Linus Tech Tips tries the Links web browser on a dialup connection:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-qyNFjZaQs&t=389s

I learned about this thanks to @gettie and @prahou

#links2gang #links2 #twibright

How Bad is Dialup Internet in 2025?

YouTube

@phl @masek I mean this in the red circle, which I can't find on Github pages (not even a text link saying "Download"). This is the webpage of our FOSS Links browser. I assume many people will hear about our Links browser and think "OK - let's give it a try - to give it a try I need to download it first. Where can I download it? Oh, a huge green rectangle saying "Download"! That looks like the thing I have to click to download it!", then they click it and there is a selection of versions to download, binary vs. source download, pre-download prerequisities (libraries). But the important thing is they know where to click to even get into the download section. And I can't find that in the Github interface.

So when I can't find the Download button I can't download it. And when I can't download it, I can't use it. So I abandon the program and google up some alternative to it.

#links2gang #links2 #Twibright

Once in a while I'll use #links2 and get on #piefed via a browser just cause. Also scheduling posts on piefed is keeping #peertube @peertube alive.

@tauon @zzt @haematophage There’s (unironically) always lynx. As a general browser anyway, not as a webapp client runtime, though.

#lynx #links2 #dillo #w3m #arachne

All bug trackers seem to be too complicated, so I made one myself in less than 300 lines. I imported the issues from GitHub and it seems to work well in #Dillo and #links2.

https://bug.dillo-browser.org/

Issues are stored in plain Markdown files with some special headers in a git repository. They get rendered to HTML when pushing a new commit to the bugtracker repo.

The whole thing is less than 300 lines of shell script and awk. It uses no javascript or databases.

@tsvenson @bagder at least my validator per RFC 3986 says:

Valid URI: { 'scheme': 'http', 'authority': 'http:', '_split_authority': { 'userinfo': None, 'host': 'http', 'port': '' }, 'path': '//http://@http://http://', 'query': 'http://', 'fragment': 'http://' }

If I add a host http to /etc/hosts, #cURL gives me a correct 404 from the webserver back.

#lynx, unfortunately, parses the empty port as meaning port number 0 and fails accordingly. (I wonder if that’s correct (probably not), permitted (maybe?), or a bug (maybe?).)

#links2 #links+ #xlinks2 mistakenly refuses the URL.

Firefox returns the 404 as well.

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