How to install Axel – WGET Alternative

Introduction

Axel is an awesome command line download manager with many futures. it’s very light, smooth, and easy to install. Generally, you can see over 80% improvement when using Axel instead of WGET.
In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to install Axel on CentOS 6 and 7, Debian 7 and 8 and Ubuntu 14 and 16.

We are assuming that you have root permission, otherwise, you may start commands with “sudo”.

Installing Axel

If you are using Debian or Ubuntu you can easily install Axel by typing:

apt-get install axel

That’s it, you just installed Axel and it needed dependencies.

For installing Axel on CentOS 6 and 7 you can add Epel repository:

yum install epel-release
yum install axel

Alternatively, you can install it by RPM package:

rpm -ivh ftp://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/dag/redhat/el6/en/x86_64/dag/RPMS/axel-2.4-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm

Get to know Axel

Now let’s test our download rate with Axel, here is a test download link, type:

axel http://mirror.lax.hugeserver.com/100MB.test

If you want to know more about Axel futures you can type:

axel --help

Usage: axel [options] url1 [url2] [url...]

--max-speed=x		-s x	Specify maximum speed (bytes per second)
--num-connections=x	-n x	Specify maximum number of connections
--output=f		-o f	Specify local output file
--search[=x]		-S [x]	Search for mirrors and download from x servers
--header=x		-H x	Add header string
--user-agent=x		-U x	Set user agent
--no-proxy		-N	Just don't use any proxy server
--quiet			-q	Leave stdout alone
--verbose		-v	More status information
--alternate		-a	Alternate progress indicator
--help			-h	This information
--version		-V	Version information

You also have resume option in Axel, you can break the download process by hitting Ctrl+c and when you want to resume the download you just need to run the command again and it won’t start from the beginning.

Adding Alias to replace Wget (Optional)

If you get used to starting your download command with “wget”, using an alias is very handy for you. it means you can start a download with Axel using Wget command:

First of all, you should open your .bashrc file with your text editor:

nano .bashrc

Add the following command at the end of the file:

alias wget='axel'

Save and exit using Ctrl+O & Ctrl+X

Note: if you want to use this alias with other users you should do above things for each user.

At last, apply your .bashrc and you are good to go:

source ~./bashrc

Now you can use Wget command and download with Axel.
Also, you can find out more information about Axel on its official Github page!