The base syntax for downloading a file is very simple: $ wget ĭownload progress shown by the curl command Wget makes file downloads painless and easy. Regardless of which one you decide to use, you’ll be able to follow along on your own system with our example commands below. As you can tell, they each have their advantages. But curl supports far more protocols outside of FTP and HTTP, and also supports uploading data. Wget may have a hair of an advantage because it’s a little more straight forward and simple to use. So, which tool is better for the job? Each tool is usually installed by default on any Linux distribution, so it mostly boils down to user preference. They are both used for different (albeit similar) things.īut we’re here to learn about downloading a file from the command line. But apart from this overlap in functionality, the commands are totally different. The confusion stems from both tools being capable of downloading files from the command line.
Sometimes people get confused over the differences between wget and curl, but actually, it’s pretty simple.