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

[vishnu350]

@Samueru-sama Does AM already support appimageupdatetool flow for partial downloads? I see it in some of the install scripts, but it seems like it still does wget for downloads.

I thought zsync was the tool recommended for partial downloads? I tested probono's zsync2 to update some appimage and it worked well. Only needed to download 20%-30% of the file (maybe even less for small updates). Saves huge amounts of bandwidth.

@dacampsss Using aria2 may not be a good idea, as it will blast servers with multiple simultaneous partial download connections and may result in temporary IP bans for some users. Also, it still has to download the entire file.

[Samueru-sama]

@Samueru-sama Does AM already support appimageupdatetool flow for partial downloads? I see it in some of the install scripts, but it seems like it still does wget for downloads.

Yes it does, check lines 8 to 11 of every AM-updater script

if command -v appimageupdatetool >/dev/null 2>&1; then
	cd "/opt/$APP" || exit 1
	appimageupdatetool -Or ./"$APP" && chmod a+x ./"$APP" && echo "$version" > ./version && exit 0
fi

You have to install appimageupdatetool with AM, we actually have an enhanced fork even.

but it seems like it still does wget for downloads.

The script still performs a wget call to update the ./version file, but this uses no bandwidth basically.

[vishnu350]

I see, the wget command will just skip the download if the file is of equal size to the remote file.

Looks like appimageupdatetool is very similar to zsync2 in code, and does a pretty good job. Nice.

[ivan-hc]

Looks like appimageupdatetool is very similar to zsync2 in code, and does a pretty good job. Nice.

it's inside 👇 (here the Pkgforge fork)

If we preferred appimageupdatetool instead of just zsync it is because this tool, combined with other tools (in the fork) allows us to avoid restrictions of bandwidth limits for applications hosted on sites that impose them.