Browse WWW from terminal

Preface

With FreeBSD (and *nix in general) you can browse the WWW from your text terminal. There is a several text based WWW browsers (elinks based on links based on lynx, Edbrowse, W3M). All of them are not require you to buy expensive hardware to run them. They even work without graphical subsystem.

I am going to show you how to install the ELinks browser.

Installation

Just enter the next command and confirm downloading the package and installing the software.

% sudo pkg install elinks

To run the browser execute, for example, the next command.

% elinks ddg.gg

The ddg.gg is a shortcut link to the DuckDuckGo search engine page.

The greeting screen looks as shown below.

Usage of ELinks is pretty simple and intuitive. Just follow on-screen tips.

ELinks works without graphics (X11) from terminals and terminal emulators.

So you can search something in the Internet, and even use FTP, IRC and a few other protocols with ELinks. Enjoy!

Bibliography

1. Хабрахабр. Обзор текстовых вeб браузеров, date: 2016-04-20.