I've written an "Ode to elinks" on my #Gemini capsule before, and I recently stumbled upon this great article that goes into more details and reasons why #elinks is one of the best text web browsers out there. Excellent for when you want to access information from a #RaspberryPi Zero or other low-powered device.

Dion Moult https://thinkmoult.com/using-elinks-browse-web.html

https://tobykurien.com/images/microblog/post-1768403680-0.png

OK, so this is an interesting project:

A modern #Chromium based web #browser in a #terminal. Having used #Lynx way back in the day and still use #elinks and #w3m on occasion, I'm curious. At the same time, it uses Chromium.

https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/02/brow6el_browser_terminal/

#tech #news #web

Okay...how do other folks decide between different terminal-based web browsers?

Lynx is the one that gets mentioned the most on fedi. It also has by far the highest popcon on Debian.

It seems Lynx is part of the same family tree as links, links2, and elinks. Trying all of them, I really don't see much difference between Lynx and Links: the only differences I notice are that they use different default colors for text, and links has a smaller file size.

Links2 can run in either graphical or terminal mode. I can't use the graphical mode due to a lack of dark mode. The terminal version of link2 seems identical to links: is there even a difference?

Elinks, when used as a web browser, seems nearly identical to the other three, aside from a different color scheme. Its website claims it supports CSS and JS, but I haven't seen those actually make a difference on a real website. Elinks can also work as a gemini and gopher browser, which is a nice perk.

Outside of the links/lynx/elinks family, Debian has a few more terminal browsers.

Edbrowse can let you load the text of a website and then edit it? It also works with geminispace.

Netrik does not appear to work with https: it works fine with plain http.

w3m, with the image extension, can display images inline in the terminal, which looks weird. Without the image extension, I don't notice much difference between w3m any the links family, aside from again a different color scheme.

Overall, I don't see what makes Lynx stand out from all the other terminal browsers. Yet both fedi and Debian users seem to strongly prefer it. What criteria are other fedicreatures using to compare terminal web browsers?


#WebBrowsers #TerminalBrowsers #Lynx #Links #Links2 #Elinks #Netrik #Edbrowse #W3m #geminiprotocol #gopher

My objective first was to be faster so I learned to develop with only my keyboard not to abandon the mouse but to only use it when it's actually faster. But now I realised I don't always need a graphical interface. I made a setup with my laptop from the 00's with #archlinux BTW using #nvim with the lazy setup. I chose #elinks for browser and #tmux to make all of it work on one terminal. I didn't know I would like that that much. It's really distraction free. Can I use an AI to assist me during coding? Probably. Not the main purpose tho. Sure I can't code a UI of any sort and I'm a bit limited in testing a back end since I can't use #postman, I have to go raw #curl. For now I will work on my language on it. It's 100% CLI so it's perfect. I don't know what it is but it feels soooooo good to spend some time coding with the simplest setup.

#ELinks with `-dump-color-mode 2 -colors 1` has colors and numbered links

#links2 with `-html-numbered-links 1` is monochrome, but has numbered links

#Lynx too, but its output looks more messy to me.

#w3m doesn't highlight links and doesn't output link URLs at all.

#Pandoc can't handle table layouts, which unfortunately are still very common in commercial emails.

#HTML2Text (the C++ tool, https://gitlab.com/grobian/html2text) does a decent job and supports bold & underline in `less` and NeoMutt's pager.

google() {
q=$(echo -n $@ | python3 -c "import urllib.parse,sys;print(urllib.parse.quote(sys.stdin.read()))")
if which elinks &>/dev/null; then
elinks "http://www.google.com/search?hl=de&q=${q}"
else
open "http://www.google.com/search?hl=de&q=${q}"
fi
}

(open for non-macOS: https://github.com/malte70/scripts/blob/master/open)

#linux #macos #shell #zsh #elinks #google

Ultimo ritual River 2025 - Los Piojos (2025)
El final del reencuentro de Los Piojos con su público está cada vez más cerca. Se presentarán en el Estadio Mâs Monumental donde se los vio brillar tantas veces, con un show que promete ser una despedida a la altura de una trayectoria que marcó a generaciones enteras.
ed2k://%7Cfile%7CLos.Piojos.Ultimo.Ritual.River.2025.Full.%5BMega%5D.(Emule.via.clan-sudamerica.net).mkv%7C4361092240%7C296E8D7B34857B89A9C2347C11A8A6C9%7Ch=JZHGROUKMZIG24UJTDTCTXE6I6VW2EBQ%7C/
visto por el clan-sudamerica
#rock #rockargentino #lospiojos #elinks #clansudamerica

@spencersb I feel you.

