CLI for Noobies: A Primer on the Linux Command Line

Chapter 62. The Word on Wget

OK, you laggardly louts come late to the Linux party, listen up! We’re talking about GNU Wget: the behind-the-scenes, under-the-hood, don’t-need-watching, network utility that speaks HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP with equal fluency.

Wget makes it easy to download a personal copy of a website from the Internet to peruse offline at your leisure, or retrieve the complete contents of a distribution directory on a remote FTP site.

The basic format for the wget command is as follows:

wget -OPTIONS PROTOCOL://URL

Let’s save the OPTIONS for later, and begin by looking at the PROTOCOL://URL combination. As noted above, wget groks HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP.

Indicate how you want to talk to the remote site by specifying one of: http, https, or ...