Episode: 4408
Title: HPR4408: Lynx - Old School Browsing
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4408/hpr4408.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-26 00:22:16

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 4408 for Wednesday the 25th of June 2025.
Today's show is entitled, Link's Old School Browsing.
It is hosted by Kevin and is about 23 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Givi takes a look at the Link's command lying browser.
Hello hello, welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
This is Kivi from the Tuckstjam podcast and today I'm going to talk about the Link's
LYNX.
This is something different because this is a command lying browser.
Yes, you did actually hear that right.
So before I actually go into any detail, I'm going to speak a wee bit about it so that then you can decide whether or not you're actually going to continue and maybe even test this out.
So first of all, why in this day and age do we want a command lying browser?
Well, I don't know about you, but at any time I need to research, especially if it is something more for work.
I am very, very guilty of I'll check something or there's something there that looks interesting.
Okay, I'll click that.
You're distracted. You're so distracted.
So actually to jump online and just look for something, one specific bit of information and not get distracted, does require an awful lot of discipline.
So that is actually the reason that I actually have this.
I've actually, it's the same reason I kind of use mud now and again, I don't use it for everything, but if I'm
want to purely focus on what I don't get distracted by things that are coming into my inbox.
So that is the main reason.
Now, there is also a wee bit in nostalgia around this.
Those of us who are old enough to remember teletext or c-facts or oracle.
Like we called it a few different things in the UK.
It was more or less like the internet surfing the way before it ever existed.
And it kind of does bring you back to that because obviously there's no graphics.
It's all just text.
So it does give you a wee bit of nostalgia trip.
It's not I like for like, don't think you're going to get all the blocky graphics and things.
Those old 8-bit graphics that teletext had.
I don't even know if it was 8-bit, it might have been less than that.
But they were certainly nothing compared to today's stuff.
So that is the main reason.
It's also because there's no graphics and it's only text.
This is going to be very useful for anybody with a very limited amount of data.
Or maybe they've just got a poor connection.
There's plenty of places we take it for granted in this part of the world that everybody has a similar connection to us.
But we have to remember that not everywhere is the UK or the US.
There are going to be parts of the world where maybe the data is exceptionally limited.
So supposing you do actually pay for it, you're still not going to get the same experience.
And certainly I know even within their own country here, my Toxjam co-host Dave,
he speaks about the connection he gets.
And I think it's about 500 mega MPS.
That's his connection.
Whereas I'm getting, I'm actually one of the best places on the island for internet.
And my limit is about 55.
And to be honest, I'm actually quite happy with that.
But it's not even comparable to the things that you can get if you're maybe further down south in the country.
So that's actually the reason why.
So if you are still listening and if you want to continue, I'm going to go over a wee bit about links.
So it is still an active development.
It seems to be a one-man project.
So just be aware that the releases do tend to be quite slow.
Updates are quite slow.
So it's still, now I'm going to be running this on Linux Mint.
And I'm just installing it from the command line.
So I'm just using app.
So pseudo apt install links.
And it'll run really quickly.
That's all you need.
Obviously different distros and different.
Especially with different package managers.
You're going to have to use that to your own.
But it does seem to be on.
It does seem to be available on most distros.
In fact, the actual claim is that it's currently the oldest of all the browsers available.
It was started.
Now give me a wee sec.
It was started actually in 1992, just 33 years ago.
And it's still being developed.
Of course, in one reason why I said actually about it, why would you use it?
Certainly privacy.
Now it will accept cookies.
So just be aware of that.
However, for privacy and security, it's actually not a bad thing.
Most of the things that are sent through are Java scripts.
They're through graphical applications or adverts, etc.
That can't load on this.
So it doesn't even give an alternative.
It just almost behaves like it's not there.
So that really is one big feature on it.
Now like I said, this is definitely a Marmite browser.
You might say you're either going to love our hate.
But when you start off, the first thing you're going to get is just by typing in links.
Now you can, if you want from the terminal, type in like links space dot dot go dot com.
And it'll take you straight there.
But there is what it calls a main page or what I would refer to as a home page.
And it's just really a bit about links and the history of it and using it.
It's just more or less like a kind of introductory to the manual kind of thing.
So that's what you get first of all.
And first thing you're going to probably want to do is go somewhere else.
So if you press G, that will take you to a very specific size.
Press G, you can take, you have to type in where you want to go.
So let's just say G dot dot go dot com.
Okay.
Press Enter then it'll go.
Then if you press M, that's equal to your home button or main screen as they call it.
So that will take you back to whatever your main screen is.
Now just because it is that manual page by default, that is not what you have to keep it to.
Okay.
So you can press O and it gives you a variety of options.
H for help.
P for print.
Q will quit the program.
You can also quit with a control.
See that works as well.
Now when you're actually getting it to start browsing.
Like I said, press G and the type in the web address, you want the URL.
So go for that.
And so for example, right?
And so I'm just going to go.
G and right now, I'm just going to load up now.
Not every page is going to load up perfectly.
And in fact, in all truth, the majority of pages are just going to give you a list of menus at the start.
