#terminalbrowsers — Public Fediverse posts

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