How to Install elinks Text-Based Web Browser on Linux

What is elinks?

• 💡 elinks is a text-based web browser designed for the terminal, allowing users to browse the web without a graphical interface.
• 🎯 It's ideal for use on servers, minimal desktop environments, or any situation where a GUI is unavailable.

Checking for Existing Installation

• 🔍 Before installing, you can check if elinks is already present by running the command elinks --version in the terminal.
• ⚠️ If the command is not found, it indicates that elinks is not installed on your system.

Installing elinks on Debian/Ubuntu

• 💻 On Debian-based systems like Ubuntu, use the command sudo apt install elinks to install the browser.
• 🔑 You will need to enter your administrator password when prompted due to the use of sudo.

Installing elinks on Fedora and Other Distributions

• 🚀 For Fedora and similar distributions, the command to install elinks is sudo dnf install elinks.
• ⚙️ For other Linux distributions, use the appropriate package manager command specific to that distribution.

Verifying Installation and Basic Usage

• ✅ After installation, verify it by running elinks --version again; it should now display the installed version.
• 🌐 To start elinks, simply type elinks in the terminal and press Enter. You can then enter a URL to browse.
• 🧭 Basic navigation is done using the arrow keys.

Navigation, Tabs, and Exiting elinks

• 🖱️ Pressing Escape brings up a menu with options like opening new tabs or windows.
• ↔️ You can switch between tabs using the left and right arrow keys.
• 🚪 To quit elinks, press the Q key and then Enter, or use the X command from the menu.