There are many tools and software available in Ubuntu to download and upload files from and to remote servers. Curl is one of those tools and works with one of these supported protocols: FTP, HTTP, IMAP, LDAP, POP3, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, TELNET, and TFTP to transfer data to and from remote servers. If you’re a student or new user looking for a Linux system to start learning on, the easiest place to start is Ubuntu Linux OS. It’s a great Linux operating system for beginners and folks looking for easier Linux distribution to use. Ubuntu is an open-source Linux operating system that runs on desktops, laptops, servers, and other devices.

Installing Curl on Ubuntu

Curl packages are included in Ubuntu default repositories and installing is very simple. To install, simply run the commands below. After installing, you can check to see if it’s installed and ready by typing the commands below and pressing enter. It should output a similar line as shown below: That’s all to it! Curl is now ready to be used on Ubuntu.

Use Curl

As we mentioned above, Curl comes with many options. To see all available options to use the Curl, type this command: curl –help In its simplest form, you can use Curl to print out a source code or a website by running the commands below: One of the many usages of Curl is to download files. When you use Curl with the -o or –output option, you can download a file and write it into a name you specify. The -o, –output Write to file instead of stdout Example: When you use  Curl with an uppercase O option, you can download and save the file, preserving its original name. The -O, –remote-name Write output to a file named as the remote file Example: If you want to look up a website header, you can use Curl with an -I option. Example: That command above will print out the BBC website header; Curl provides many more functions. If you want to see all the options, run the command below: curl –help These are just some of the functions available: That’s it! Conclusion: This post showed you how to install and use Curl on Ubuntu 18.04 | 16.04. If you find any error above, please use the comment form below to report it.