I once applied for a school for a role which involved settling a n IT curriculum (mwahahaha) and overseeing the schools infrastructure.

I was reading the raw site from #elinks and noticed the school had adverts at the bottom for illegal downloads; gambling; and goodness knows whatever nasty SEO afflictions.

I tracked it down to the plugin, which was like a webring for SEO (*insert joke*).

Sure I got the interview but the role went to somebody 'with more experience'.

@luceos ah, #Flarum is really nice! My only gripe is that it doesn't work without JS (interaction, not just reading) since I browse the web mostly using elinks. This is a similar issue I have with #Discourse.

(interestingly I cannot post on #PHPBB on #elinks either, haven't investigated why. Vanilla without JS strangely takes 10x longer for the post request).

You're right storage is cheap. Just checked, Flarum is 65MB (16MB Flarum itself, the rest as deps).

you know what, i gave elinks a try and i actually like the UI better than lynx! gonna try using it instead and see how it goes.

#cli #CommandLine #tui #elinks #lynx #terminal

Sure, #elinks isn't built for the modern web, but it serves a purpose. I use #aerc for email, #senpai for irc, #iamb for matrix chat, #slrn for newsgroups and message boards, #ncspot for Spotify, #mpg123 for local media or online radio, and #rbw for my bitwarden client. I really don't need much else. It's not a machine I rely on for serious tasks, but it's covered most of my daily needs. Best of all, without a GUI, it's blazing fast!

I've been enjoying some time on #gopher and #gemini as well.

use #elinks -dump to bypass paywall #CLI

#fvwm #smol #terminal #unix

I wonder whether I should do a write-up on how I use #linux/#unix the way I do?

I have spent all of my life living out of the terminal as much as possible, which has meant using certain programs to establish some kind of "workflow". I equally dislike how much I might have to use the browser. Although I use #telescope-browser with #gemini as much as I can!

I used to use #elinks (https://xteddy.org/elinks/) -- I believe this has been resurrected (https://github.com/rkd77/elinks). I'm also aware #dillo has also been revived.

There's so many of these types of articles though, and it can come across as a cliche -- which I would not want. But equally, I think there's merit in appreciating how other people use their computer to do $STUFF.

So... I'm not sure. If you think this might be interesting, let me know. I'll do it. Possibly, #gemini first, to prove a point? ;) ;)

@gruntled I've used modified search engine descriptions in more than one browser (at least SeaMonkey and Elinks) to add a lot of "-site:..." terms to the search expression.

Sadly, in my experience, this might make Google show the "you're a bot" page, requiring javascript and a Captcha, and so I don't use that so often. But it is a good idea indeed.

#SeaMonkey #Elinks #WebSearch

select the best

(for subjective values of "best")

explicit invitation to explain your reasoning in the replies

also, feel free to recommend other terminal-based web browsers if your favorite isn't listed

#CLI #TUI #browser #elinks #links2 #lynx #w3m #web

@RL_Dane @pkw @sotolf @mirabilos
Also worth mentioning:
- #chawan (https://sr.ht/~bptato/chawan/)
- #carbonyl (https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl)
- #elinks (http://elinks.or.cz/)

@mav "the only"?

#SeaMonkey, #PaleMoon, #Lynx, Links, #Elinks, Emacs-w3m, to name a few.

Dear @nixCraft,

Your website isn't accessible without JS. 😭

#NoJS #AccessibleWeb #TextBrowser #Lynx #Links #eLinks #w3m

@mos_8502 I also made an #elinks container image.

https://quay.io/repository/vwbusguy/elinks

@Brad_Rosenheim @davidho my current #mutt setup includes piping html to #elinks to render it into text. Most of the HTML emails I get are spam anyways, and I can delete them without even opening them based on from or subject.