Use Terminal as a Web Browser

2017-3-15

Web browsers are software used to access and view the internet and webpages. We all know about some of the popular web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and others.

Surfing the web from the command-line can be somehow scrappy, but you can give it a try as well. Most users doesn’t know that they can browse the web from the command-line.

w3m

w3m is a World Wide Web (WWW) text based client. It has English and Japanese help files and an option menu and can be configured to use either language. It can display HTML tables and frames. w3m current versions can run on Unix (Solaris, SunOS, HP-UX, Linux, FreeBSD, and EWS4800)

Installation

$ sudo apt-get install w3m

install-w3m

Accessing a website

$ w3m www.google.com

w3m-google

Press Ctrl + Z to quit.

Lynx

Lynx is a general purpose browser for the World Wide Web.

Installation

$ sudo apt-get install lynx

install-lynx

Accessing a website

$ lynx www.google.com

Press Ctrl + C to quit.

Links

Links is a text mode WWW browser with ncurses interface, supporting colors, correct table rendering, background downloading, menu driven configuration interface and slim code.

Frames are supported. You can have different file formats associated with external viewers. mailto: and telnet: are supported via external clients.

Installation