features I liked in uGet was support for batch download, you could specify wild card character and specify range thus allowing you to download number of files from the server, this could be useful while trying to download multiple sequenced files from the server.

Multiple batch downloads in uGet

The other feature I liked in uGet was allowing one to download links saved in clipboad, you could select link to be downloaded in browser, copy it and click on uGet icon on panel and chose "New from Clipboard" to download link. However, I found rather irritating that dialog popped up in uGet as soon as you chose to download file from clipboard, asking you to confirm the link, this does away the novelty of quick download of file from clipboard, Ideally, it should download valid link automatically from clipboard if someone choses the option.



uGet supports adding categories, downloads belonging to particular category share default attributes like download folder, proxy, etc, category further allows one to control number of parallel downloads from a category as well as classify ongoing/running/finished downloads.


Further, one interesting and useful feature is to be able to restrict upload and download speed of download, upload speed should be useful for torrents, this allows you to control bandwidth used and thus could be useful if your Internet service provider meters the internet connection.

However, one thing I wasn't able to get to work was using multiple threads in a single download to increase the download speed, for some reason option for multiple connection to server was greyed out. Without support for threaded download, uGet will not be useful much.

uGet downloading!

There are other simple neat features in uGet,though they are lost in the interface of uGet.

uGet as of version 1.8.0 supports downloading of Bittorrent and Metalinks, in addition to scheduler. uGet as I understand has not implemented Bittorrent protocol in the application but is only graphical front end for aria2.

A more detailed release log ( for 1.8.0) as obtained from uGet homepage is :

What’s new since 1.6:
1. support for Torrent and Metalink file (with aria2 plug-in).
2. support for application indicator.
3. It can do speed limit control per download.
4. It can sort downloads by column in “All” category.
5. add scheduler.
6. add new plug-in that support aria2 version >= 1.10.
7. add new timestamp columns – “Added On” and “Completed On”.
8. add configure option “–with-gtk3″ to enable GTK+3 support.
9. add Belarusian translation file (Mihas Varantsou)
10. move web site from http://urlget.sourceforge.net/ to http://uget.visuex.com/
Overall, I have mixed feeling regarding uGet, it has progressed but not much, Batch downloads is an interesting feature along with having support for adding multiple categories, however, the interface is still cluttered, I couldn't get multi-threadeded download to work, further, torrent protocol is not implemented as part of uGet, it uses external aria2 application to do so, which makes uGet only a front end, additionally, I disliked the dialog popping up when one choses option to download link from Clipboard, uGet needs to improve further to force me to migrate from console based download managers to uGet.


Article Written by : Ambuj Varshney (blogambuj@gmail.com)
For Linux on Desktop Blog , http://linuxondesktop.blogspot.com
(C) 2011 , Ambuj Varshney

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