Let's find out.

Even if you don't want to use Galaxy as a client, you can still use it as a pure downloader. (i.e. download the installers, then install and play the games without Galaxy)

To save me having to type the reasons against it all over again...

You already have the option to tell Galaxy to not update installed games. Granted you have to do it manually for all installed games but you only need to do it once.

Personally I think it would be better and more future proof to ask GoG devs to add a feature in Galaxy to globally disable automatic game detection / update this way you won't have to manually do it rather than expect them to continue support the downloader especially when you have exactly the same feature available in Galaxy. (and even more when they apparently already have a lot of trouble supporting/improving Galaxy itself.)

As a Linux user, I got to used to getting by without any of those official tools which only run for Windows (and Mac?) at this point.

I also don't have the time to write my own tool or code review an existing one these days so the freshness of my backups have slipped somewhat.

I guess I'll have to take the time to review the best of breed from the community (unless a well documented API is available, I realistically won't have the time to troubleshoot it and write my own script) and update my backups in the hopefully not so distant future.

You're correct, however there's no need to ask GOG for this feature as they already plan to add it in the future and have mentioned this in the forums on several occasions. They settings dialogue in Galaxy has a mockup of a number of "future settings" that will eventually do something but which aren't currently wired up to any code so they don't function at the moment. It isn't clear which if any of the checkboxes in settings will be actually functional in Galaxy 1.2 or some future release however so all we can do is wait it out for now.

It is rather annoying that the global auto-update is not functional currently, and that we've got no idea why. It's possible that the true technical explanation might be as simple as "priorities, just haven't gotten to that yet", or it might be something too much to go into detail publicly about (micro-explanations). I think what further irritates many is that we go for long periods of time with no new major features nor communication and are left wondering what's going on. Hopefully after 1.2 they're able to roll out individual features more quickly and perhaps move to a regular update schedule or something.

Time will tell...

I use DownThemAll

It's very easy to use and downloads at full speed. ^_^

http://www.downthemall.net/

Yep...the DL is dead for a few months now.
There was talk once, that it would get fixed - but to no avail (that I'm aware of).

I tried reinstalling several times, etc.
But nothing helped, and all the games I tried to download via DL, went straight into "downloading limbo".
I refuse to use Galaxy, so I use FDM now - works like a charm.

Why? Officially, the downloader isn't supported at all any more. Anything that still works is a bonus.
Why would you have an expectation that the downloader would work? No justification for a refund at all.

I only use GOG Downloader.

And yes, shortly after galaxy came out, there were may link problems, but there's been a while now since I don't find any. And I hope it keeps that way, as I would only be interested in galaxy if it had an easy option to save and update the installers, but as a "true" client, it mostly focuses on installed games, aparently. Emphasis on easy.

Uh ... question, are you not having full access to the installers without a login requirement ?
I mean, those links should be here?

You shouldn't. GOG Downloader should be doing the check when the files are about to be downloaded.

Ah true! I didn't remember that.

Thanks by the clarification.

I too only use gog downloader. Very rarely have I had a problem.