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A comparison of text-based browsers (2011)

31 points by akkartik 3y ago

akkartik 3y ago
Found via https://tilde.news/s/xlrzqc/comparison_text_based_browsers https://tilde.news/s/xlrzqc/comparison_text_based_browsers I find the two smallest browsers mentioned here most interesting: - https://retawq.sourceforge.net https://retawq.sourceforge.net is 25k LoC. Last release 2006. - https://netrik.sourceforge.net https://netrik.sourceforge.net is 8K LOC. Last release 2009. Both build flawlessly on a modern Linux machine. No js support, and the optional https in retawq is slightly bitrotted. But they seem fine for simple websites.
- jwilk 3y ago
  netrik doesn't support HTTPS at all.
  - akkartik 3y ago
    Sorry, yes I see my comment didn't convey that.
anthk 3y ago
K.Mandla and Inconsolation were my inspiration sources. I still use a minimalist setup since mid-late 2000's, and it's amazing. No distractions, pure music from Jamendo/Magnatune, no notifications, no nothing. Mails, RSS' and news are fetched automatically via Cron, and read in text mode. And OFC as I played text adventures thru retroemulation since ~2002, I play IF and Roguelikes as my main gaming sources. For the rest, libre gaming. My setup it's an Atom n270 netbook with 1GB of RAM + 1GB of ZRAM acting like 2GB, but currently I'm following Solene's challenge on low resources, so I have 512MB of physical RAM limited by a Syslinux boot flag and a single core: https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2023-06-04-old-computer-challenge-v3.html https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2023-06-04-old-computer-challe... Once you use Groff+MuPDF, sc-im, mutt, AWK, and a few of C (Unix low-level knowledge) and Scheme (global CS terms), your skills skyrocket with very few resources and lower electricity bills. I could even chat with some nice people from Mastodon at https://brutaldon.org https://brutaldon.org and using Lynx and by calling sxiv/mpv externally for image and media links.
- 2b3a51 3y ago
  Half a gig of RAM with a Centrino M processor (one core) was a pretty solid spec for Gnome 2/KDE3 what 10 perhaps 15 years ago? Time passes. My take on the Old Computer Challenge is actually using GUI applications (Seamonkey/OpenOffice and my new discovery the Gnumeric spreadsheet - fast for modest simulations). Groff is one of those things hidden in plain sight I agree. I did the K.Mandla thing with Debian for a bit but never got into the bespoke kernel builds as I had more capable hardware (P3 with 256Mb RAM). I went the other way though and now use Slackware which is pretty maximalist (although you don't actually need to enable all the processes).
  - anthk 3y ago
    Well, 256MB of RAM and an AMD Athlon were more than enough for KDE3 and some light distro. Slackware flew. Fedora under Gnome 2 began to be unusable from the 2nd release.
le-mark 3y ago
I once had a job at toxic company where all teams sat in pods, shoulder to shoulder facing the wall. The manager would walk around and look over everyone’s shoulders to monitor if they were working. I used lynx extensively to slack off and surf the web. I thought I was getting away with it until I noticed he used lynx too!
Sakos 3y ago
On that note, I really enjoyed using terminal-based Reddit clients like rtv. Simple interface and controls. No wasted space. I've never really liked text-based browsers, but a bespoke client for a specific site somehow worked for me.
- anthk 3y ago
  If you only lurk out, consider lynx -image_links gopher://gopherddit.com . Then change the image viewer at /etc/lynx.cfg for something usable from a keyboard such as sxiv or nsxiv.
realitythreek 3y ago
> Next is lynx, which is an obvious pun but a clever name. I wonder if the author didn’t know Links is derivative of Lynx and not the other way around. There was a time when most people had used Lynx in a library somewhere if nothing else, but that time probably passed 20 years ago.

31 points by akkartik 3y ago

Found via https://tilde.news/s/xlrzqc/comparison_text_based_browsers https://tilde.news/s/xlrzqc/comparison_text_based_browsers I find the two smallest browsers mentioned here most interesting: - https://retawq.sourceforge.net https://retawq.sourceforge.net is 25k LoC. Last release 2006. - https://netrik.sourceforge.net https://netrik.sourceforge.net is 8K LOC. Last release 2009. Both build flawlessly on a modern Linux machine. No js support, and the optional https in retawq is slightly bitrotted. But they seem fine for simple websites.

jwilk 3y ago
netrik doesn't support HTTPS at all.
- akkartik 3y ago
  Sorry, yes I see my comment didn't convey that.

anthk 3y ago

K.Mandla and Inconsolation were my inspiration sources. I still use a minimalist setup since mid-late 2000's, and it's amazing. No distractions, pure music from Jamendo/Magnatune, no notifications, no nothing. Mails, RSS' and news are fetched automatically via Cron, and read in text mode. And OFC as I played text adventures thru retroemulation since ~2002, I play IF and Roguelikes as my main gaming sources. For the rest, libre gaming. My setup it's an Atom n270 netbook with 1GB of RAM + 1GB of ZRAM acting like 2GB, but currently I'm following Solene's challenge on low resources, so I have 512MB of physical RAM limited by a Syslinux boot flag and a single core: https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2023-06-04-old-computer-challenge-v3.html https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2023-06-04-old-computer-challe... Once you use Groff+MuPDF, sc-im, mutt, AWK, and a few of C (Unix low-level knowledge) and Scheme (global CS terms), your skills skyrocket with very few resources and lower electricity bills. I could even chat with some nice people from Mastodon at https://brutaldon.org https://brutaldon.org and using Lynx and by calling sxiv/mpv externally for image and media links.

2b3a51 3y ago
Half a gig of RAM with a Centrino M processor (one core) was a pretty solid spec for Gnome 2/KDE3 what 10 perhaps 15 years ago? Time passes. My take on the Old Computer Challenge is actually using GUI applications (Seamonkey/OpenOffice and my new discovery the Gnumeric spreadsheet - fast for modest simulations). Groff is one of those things hidden in plain sight I agree. I did the K.Mandla thing with Debian for a bit but never got into the bespoke kernel builds as I had more capable hardware (P3 with 256Mb RAM). I went the other way though and now use Slackware which is pretty maximalist (although you don't actually need to enable all the processes).
- anthk 3y ago
  Well, 256MB of RAM and an AMD Athlon were more than enough for KDE3 and some light distro. Slackware flew. Fedora under Gnome 2 began to be unusable from the 2nd release.

le-mark 3y ago

I once had a job at toxic company where all teams sat in pods, shoulder to shoulder facing the wall. The manager would walk around and look over everyone’s shoulders to monitor if they were working. I used lynx extensively to slack off and surf the web. I thought I was getting away with it until I noticed he used lynx too!

Sakos 3y ago

On that note, I really enjoyed using terminal-based Reddit clients like rtv. Simple interface and controls. No wasted space. I've never really liked text-based browsers, but a bespoke client for a specific site somehow worked for me.

anthk 3y ago
If you only lurk out, consider lynx -image_links gopher://gopherddit.com . Then change the image viewer at /etc/lynx.cfg for something usable from a keyboard such as sxiv or nsxiv.

realitythreek 3y ago

> Next is lynx, which is an obvious pun but a clever name. I wonder if the author didn’t know Links is derivative of Lynx and not the other way around. There was a time when most people had used Lynx in a library somewhere if nothing else, but that time probably passed 20 years ago.