So the first thing you probably want to do on most pages is.
Press page down because page up page down will move a whole screen down.
Although to be honest, I'm not actually a big fan of reading like that.
I like to kind of keep the thing scrolling just nicely.
And it does offer you that.
It's not that easy to remember though at the start.
It took me a while to get this into my head.
So if you hold down control and press N.
I just think of it as I don't know, new or something or next control day.
Well, it's just jump it down a couple of lines.
If you want to go back up the page, control P.
So again, maybe next and previous something like that.
You can think of.
So that will take you back up the page.
So that's just for those who like just scrolling down a bit at a time.
However, page up page down work fine.
The up and down arrows, what they do is they jump to different links.
Okay, they jump to the next link, next link, the next basically clickable link.
So that could be fine, but if you've got a page of a lot of just text,
it might jump a huge amount in the page.
So I wouldn't use that now using the left and right arrow keys.
They will go left to go back and right will go forward.
Obviously, if you're just visiting a site for the first time,
right does absolutely nothing because there is no forward.
So just be aware that it seems to be if you accidentally hit something
and it comes up with a.
It comes up with a menu or it asks you to put an input.
Using the arrow keys will generally cancel that.
So if you've got a menu where it's like it's all five vertical options, let's see.
Then up and down just goes through that, but if you press left or right,
it does tend to just come back out of there.
So just be really pressing escape.
Either way, it doesn't seem to do much except cause it to kind of delay for a couple of seconds.
So don't do what I did the first few times and hit escape.
Yeah, so if we're going to URL.
So I'm just going to go to hacker public radio.
So let's have a look.
Hacker public radio dot org presenter and here it is.
So actually, hacker public radio is pretty good.
I have to confess.
So normally you get a huge list, long list of menus and you can go.
So if I do the control end, it's scrolling down.
So I've got latest shows.
In fact, today's one is the community news.
So if now the good thing is when you do do that and you move the screen,
if you press left and right, it will only go to the,
it'll start from the link that's on the screen.
So it doesn't go right the way back to the top of the page.
So pressing right going into the community news.
It's all there.
I'm not actually going to actually I'm curious here because I've never done this to.
Listen, there's live here.
So I click on the org.
What does it do?
It's trying to do something.
It's downloading the org file.
Okay, then actually I'm going to have no idea where this goes because I usually just use this for text.
And it's brought it up in VLC.
Right.
Okay, then.
It's okay.
That's quite handy to know.
Right.
Okay.
So I had to, I actually did a control C and it brought me back to the web page.
One side closed VLC.
Okay.
I'm quite glad it didn't actually start playing.
They said that would have been an editing job for this.
Right.
So, okay.
So if I want to go back to hit the left key and back on the page.
Now, so obviously one of the things you're not going to need that manual page,
especially after the first few times you use this.
So probably in all honesty, I would recommend that you set the main page at home page
to whatever, whatever your favorite search engine is.
Okay.
So that's for something we're going to do just in a week while.
So not quite yet.
So sluff you other things to do.
So if you are on a page like someone hack a public where you just now.
So if I press A, it says you want to save this as a document in which case I'll download
the text or link L or I can cancel it.
So I'm going to put L for a link and I'm just going to call it HPR.
And there we go.
It just tells me done.
Now if I want to view those, press view.
And there we go, just pressing scroll to it, press return, go straight away.
Now, some of the times I said you will get not action awful lot, but if you go to our
page where it's something like which all videos are heavily, heavily graphic.
A lot of them actually have next to no text.
So let's say YouTube or something like that.
Or if you were to go on to our website, let me try something here.
Like I said, I don't know the reason I haven't been a wee bit weird is I don't normally use
it for this kind of thing.
So if I were to go on to YouTube, now it's what's thinking about it.
Right.
Do you want to accept cookies bare in mind this will allow you cookies.
So that's one privacy feature I'm not so fond of.
So I'm actually with no.
Right.
It's all it's asking me to do is do I want to accept cookies.
Am I going to have to say yes?
Okay.
Now it's come on.
Okay.
So all I've got is a page of alternative alternative alternative alternative.
But let's just say that you actually needed a web page that either said it was unavailable
or it was something like this where that actually was a video on it.
Then what you can do is if you press the question mark, comma, then you'll be given an option.
Now this is where it's showing.
It's a wee bit of a date here because by default you get W3M.
You can download it with WGate or you do the XWW browser.
Those are the three options, the four options that you get.
There's two WGate versions.
And that's actually not too much use to us who are with Wayland because obviously XWW browser no longer works for us.
So we're going to need to use xdg-open and then the website.
And we'll go with that in a way minute because this is one good thing about it.
It's quite configurable like that.
So we can actually change that and I'll go over that shortly.
Oh, so yeah, I think that's pretty much all I really can do.
I'm not going to sit and start just to have you listen to me browsing Internet pages.
Oh yeah, now be wary.
Some of the commands they are different for if their capitals are not.
So if, for example, you want to go to the current website and you're wanting to let's just say you've maybe mistyped it.
So rather than mistyped, rather than retyping the whole thing.
