Slashdot Mirror

...text browsers!

It may not be the #1 choice for your kids, but using it to just read stuff like news, it really saves your time, and the information is displayed surprisingly well.

If you ever build another version of your live-cd, you may wish to try this one out. It'll render tables inline, and frames (as tables). It kicks many, many asses.

A Walk in the Sun by Geoffrey A. Landis.

===== =====

Another good short story about an astronaut on the moon being pulled into different possible same-Earths, and his life when he returned to 1950's Earth from Moon #6 (the sixth different Moon he had been warped onto)

Moon Six by Stephen Baxter

Seeing is believing. That's MPlayer running through AAlib.

On a more serious note, here's Lynx and Links looking at SlashDot. Still quite useful. Not so special for seeing the latest from Cassini or Rutan, but more than enough for 95% of your browsing needs. Links can be compiled to (if run under X) display images.

Perhaps, you've heard of them. It's an affliction called frames.

I ran Debian on an equivilent laptop to that. It didn't run amazingly fast, and I used Links (in the console) and Dillo (when in X) for web browsing. Mozilla was absolutely hopeless, although Opera was almost usable.

For IM, there was naim, and when I felt fancy, Gaim ran pretty well too, but then I couldn't really do too many things due to X taking up resources.

Let's start with the shell--zsh is by far the best one I've used. It has everything.

Moving on, Links (web browser) and Naim (AIM/ICQ/IRC client) rock. The only issue with the former is that Links doesn't support cookies, so I have Lynx in case I want to post on /. or something.

I don't have a console mail client on my machine--I have other methods of getting my email. For accessing my email account with my uni, I ssh into my uni's shell account and use pine from there or I use Links to access the Squirrelmail setup on my web server (over HTTPS, of course). To access my fastmail.fm account, I just use Links to access their web interface (they support both web and IMAP access for free).

For downloading stuff, I use giFTcurs, the btdownloadcurses.py BitTorrent client, and the venerable wget, depending on what I'm looking for and where I'm downloading from.

And, for the part that will generate the most flamage, my text editor of choice: Joe! Its interface is just as simple as nano, but with more features, such as find/replace and decent copy/paste, using text selection. On a related note, I use most as my pager--coloured man pages are good.

And, finally, who could forget NetHack?

Hmm...now I have an urge to find out how to make live CDs, so I can make a ``CLI survival kit'' live CD. Well, maybe not, as I'm too bloody lazy, but it's an idea...

For IRC, I use irssi. It's neat, small, fast, and does what I need it to. Also, I haven't had the need to change any of its stock options yet - I like it the way it is. Other candidates are BitchX (annoying autoaway etc.), ircII (too much configuring, maybe?), or CenterICQ (don't like the interface for IRC).

CenterICQ is my app of choice for IM. It's quirky sometimes, and once segfaulted, but other than that, I have had 0 problems with it. Also, it supports a variety of protocols.

For web-browsing, I use links. I've tried lynx and w3m, but links just "does it" I guess :). It's got support for more stuff. Also, I find the -g option nice, something the other two don't have IIRC.

I've tried Emacs, Pico, Nano, ed, etc. etc. etc., but so far, nothing has replaced my addiction to Vim. Maybe I'm a masochist, I don't know.

When I'm at home in console mode, I usually use Alt+Fx to switch between different apps, and use screen to keep irssi and centericq running. When over ssh, I use screen. Sometimes, I run out of VTs, so I use screen to group things inside the VTs. When in X, I just keep things in separate rxvt windows.

For entertainment, I have either NetHack, fortune -o, or bash.org (aww shit, slashdotted them, they're down enough as it is!) in links. :)

-- Chris

For IRC, I use irssi. It's neat, small, fast, and does what I need it to. Also, I haven't had the need to change any of its stock options yet - I like it the way it is. Other candidates are BitchX (annoying autoaway etc.), ircII (too much configuring, maybe?), or CenterICQ (don't like the interface for IRC).

CenterICQ is my app of choice for IM. It's quirky sometimes, and once segfaulted, but other than that, I have had 0 problems with it. Also, it supports a variety of protocols.

For web-browsing, I use links. I've tried lynx and w3m, but links just "does it" I guess :). It's got support for more stuff. Also, I find the -g option nice, something the other two don't have IIRC.

I've tried Emacs, Pico, Nano, ed, etc. etc. etc., but so far, nothing has replaced my addiction to Vim. Maybe I'm a masochist, I don't know.

