How To Install IDM In Ubuntu Linux 10.10

IDM or internet download manager is one of the best commercial applications that you can use to download files  many many times faster than the default built in utility that comes with the Microsoft windows OS versions. But let's say you're and addicted IDM user who switched to Ubuntu 10.10 maverick meerkat recently, then you'll most probably miss that great little app!.

A real screenshot of IDM in Linux!

And since it is a well known fact that MS Windows applications won't run in Linux.... well not quite true actually!, you can run some of them, even better than they run on Messy windows ;-)!. Although I'm not going to write a post about what that application is all about or how it does that but will give the basic understanding.

It is called the Wine project for linux. After installing it on Linux, it'll let you run most of the softwares that are built to run on MS windows on your newly installed linux distro!. So before installing IDM, you have to first set up wine on ubuntu 10.10. Now first...

1. Don't be afraid and start your Linux terminal first

2. Then issue the command below:

sudo apt-get install wine

3. Now when asked give your password and it'll automatically install all the necessary packages (Note- this may take a while since the it is a little over a hundred MB's.....)

After the installation finishes it'll add its own menus to the Gnome/KDE desktop task bar menus for ease of access. Now whenever you want to install a ".exe" file under Linux just right click on it and you'll see a newly added menu called “Open With Wine Windows Program Loader”.

Now just go to your IDM downloaded package (setup file), make sure to have a bit older version 5.18 (build8) or lower one, it may or may not be able to run the latest version....

1. Right click on the setup file and from the menu choose the above stated "Open With Wine Windows Program Loader" from the menu.

2. Now as in windows just follow the instructions and when in confusion just select all the default settings

3. Click finish at the end.

Now if everything went well you'll see that "beautiful" (hurray!!!) looking IDM icon on the Notification area on linux. Now functions such as automatic URL grabbing might not work but you can always copy and paste that URL manually into the IDM GUI or use the "Drop Target" feature.

That's how you install IDM in Ubuntu Linux 10.10