hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0616.txt

Episode: 616
Title: HPR0616: Surfraw
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0616/hpr0616.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:54:50

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Hello again, this is Dave, this is Hacker Public Radio.
And in today's episode, I want to talk about the program
Surferall S-U-R-F-R-A-W.
And like a lot of most good Linux-y kind of programs,
that's an acronym.
It stands for Shell Users Revolutionary Front,
Rage Against the World Wide Web.
And this is S-U-R-F-R-A-W.
You can find Surferall in your Debian repository,
or you can download it at surferall.allioteh.debian.org.
Surferall is written by Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame.
I don't think he's anything to do with the program
as a developer since 2003, probably.
I think there's just a group of Surferall developers
that work on it now.
Anyway, what is Surferall?
Surferall is a program that makes your life more convenient.
It does this simply by allowing you to search the web
using your command line first,
and giving you the results in your web browser.
Web browser choice be a graphical order of the command line.
I highly encourage you when using Surferall
to configure it to use a text-based web browser,
more on that later.
So how do you use Surferall?
Well, after you install Surferall,
you simply type Surferall space,
and then the name of the search engine script
that you want to use,
and there are over 100 pre-configured search engine scripts
that come packaged with Surferall.
They're called LVI,
I guess the plural would be Elvis,
and then your search term.
So you simply type Surferall space Google,
and that's the name of one of the LVI space bunny huggers,
and that would return the results in a browser,
preferably text-based,
and your terminal window,
the Google search results for the term bunny hugger.
That's all it does,
but it's even more convenient than that.
You don't have to type Surferall space Google space bunny hugger.
You can just type SR space Google space bunny hugger,
and you'll get the same results.
It gets even more convenient than that.
If you run the program,
Surferall-update-path,
another program that comes packaged with Surferall,
this will add all the LVI that come pre-packaged with Surferall,
all these search engine scripts is over 100.
This will add those to your path.
So once you've done that,
really all you have to do is type Google space bunny huggers
to see the results of the Google search for the term bunny huggers
displayed in your text-based browser.
That's all it does.
How does that make your life more convenient?
Well, there, like I mentioned,
there's over 100 search engine scripts, these LVI,
and I'm not going to go through the whole list,
but just a short abbreviated list,
there's Amazoners, BBC News,
there's code search,
there's devian packages, there's dev packages,
there's dev wiki,
there's Google code search.
Well, I've already said that,
there's Google group search,
there's eBay, there's FreeBSD,
there's FreshMe, there's Gentubugs,
there's Gutenberg,
there's Jemando,
there's LastFM,
there's MusicBrains,
there's Slashtide,
there's RPM Search,
there's Happy Penguin,
the list goes on and on.
So, you know,
you type SR space,
Gutenberg space,
at Princess of Mars,
and in your text space browser,
we'll pop up in that same terminal in there,
and you'll be presented with the results.
Or you can just type Gutenberg space at Princess of Mars,
and you get the same results.
If you've added the LVI to your path,
that's pretty cool,
it's pretty convenient,
but why is this noteworthy?
If you are like
most of us probably are,
and you're running multiple terminal windows,
let's say you're running a screen session,
and a Terminator window
that's divided into three pains,
you know,
one half of the Terminator window
is got your,
your, your RC chat session,
even in nine different screen sessions,
attached to that one.
And in the other half of your Terminator window,
you've got two other X terms open.
So, you know,
you're in there doing all kinds of stuff.
Well, if you've got an extra X term window
laying there on that desktop,
or in that screen session,
or anywhere there,
it's a whole lot more convenient
to search for something on the way up,
and at the results presented to you
in a text-based web browser,
right there on that desktop
with all your other X term goodness,
all the other terminal goodness going on.
Then it is to actually have to change
to a different virtual desktop
and use a graphical browser
and copy and paste the link
that you were looking for
into your chat window,
or into your notebook file,
or whatever.
It's,
I cannot describe how much more convenient
your life will be using surf raw.
That's not something you'll use all the time,
but if you do use it,
I can promise you
that you will find yourself
using text-based web browsers
more often than you are now.
I have spent a lot of time
in a text-based web browser
this last week and a half,
just because of surf raw.
And I've rediscovered the joys
of text-based web browser.
There's links,
L-Y-N-X,
which is my text-based web browser choice.
There's L-I-N-K-S-2,
which I think is a fork
of possibly the now-to-funk,
L-I-N-K-S,
maybe,
maybe not,
and there's E-Links,
which may be a fork of links.
I'm not sure I can't remember,
but that's three
that I can think of all the time
I had text-based web browsers.
There's also W-C-E-M, I think.
But links, L-Y-N-X,
is my favorite,
because it does go for as well.
And just by using this links browser
and using surf raw has,
it's got me rediscovering stuff
like go for space,
which is a very small place.
It's still a very cool place.
But it's really cool.
You'll find yourself using it more and more
because it's useful,
not because it's neat,
not because it's a novelty,
not because it's retro,
but because it's useful.
You know, before I discovered surf raw,
I was doing,
I had one virtual desktop
for just,
my internet chat,
all my attached SSH sessions
in screen,
and a couple of other terminal windows.
That was just,
I had one full desktop
of terminal going on.
But I had switched
a virtual desktop to
to do all my web browser
and then Chrome-E-M.
And that just makes no sense.
If you're in your chat room
and you're chatting,
why even leave the chat room
when you can just like move
over to the next panel
on that same screen to surf the web?
It's really, really cool.
Now, surf raw by default,
I don't know,
it's by default enough,
but out of the box for me,
when I first use surf raw,
it opened up a conquerer,
I think, is the web browser.
That's not the behavior I wanted.
So if you will edit your,
in your home directory,
dot surf raw.conf file,
and if you add the following lines,
all caps issue are F-R-A-W-S.
All caps surf raw,
underscore,
and then in lowercase,
graphical equals no,
this will ensure
that you don't use a graphical web browser.
You can also enter
in all caps surf raw,
underscore,
and then in lowercase,
text underscore browser equals,
L-Y-N-X,
or your text-based browser choice.
This will ensure that you always use
the browser of your choice.
And there's other options
that you can put in your surf raw.conf file.
The one that strikes me as being useful is,
I know caps again,
surf raw, underscore,
and then in lowercase,
screen equals,
and then followed by the name of the screen command,
you want to run.
That seems pretty cool as well.
Anyway,
if you're a heavy terminal user,
or if you spend, you know,
any amount of time
in multiple terminal windows,
I encourage you to use surf raw.
I think you'll find it.
It makes your life more convenient.
Anyway,
that's it for today's
Hacker Putter Radio.
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