When I'm at home in console mode, I usually use Alt+Fx to switch between different apps, and use screen to keep irssi and centericq running. When over ssh, I use screen. Sometimes, I run out of VTs, so I use screen to group things inside the VTs. When in X, I just keep things in separate rxvt windows.

For entertainment, I have either NetHack, fortune -o, or bash.org (aww shit, slashdotted them, they're down enough as it is!) in links. :)

-- Chris

For IRC, I use irssi. It's neat, small, fast, and does what I need it to. Also, I haven't had the need to change any of its stock options yet - I like it the way it is. Other candidates are BitchX (annoying autoaway etc.), ircII (too much configuring, maybe?), or CenterICQ (don't like the interface for IRC).

CenterICQ is my app of choice for IM. It's quirky sometimes, and once segfaulted, but other than that, I have had 0 problems with it. Also, it supports a variety of protocols.

For web-browsing, I use links. I've tried lynx and w3m, but links just "does it" I guess :). It's got support for more stuff. Also, I find the -g option nice, something the other two don't have IIRC.

I've tried Emacs, Pico, Nano, ed, etc. etc. etc., but so far, nothing has replaced my addiction to Vim. Maybe I'm a masochist, I don't know.

When I'm at home in console mode, I usually use Alt+Fx to switch between different apps, and use screen to keep irssi and centericq running. When over ssh, I use screen. Sometimes, I run out of VTs, so I use screen to group things inside the VTs. When in X, I just keep things in separate rxvt windows.

For entertainment, I have either NetHack, fortune -o, or bash.org (aww shit, slashdotted them, they're down enough as it is!) in links. :)

-- Chris

After several attempts to live solely on the console, here are the best apps I've found:

Links: a superior web browser alternative to Lynx that formats things correctly on your screen.

Mutt and Pine: Two great email clients that allow you to work much more quickly than with any graphical client.

Nano: My favorite text editor. I refuse to feel guilty that it's easy to use!

Micq: a very nice ICQ client that works much better than the various AIM console clients that are out there.

Finally, last, and well yes, basically least, Seatris: This is the best -- the best! -- of all the console tetris games. It takes me back to wasting hours in the various UC Santa Cruz computer labs.

Um, Go Banana Slugs! Go Stevenson College! I think that takes care of this year's quota of school spirit.

And here and here and here. :)

As a matter of a fact i run Dillo AND Opera, I even run Links on the console (cheap routers maintance) and on the X.
How does THAT look for you ? This IS a small footprint browser, no bloat, no dependency lists longer than my penis.

Hell, I used to run ARACHNE on my DOS thin client back in the days. Now it looks like an abandoned project :(.

Yup. Just installed 9.1 on my 32MB Toshiba Tecra laptop (the 120MHz Pentium only tooks ~3 hours to compile a 2.6.6 kernel). I absolutely love ratpoison for the window manager and links -g for the web browser.

I concur. I've been using links full time for about a year now. It is fantastic. Just try it out. Unfortunately, its javascript support is a bit limited, so some completely broken websites do not work properly, but mos do.

Here is the correct link for links:

http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/l inks/

You seem to have posted a link to Lynx, and not Links.

But I use Links!

It does that by having a feature set around the level of links. Once you start having to walk the DOM applying CSS and table layout complexity shoots up quite a bit. Try turning off JS/Plugins/CSS in Opera for a while and set the rendering speed to Immediate and see if it feels faster too :)

Its been done, ever use links (built to betty lynx)? Links has an option to compile in graphial suppost, however I never have done this, I use dillo.

IFRAME is actually good, because it allows one to modularize web pages without writing scripts that can hijack browsers. Unlike the Netscape FRAME, IFRAME can be put inside . If you have trouble of finding a browser for text consoles, you should get something like Links.

0verkill! is a client-server 2D deathmatch-like game in ASCII art. It supports free connecting/disconnecting during the game, and runs well on modem lines. Graphics are in 16-color ASCII art with elaborate hero animations. 0verkill features 4 different weapons, grenades, invisibility, and armor. The package also contains reaperbot clients, a simple graphics editor, and a level editor.

The Links 2 page is here

Lynx ? That bloated, inefficient piece of slagware ? ;-)

I'm posting this using the graphic version of Links - yes, with pictures and all that !

