Install JDownloader 2 Pre-Beta In Ubuntu

JDownloader is a free, open source download manager which makes it easy to download files from one-click hosting sites (supports more than 110 services) including using premium accounts, support for downloading from YouTube, Vimeo and other such websites, it allows parallel downloads, automatic CAPTCHAs, automatic archive extraction, automatically acquire a new IP (if your router is supported) and more.

JDownloader 2 pre-beta is available for download. The new version brings a reworked user interface, simplified settings, new options for some of the available plugins and more. The JDownloader Google+ page also says there are "many new features and improvements under the hood" but unfortunately, there's no official changelog for the latest JDownloader 2.

Since this is a pre-beta release, not everything works yet: for instance, JDownloader Unity integration doesn't work with this version for now!

JDownloader 2 pre beta settings

Install JDownloader 2 pre beta in Ubuntu

The steps below are for Ubuntu users, but they also work for other Linux distributions. Using the JDownloader PPA (first step) in Ubuntu will install a .desktop file so JDownloader shows up properly in Dash / menu along with some other tweaks. For other Linux distributions, you can create your own .desktop file for JDownloader and for the "Exec" filed, use "java -jar ~/.jdownloader/JDownloader.jar" (you can use a different JDownloader folder if you want).


1. Install JDownloader from it's PPA.

2. Download JDownloader 2 beta updater

3. Extract the downloaded JDownloader archive in your home folder, then navigate to the "Updater" directory, right click the "Updater.jar" file and select "Open with OpenJRE runtime" (instead of OpenJRE, it can be OpenJDK or Oracle Java, etc.). If this menu entry doesn't show up when right clicking the Updater.jar file, open a terminal and copy/paste the following command:

java -jar ~/Updater/Updater.jar

The JDownloader updater should now open and start downloading the latest JDownloader 2 beta. Don't start JDownloader yet.

If running the above command doesn't work, make sure you have OpenJRE/JDK or Oracle Java installed.

4. If you want to keep your old JDownloader settings, see THIS comment (and skip the first command below).

Now let's copy JDownloader 2 beta to ~/.jdownloader (that's where the JDownloader files are copied when installing JDownloader from the PPA):

rm -rf ~/.jdownloader
cp -r ~/Updater ~/.jdownloader

Now you can start JDownloader 2 pre beta from the menu / dash.

Revert to the stable JDownloader build

To go back to the stable JDownloader version in Ubuntu, remove the JDownloader 2 files using the following command:

rm -r ~/.jdownloader

And now simply start JDownloader from the menu / Dash. The JDownloader updater should start (if you've installed JDownloader from the PPA like we've recommended) and automatically download the latest stable JDownloader version.

via JDownloader @ Google+

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