Description
You are on a headless box over SSH, you need to read a doc page or check what an endpoint returns, and installing a whole graphical stack to look at one page is absurd. That is what Lynx is for — it renders pages as plain text and drives entirely from the keyboard: arrow keys move between links, right follows one, left goes back. A terminal window is the whole requirement.
Development started in 1992 and has never stopped, which makes it the oldest browser still in use. It loads no images or video and runs no JavaScript, so its memory footprint is barely measurable and it stays responsive on old hardware and thin links. The build listed here is the PortableApps package: unpack it and run, with bookmarks and settings kept in its own folder and nothing written to the system. Beyond interactive browsing it doubles as a command-line tool — lynx -dump turns a page into plain text in one command, which scripts love.
Text rendering: pages come through as text and links, with images and video handed to external programs, while forms, tables and frames all remain usable.
Keyboard navigation: arrows move between links, right follows and left returns, G opens an address, / searches and Delete shows history — your hands never leave the keys.
Scriptable fetching: lynx -dump writes the rendered body to standard output and -nolist drops the link index, which makes it a natural pipeline component.
Tiny footprint: no JavaScript engine and no media downloads, so it stays usable on old machines, serial terminals and slow connections.
Portable build: the PortableApps package runs from a folder, keeps bookmarks and configuration beside itself, and travels on a USB stick without leaving traces.
Development started in 1992 and has never stopped, which makes it the oldest browser still in use. It loads no images or video and runs no JavaScript, so its memory footprint is barely measurable and it stays responsive on old hardware and thin links. The build listed here is the PortableApps package: unpack it and run, with bookmarks and settings kept in its own folder and nothing written to the system. Beyond interactive browsing it doubles as a command-line tool — lynx -dump turns a page into plain text in one command, which scripts love.
Features
Text rendering: pages come through as text and links, with images and video handed to external programs, while forms, tables and frames all remain usable.
Keyboard navigation: arrows move between links, right follows and left returns, G opens an address, / searches and Delete shows history — your hands never leave the keys.
Scriptable fetching: lynx -dump writes the rendered body to standard output and -nolist drops the link index, which makes it a natural pipeline component.
Tiny footprint: no JavaScript engine and no media downloads, so it stays usable on old machines, serial terminals and slow connections.
Portable build: the PortableApps package runs from a folder, keeps bookmarks and configuration beside itself, and travels on a USB stick without leaving traces.