Those people probably thought that making the best text browser asn't enough, so they decided to make the ideal complement to Moz as well. I use Links-graphics 90% of the time and only use Moz on sites that need Java, Flash or something like that.

Thomas Miconi

ftp://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/pub/local/mj/linux/ sss-0.0.1.tar.gz

It's easily configurable, as everything is kept in a single, hierarchicaly structured config file.

It's very convenient to use, since you can bring up whole subtrees of services up and down with a single command.

And it's damn FAST, allowing to boot my system under three seconds from LILO to running WindowMaker desktop. It achieves that by reading just the single config time just one time and then piping all the commands that it needs to execute to bring the system up to a single bash instance.

I used it once, and I can't never go back and replace the init scripts on every distro I use with it.

How long do your init scripts take to boot?

Mutt plus links equals the ideal text email client?

Mutt plus links equals the ideal text email client?

... is the native Plastik theme that comes with KDE 3.2. (Tip of the day: for added prettiness, set Nimbus Sans L as your default font. Then watch people gape and go 'ooooh!'). None of Xandros' doing, although their choosing it certainly sounds like a proof of good taste.

> ... the customized OpenOffice which is one of the key perks of Ximian

Oh is it?

A redesign of Slashdot is way overdue, IMO. I like the prototype suggested, but have a quibble regarding lo-fi web clients.

When I load the current design in the Links text browser, the page renders with several secreens of page decoration (navigation links, etc) before the actual page content is reached -- specifically, the articles begin on page six when using a 90 column terminal window. The current design, on the other hand, is displayed by Links roughly the way it would appear in a graphical browser, with a top row of links, a column of links on the left hand side, and the bulk of the page taking 80% or so of the right side of the page -- the interesting stuff begins right on the first screen, just like graphical browsers. (The Lynx text browser behaves similarly, but doeesn't do as well with either version of the page.)

I'm not up on contemporary CSS/XHTML design techniques, but it seems to me that a good CSS design effectively divorces the rendered page from the arrangement of elements of the page in the HTML source itself. In other words, it seems like the HTML could be generated in such a way that the first portion of the <body> part of the page has minimal headers & navigation, followed immediately by the "meat" of the page -- the articles & comments on Slashdot, similar content on other sites -- and then the core content can be followed by all the page decoration stuff. This way, a modern browser will still arrange everything on the page in the proper way, but a low end browser like Links would be able to put the most relevant material first.

Alternatively, Links could just be patched to do minimal CSS layout, but that doesn't get around the issue of how to design the HTML itself -- it just patches it for a particular low end web client.)

Even better, I wrote aavga2 to run Quake2 on aalib!

Now that Gtk+ is moving to TTY as well, maybe I can get rid of X entirely? *grin*

We've got Links, Dillo, and we could probably get Gecko working within reasonable constraints. We have commercial products on our side such as Netfront, Opera. If you're talking QNX, you've also got Voyager. So yeah, Windows, 0, the other guys, 1.

0verkill !

I applaud the "Praise the lord" link, but a joystick is functionally equivilant to a mouse IMO, and lynx.. I shudder. If you go text for a browser *shudder again* at least go for Links and gpm if you don't use X because tabbing links still sucks.

On my box it has a features like 'prevent resizing of the window' and 'disable pop-ups'. As far as I know, almost everything in X-Window system is a window, so checking this will work. Anyway, there is lynx and links. And now try the full screen ad on my vt100 terminal. ASCII ads anyone?

Upgrade to links, they've even got graphics now!

Xoder: Proud Graphical Links user since 2 weeks after he upgraded to Linux

What you are asking for cannot be done. Worse, it is a dangerous route to go down, because it gives an illusion of safety.

From a VM level you cannot know what a program it up to unless that program obeys certain rules. When dealing with x86 architecture (specifically), those rules are not sufficiently verbose to allow for the sort of checking you are after.

While a VM could intercept all stack access and prevent modification to the return address (presenting stack smashing attacks), it cannot tell if a malicious attack has caused values within a valid range in the stack or heap to be altered in a way that is not supposed to happen. Thus a VM approach would suffer all of the deficiencies of StackGuard.

So while you may be able to protect against a classic buffer overflow attack (overwrite the return address on the stack and jump to your own code), there is no guarantee against arbitrary modification of the behaviour of the software by adjusting variables.

The dangerous part is that you are trying to partition security and look at one aspect of it in isolation. This is shortsighted.

