if its an ISO I use qbittorrent. This way I can support the ISO by sharing it with others. I do this with several Linux Distros that even though I may not use I do donate bandwidth to.
āUglyā is subjective, so Iām not sure if I can help much there
functionality Iāve had luck with Uget, Persepolis, both of which have Firefox extensions.
I guess it depends on what exactly you need them to do. Iāveh ad a very good internet connection for osmetime now, and might be a little spoiled, But 9 tiemso ut of 10 I donāt notice any speed difference between any multi-thread download program, and my browsers built in download program, except on sites that specifically throttle downloads. that of course is my personal experience only.
When it comes to downloading big bunches of files, Iāve found UGetās batch downloader to be fairly good, but also the Firefox extension downthemall. Depending on the situation.
Persepolis is essentially a nice GUI for Aria 2, but it has a good deal of functionality. Iāve never had any real problems with it.
The above, again, is only my limited personal experience, but I hope it helps, if even a little.
Edit because I didnāt include links:
Persepolis:
Uget:
Maybe you are looking for a Torrent solution. There are many different Torrent clients/UI.
Torrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol and has some abilities:
- It allows multiple connections per download file.
- Download is quick thanks to a decentralized distrubution network when selected multiple servers are located near your location.
- Prevent broken total downloadsfile if your internet connection drops randomly, reconnects frequently and is slow.
- Ability to have a checksum by default. (I guess, If a part of the download file is corrupted, this part will be downloaded again)
- It allows managing several different download files (Depending on UI).
Hi. I have no personal experience on the topic, just suggesting to look up some apps from the Archwiki list:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_of_applications#Download_managers
I think it was released 2020, not 2000
Yes, typo.
Nice, itās the only aria2 GUI application that is available on official arch package, when I search with keyword āaria2ā.
I am also confused about best download manager for linux. AND STILL IS!!! I was about to ask the same question as you.
I donāt particularly care about how my download manager look, they can be as ugly as possible as long as they perform well.
UGet
I have bad experience with it. Unlike IDM, they donāt know if download is corrupted and just pretend itās done, sometimes they donāt even catch file from a link correctly, like instead of downloading video, it will download html file.
Persepolis
I tried that before, but I donāt remember why I donāt like it, but I think there was some problem.
Jdownloader
I also donāt remember why I donāt use this regularly, it seems like competent download manager. I just reinstalled it. I remember now!! Every launch it likes to randomly update itself and itās so slow. And I canāt use the program before it finishes, not very reliable.
I only use them to download files from mega.nz, which is special feature they have, I donāt think any other download manager do this.
now enter:
Xtreme Download Manager 7
Xtreme download manager (XDM, xdman) is almost like IDM. It doesnāt pretend that corrupted file is done (in fact it never corrupt any downloads), it has video catcher (not just youtube), itās fast, it can catch link well, it can refresh link when they changed, and so on.
If you use this, I recommend to disable tray feature, they kinda buggy and XDM works just fine without it. Then disable DOWNLOAD NOW popup, they are just annoying, unlike IDM where they float above the video, this one float above the screen, you can just use the extension icon in the browser.
So far, this is the MOST RELIABLE download manager Iāve ever use on linux. Itās almost perfect. Almost.
Unfortunately, because of the manifest thing on chrome, addon for chromium based browser no longer works and development is already abandoned. So I can only use it on firefox. Itās perfect if you use firefox.
But wait!! there is also
Xtreme Download Manager 8 Beta
This is basically XDM, but with qt, well almost XDM. Good thing is that this one has extensions that also works on chromium based browser, yay!!
Only problem is, it sometimes, while can catch link properly, it doesnāt catch the name properly. So it will just be gibberish. However, this is very rare, the only case itās happening is in my favourite anime piracy site.
Flareget
It crashed all the time.
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Nice write up on your experience with these download managers but you should remove the link to that piracy site if you have read the sites rules you will see this is not allowed. https://forum.endeavouros.com/faq#stealing
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AUR
Extensions: https://github.com/mhogomchungu/media-downloader/wiki/Extensions
This is an interesting option as it makes use of the popular foss CLI-based tools as plugin.
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Found another download manager that is built with Golang and Flutter. Supports all platforms.
17.5K GH stars, looks quite popular among users.
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Personally I canāt get past yt-dlp, wget and aria2c.
They work, why complicate matters?
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In Linux there doesnāt (to me) seem to be much need for download managers. Downloads typically just work out of the box 
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The thing is that browsers will sometimes fail a download after 90% of the download is complete, then when you click retry, they have the audacity to start over from 0%! 
Download managers mitigate or completely avoid this issue.
Not a problem Iāve had for yearsā¦but I do have highspeed/high-capacity.
Thatās what I thought.
Yeah, once a download will take minutes to download in a web browser, the possibility of it failing increases based on the website, your internet connection, VPN, etc.
It can depend on the website, for exampleā¦ Annieās Archive has some painfully slow sources - which is what prompted me to put aria2c in the mix, if the browser doesnāt get it, then I copy the URL and do it in the terminal.
I donāt need bloat hanging around in the background ready to intercept all downloads, as I canāt remember it happening more than one time (last month).
I use wget , it works for most sites
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AUR (Unofficial)