If you hold down Shift and G to give you a capital G, it'll tell you where you are.
So right now I'm on youtube.com.
So well, it's not showing me very much.
So I can just edit that.
So let's just say instead I want to go to I don't know BBC.
And I'll type in news. There we go.
So this comes up straight away and this is what I was talking about.
I've got a whole page of just menu options.
So all those collapsible menus that you would click on where they're normally be hidden.
And they're there right in front of you.
So page down.
And I've still got half a page of menus.
So I'll do control end just to get rid of all these.
So now, yep, working as normal.
So live.
Starmer says you came moving to what fighting readiness I see unveils defense spending plans.
Then it shows the.
All these are clickable.
So then it just shows just generally a.
A description, a short description.
That's in purple.
And then you've got orange.
And this is clear to just alternative text for that picture.
So yeah, so that shows you actually what you can do.
So if you want, if it's something like so obviously that's live.
If you hit control L, that will reload.
Reload the page.
So that can refresh the page for you.
So that can certainly be quite handy.
Now, if to make this a wee bit more usable, right?
What we can do is we can edit the file links dot CFG.
Now on Linux, that is stored at slash ETC slash links.
So choose whatever editing program you prefer.
I just like now.
No, it's just easier for me.
It's just the one I'm used to.
Whichever one you want, open that up.
Now remember, that's in the file system.
So you will have to use to do with that.
You'll have to become a super user privileges for this.
So the first thing we're wanting to do is decide first of all
where you want to go every time you open up this browser.
Or what's your main page, your home page?
Now, I've just got duck duck go.
So what you want to do is go to the line 111, 111 line.
And you want to add, now this will be in the show notes.
So if you don't want to do this as I'm typing it, that's fine.
So now, all capitals you want start file and then a colon.
And then just put in whatever you want the website to be.
So I've got HTTPS, colon, forward slash forward slash duck.go.com forward slash light.
Because I had duck duck go, but then it was always redirecting me.
So I just changed it to that.
And also, if you look at line 105, you'll see there a start file.
Or it's around about there anyway.
You'll see a start file where it shows you the current one.
Don't forget to comment that out because if you don't comment that out,
it'll still load up that kind of a start manual page that's already got.
So make sure you do that.
Now, if you want to change the browser to open a link, then we need to go to line 3141.
And we need to add, now, if you just want to use the default graphical browser,
that's fine, this is easy.
So it's external, all in half uppercase, external uppercase, colon, and HTTP,
and then colon, because that's just telling you what it's going to open there.
And then you want the browser launch command.
So you just want there to open up the default browser.
It's xdg-open, and then print a space, and then percent s, and then a colon,
and then uppercase true.
However, you don't actually have to have your default one.
Let's just say you wanted to put, you can be more than one there as well.
It just means that when you press the comma button, it's going to give you more options.
So let's just say you wanted one for Firefox, one for Chromium, one for, I don't know,
Brave, one for Vivaldi.
I don't know, you decide, right?
Then all you need to do there is put in the launch command for that,
and you can have this over multiple lines.
So you can add as many as you want, just bear in mind if you have too many,
then you are going to essentially have quite a big long list to walk you way through.
So it's only if you want to test out, if you want to open things on different sites,
that I would recommend that.
No, then.
So I mean, that's pretty much it.
The one thing that I would really like to be able to do with this,
that I can't seem to, is to change the key bindings.
And I've looked a few times at this, and it doesn't seem to be an obvious way.
It seems to be that they're kind of hardwired.
And there are ones where you can use it to use things like them, key bindings and things,
but as far as making your own ones, I still would really like that,
controlling, control P to be something a wee bit nicer.
But at the end of the day, I can live with this.
Now, is this going to become your default browser?
I wouldn't believe so.
However, like I said, I initially wrote it off when I first seen it.
I thought, this is an outdated scheme.
It's just good for nostalgia.
It's good for a wee bit of retro theme.
If you want a wee bit of retro browsing.
But I've actually started using it more and more.
Like I said, specifically when I don't want distractions,
there's no adverts there telling me to go anywhere.
There's no, there's no anything.
Even if I wanted to go to watch a video,
it's not even there in my face.
I would really have to go ahead of the way and make an effort to it.
So I would recommend it if you find you're distracted very easily
on your productivity and you're just looking for information.
You're just looking for raw text.
This is absolutely ideal.
Is it the prettiest browser in the world?
Absolutely not.
Is it even the most functional?
No.
However, that's actually an advantage because it means it can't run
on over a lot of these scripts that might potentially damage
your computer or give away information.
Just one thing to be aware of though,
it does use cookies if you accept them.
So just be aware of that.
Well, that's always kind of a bit of a security issue there.
Just to want to watch.
Right.
So I believe that is all I've got to say on this.
I'd recommend you check it out.
Like I said, up to you, if you did check this out
and you actually used it rather than just for a two minute thing,
then why not record a show and give your experience on it
or leave a message in the comments.
But the show would definitely be preferable.
So this is Kaby signing off.
And as always, tune in tomorrow for another great episode
of Hacker Public Radio.
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