Using permissions, a binary running in a user acocunt is less of a threat to overall system security than a binary running as root -- irrespective of whether there are exploitable vulnerabilities in that binary or not.

Tools like the ptrace-derived sandbox further improve this situation -- an arbitrary binary could be denied access to the file and IO functions in the kernel, preventing a malicious intruder from reading or modifying the hard drive. Or those open function could be filtered by directory. Network access could be restricted, denying the opportunity of using the vulnerability as a springboard to probe behind a firewall.

There is an interesting Usenix paper relating to these issues. There is a list of sandbox possibilities plus another one here, and you should also check out Medusa. this article also points to several resources on ACLs.

Anytime you run emulation of any kind there is a considerable amount of overhead, even in the case of emulating an 8-bit computer on a 32-bit platform.

BTW--links has a smaller footprint than lynx and supports graphics under SVGAlib or X.

Dude, go read your homework.
It's what the site says: "Lynx-like text WWW browser with tables".

Links just happens to be much better than Lynx ...but what the hell. I'm just waisting my time writing to you.

*lbrt

Since it was such a small fix the reason why it took so long for the fixed version to be released is that Mozilla is a monstrosity, and it took SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO long to build it.

That's why I use fast and small browsers, like this browser and another great browser on my systems.

Got Lynx?

What about Links?

If you are just after graphics, you could go with Links. It will work using SVGAlib or Linux Framebuffer to provide a graphical display of the website but without the need for a host GUI layer.

Thats why I use links. Perfect for viewing websites that you shouldn't be, with the added bonus that if you run it remotely through an ssh connection, the sysadmins *CAN'T* look up your history in the proxie logs.

I switched over to links a long time ago...

I've had great luck with First Tennessee.
I havent had any problem using the likes of Mozilla/Phoenix and Netscape.
Links even works fine as long as SSL and Javascript are compiled in.

-Dave

Another thing I wanted was a way to crop the excessive white space border that many papers have. It would also fix the binding offset that some papers have, i.e., left-side pages have a larger right margin for the binding. It annoys me to no end to view papers in feh that jump side to side between pages. I also wish feh had a "toilet paper" mode for viewing images.

Are you trying to do an OCR type thing that recognizes the font and replaces it with the appropriate postscript font?

The other thing is, why bother converting a ps to pdf? I keep my ps files bzip2, and ggv will open a *.ps.{gz,bzip2} file with no problem. (It decompresses it to /tmp and opens that.)

Now if you're talking about creating pdf directly than that's different.

Looks like the guys behind Phoenix did a good job, but the Galeon interface is still much faster than the Phoenix one.

Take also a look at Links , the fastest -graphics- browser ever made (it runs circles around Opera. No kidding.)

Javascript and graphics need to be enabled before compilation, so download it (less than 4 Mb) then...

# ./configure --enable-graphics --enable-javascript
# make
# make install

Start it in graphics mode (otherwise you'll have a console only lynx clone)

# links -g

And enjoy it.
It still lacks the bells and whistles one can find in other browsers, so there are problems with complex and bloated websites (Java, Flash), in that case I'm happy with Galeon, but I find it perfect for anything else.

I don't think you've read the pages, it is not a text only browser, it just has a text mode as well as a graphical mode.

Screenshots of Links rendering in graphical mode

If you like Dillo, but it doesn't have the features you need, try Links. No, it's not Lynx, it's a graphical browser, and it's fast.

you misspell pidgeons

and add a link

and a smiley face and then it ends up +2 funny. Weird

So for GOD'S SAKE MAN, SMILE!

You can get Links that has image support (yeah, I didn't believe it either until yesterday)

Links

And worse comes to worst, you look at the freaking source yourself.

Do you think Grandma can also fix bugs in the source when she finds them? There are non-programmers out there. They need to have some level of trust, and "Bob's WebBrowser and Tackle Shop" is going to be the perfect excuse for paladin.

This is why Paladin is going to sell. Cant trust those nasty OpenSource programmers, afraid of viruses? Trust our "Microsoft Signed(TM)" programs. Gives you those nice warm fuzzies about buying things on the Internet. Feel secure about your "Trusted" OS.

Hell, Grandma and Joe Six pack will be first in line to buy a Secure and easy to use OS with all the M$ support included.

You arnt against Security are you? Damn terrorist.

-
A version of Links that does gfx - http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/l inks/