Haven't encoutered sites which don't work with it, surely will be some but not like keeping other browsers on-hand is difficult for the few exceptions. Other pro's as to links2, it's BLAZING fast(and uses a tiny amount of bandwidth/data), ridiculously light on memory + cpu-load. It's generally a good idea to keep a command-line browser on any OS's anyway, for times like if a person breaks X and thus no graphical gooey goodness is available to use. Anyway, really cool web browser "man links2" of course lists options which can be used. I prefer running the thing in cli-mode, in my case I'm doing wireless tethering to my Android phone and using the mobile data link for my laptop. Even on this crappy, lossy mobile link links2 blazes. On a solid connection, it'd have to be ridiculously faster.
To get more out of the thing, decided to enlist the help of a couple other what I think are awesome progs, there's so many in gnu/Nix it's insane but getting back, I remembered that the terminal emulator = terminator, allows people to do all kinds of layout magic, cut the terminal into sections, split them horizontally/vertically, resize whenever desired etc etc and save those layouts for reuse. I wanted a layout which would open 3 tabs, maximized with links2 opened on the http://www.google.com homepage. So I setup a new layout in terminator, launched my 3 tabs, in the right-hand panel of the terminator Preferences > Layout settings, a person can define a custom command to run in each of those, that of course could be anything you wanted, could be other sites than google etc. Command I used in each of them is ... I also set my home directory to be the working directory in all of them "/home/my-user-name". Also of course be sure to save your changes to a given terminator layout, there's an obvious "Save" button.
Code: Select all
links2 www.google.com -max-connections 16 -max-connections-to-host 8 ; bash
Couple other notes of interest, terminator works esp well with links2 because by default to open it's right-click menu/Settings, a person has to double right-click, thus it still also allows me to use links2's right click options, like "Open in new window", download link etc. Something else I found really annoying until figured it out, when terminator was running, it'd hijack the Ctrl + A (select all text)feature in any text-editors, the answer is to uncheck the box for "smart copy" in terminators Preferences > Global settings, then select all in editors works again. Someone can set font + size in terminator's settings too.Update note: Play around with this to find a sweet spot for yourself, in the case of cli-mode, parallel connections to a host aren't going to make all that great a difference, can-depending I guess, however in graphical it'd be different. Boosting # of connections should mean boost in speed. While messing around lowered my settings to 12/6, even in cli-mode would bump it up a bit. Only noting this ...
Note: That someone can drag-drop and reposition the tabs in terminator, just click and drag them where you want etc. Just like someone can do with tabs in ie: Firefox. Some other keyboard shortcuts I went with and changed in terminators settings, of course that's under the one for keybindings, I set Ctrl + Tab to switch tabs, Ctrl + Shift + Tab to go to previous tab, Ctrl + T open new tabs, Ctrl + W to close tabs, Ctrl + Q to close terminator, though Alt + F4 of course still works too.
Another really cool thing I noted about using terminator, when I open a new tab, I have a fullscreen terminal running, can use any commands, aliases etc desired, someone can even of course use all the layout changing magic terminator gives, I can split that tab(s), resize sections of it as desired. Terminator is pretty friggin awesome in my view. Something else terminator saves the config file at /home/yourusername/.config/terminator/config very interesting to look it over, you can obviously set and control many aspects of terminator in this file, without bothering doing so in it's normal settings, of course advise making-keeping backups of any config files, before editing overmuch. I had to change some of the size dimensions in that config file to get it to be sized and positioned as desired.
At this point I setup a keybind to launch it, I use/prefer the Openbox windows manager, so I chose to make the following keybind in its rc.xml file. Though of course that command example could be used in whichever other desktops/windows managers too. Here's the full thing though.
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<keybind key="Alt-Right">
<action name="Execute">
<startupnotify>
<enabled>true</enabled>
<name>Links2</name>
</startupnotify>
<command>terminator -l layout1 -p profile1</command>
</action>
</keybind>
I've still much to learn about both terminator and links2, think they're both amazing though. Some nagglings noticed and possibly on the 2-do-dork list, as regards links2 in cli-mode, getting it to autofocus on google's search field(not much trouble to click on it), getting the "Open in new window" to work opening links on right-click, works in the graphical mode, as does copy/paste (considering trying a stand-alone clipboard app to see if it'll get things working more smoothly in cli-mode)and normal scrolling using touchpad or mouse. Consider these hassles not a big deal compared to all the benefits links2 in cli-mode provides.
Links2 can also open different media types (like youtube vids, mp3-4's etc) with external programs, such as a media player, I'm thinking about setting up youtube-dl + mpv or whichever other cool minimal options, there's TONS of great ones as usual with just about everything gnu/Linux. Got a somewhat good idea about how that's done, associating different media content with external programs to play them in links2, cool stuff and am a lil annoyed there isn't more info and tutes on this kickbutt command-line browser online. Hat's off to the developers and yeppers, it's still actively maintained, there is a newer version in Sid-unstable, so it's still bound to only keep getting better too. The default keyboard keys are great imo. Just takes some time and reading of the manpage on it to get using it down.
Here's a couple screenshots of these in action ( links2 + terminator)
Here
Two are of this junk using terminator + links2, the other is just it running in xterm. Link points to imgur, an image sharing website I've never used but hey, it's free and didn't require registration so hopefully works well.
Still haven't gotten around to fiddling with terminators appearance, could change those tab titles to something more meaningful, it uses gtk3 and actually don't mind the looks I've got now, you can do much more/else and differently obviously, go for it. My installs memory stats are none to shabby, for having a web-browser with 3 tabs, a terminal running etc. Had to brag a bit, as I'm proud of that. That's the output of "smem -tk", smem is a fairly kickbooty memory utility I've typed about before.
Next up, enter Xterm, think it's just another cool terminal emulator "man xterm" shows much xtermy goodness for the options people can use with the thing, in this case I setup a bash aliases in .bash_aliases (or someone could of course enter such into their .bashrc file) I advise people use that dedicated .bash_aliases file to manage bash aliases though. Getting back to it, set up an alias to launch links2, again, open it on google.com and maximized. Also a similar one to launch links2 in graphics mode the "-g" switch, for the few times I might want to use it in graphics mode. Here's the bash aliases used.
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alias links="xterm -maximized -fa 'Liberation Mono' -fs 14 -e links2 -max-connections 16 -max-connections-to-host 8 www.google.com &exit"
To end this sucker, stumbled on a cool script, which lets someone pick between 3 terminator layouts, could setup a bash alias for the purpose, of course those could all be customized to do whatever someone wishes. Haven't worked the kinks out but it's fairly self explanatory anyway. It's really interesting, so sharing the thing.
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PS3='Terminator options: '
options=("Split 1" "Split 2" "Split 3" "Quit")
select opt in "${options[@]}"
do
case $opt in
"Split 1")
config=config-1
break
;;
"Split 2")
config=config-2
break
;;
"Split 3")
config=config-3
break
;;
*)
exit
;;
esac
done
cd ~/.config/terminator
cp config config-
cp $config config
cd
terminator &