Is there any other package other than elinks so that I browse internet inside the terminal using terminal as a browser. I feel elinks is a bit difficult to operate.
Asked
Active
Viewed 7.3k times
45
-
Some times we may be not sure whether the web site from a server is being rendered or not(ISP modem may have to be reset). So we can connect to that server via ssh and check browsing in the terminal and may help to resolve some issues – user3215 Jan 02 '11 at 06:16
-
How would you define 'practical'? It will be easier to give a good answer if you elaborate on what your practical needs are when it comes to console web browsers. – N.N. Sep 25 '11 at 14:47
-
@N.N Does this help you? ( also I want something that is easy to use.) – Alvar Sep 25 '11 at 15:08
-
Not packages, but other commands that can be used to open webpages/links in terminal http://askubuntu.com/questions/8252/how-to-launch-default-web-browser-from-the-terminal – Suhaib Mar 30 '13 at 19:01
6 Answers
57
There are three families of text web browsers.
lynx
is the classic text mode web browser. It's slightly older than the web. Its interface is nothing to write home about. It has the advantage of being available on many exotic platforms.
links is a more recent implementation of the same concept. There's an alternate development tree, elinks, for which there is an experimental patch for Javascript support, but this is not enabled in the Ubuntu package.
w3m has an interface with a different (and I think much more nicer) feel. It's better than the others (though links has been improving lately) at rendering web sites with complex formatting, not necessarily the way the designer intended it, but in a readable way. It can display images. There's an Emacs interface, w3m-el.
My recommendation is to use w3m now but keep an eye on (e)links's evolutions.
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
- 60,593
-
I was wondering if I could get webpages in same format as we'll get on the graphical browsers. lynx and w3m are ok. – user3215 Dec 03 '10 at 09:30
-
@sajjadG Why did you make that edit? Every single modification you made made the post worse. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Dec 10 '13 at 00:02
-
@Gilles I taught my edit make the post easier to read.
w3m-el Install w3m-elis not good IMO andw3m-el (Install w3m-el)is better. and is this sentence OK?Its interface is nothing do write home about.. If you think they are unnecessary then alright. Thanks god we have history in stack. – sajjadG Dec 11 '13 at 05:50 -
@sajjadG The format
[NAME](http://packages.ubuntu.com/NAME) [](http://apt.ubuntu.com/p/NAME)is one that we standardize on on the site, see How to post links that integrate with the Software Center?. I just noticed the typo in “nothing to write home about”. This is a common English idiom, if you're not familiar with it please look it up instead of replacing it by clumsy English. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Dec 11 '13 at 09:40
7
-
Nice tool and a bit easy to use but asking for the confirmation(y/n/always/never) many time to render a page. – user3215 Dec 03 '10 at 09:32
-
2you can use the '--accept_all_cookies' option to avoid this.
lynx --accept_all_cookies google.com
– aneeshep Dec 03 '10 at 09:39
5
Elinks is IMHO best to use on a daily basis.
Amongst other features it supports
- tabs
- bookmarks
- javascript
- tables
- transparency
- and you can easily "pipe" a page to any other program like Firefox with vimperator, or scripts if you'd like.
Gmail is still very much workable and as any other page, very fast under Elinks.
MJB
- 1,804
-
-
I've never used Links2, but from what I understand [http://pupnik.de/links2.html] it's not a console browser. It seems to be much like Links, but able to display graphics. Any console-based browser isn't capable of doing this so Elinks/W3M/Lynx would use less bandwidth. – MJB Sep 26 '11 at 16:09
-
links is a console browser that is able to show a GUI if the user WANTS to. – Alvar Sep 28 '11 at 15:26
