Ade Malsasa Akbar contact
Senior author, Open Source enthusiast.
Friday, February 9, 2018 at 16:23


Persepolis is a very good replacement to Internet Download Manager (IDM) for GNU/Linux. Persepolis Download manager (PDM) is free software, with high-speed downloading, with nice user interface similar to IDM, and integration to web browser. Persepolis supports scheduling and bulk downloading as well. This guide is a short tutorial covering how to install Persepolis, downloading files and videos with it, and finally bulk downloading, basically things everyone needs the most out of a download manager. So, give it a try and be happy!

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How It Looks Like?


Here's PDM downloading on Kubuntu. Can you find that it is familiar to you?

Persepolis with main window (rear) and progress bar window (front)

What Is PDM?


PDM is a program that makes use of another program. To give you big picture: when you download, actually you are using aria2 program, but with the PDM window. The download manager is actually aria2 but runs in command line. Persepolis made aria2 user-friendly for you, with browser integration and scheduling, and you don't use Terminal for it.

Persepolis logo

 

1. Install PDM

 

Persepolis is available for GNU/Linux, Windows, and macOS. You can easily install it on Ubuntu, too.

  • Ubuntu:
Run this single command line:
sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:persepolis/ppa && sudo apt update && sudo apt install --yes persepolis

  • Windows:
Download EXE here.

  • macOS:
Download DMG here.


1. Integrating


You can connect your browser to PDM so every file will be downloaded using PDM.

  • For Firefox 57+:
Install Persepolis Integrator addon.

  • For Chromium/Chrome:
Install Persepolis Integrator extension.

After installing the integrator, you should have a red circle button of Persepolis on your browser:

Enable and disable Persepolis easily by click


2. Downloading


For example, go to https://archive.org/download/Debian_7.4.0 where you can see many large .iso files in GB. Right-click on debian-7.4.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso (3GB) > Download with Persepolis > Persepolis window appears > press Start button.

Press download > determine save location > Persepolis appears


3. Downloading Videos


Install first 1-Click addon, then you can download videos easily (like most of you did with IDM) from YouTube in Persepolis.

1-Click gives you "Download" button in YouTube


4. Change Split Number


Go to menu Edit > Preferences > Download Options > Number of connections > change the number to anything under 16. Yes, by default Persepolis uses max. connection 16.

See "Number of connections" box


5. Bulk Download


You can supply Persepolis a TXT file containing many URL addresses and it will automatically download them for you. This way, you don't have to insert nor clicking one by one anymore.

Note: this bulk download is very useful when you need to download many Ubuntu's .deb packages manually for offline installation.

Left: TXT with many links; right: Persepolis importing the links


Get Involved!


Are you a programer? Are you interested in helping Persepolis development? You can have Persepolis source code at GitHub https://github.com/persepolisdm and help improve Persepolis there. Persepolis is free software licensed under GNU GPLv3 or later license. Big thanks to AliReza and the whole developers!

Development page of Persepolis at GitHub




This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.