SHA-256 hashes
With the SHA-256 hashes you can check the integrity of the downloads. This ensures that you have downloaded an unmodified zip archive (as released by the developers).
Here are two ways to test the downloaded archives and their checksums, as an example.
7-Zip
With 7-Zip you can display the SHA-256 hash. Unfortunately you have to compare it manually.
7-Zip is open source. If you don't want to install it, you can also use the Portable-Version.
Available for Windows, MacOSX and various Linux distributions.
QuickHash
With QuickHash you can copy the hash value from the website and compare it directly with the downloaded archive. The tool tells you whether the hash value matches or not.
QuickHash is open source and does not need to be installed.
Available for Windows, MacOSX and Linux.