Lynx Plus FrogFind! Search Engine

[blizzardfromoz]

I've been looking at changing up the way I browse the web in a more secure way and have been using the Lynx terminal browser. I came across a neat search engine called FrogFind! which is basically a proxy that uses the Duckduckgo search engine and then strips websites into a basic HTML format with a nice readable format. Works great with Lynx. I tried using the search engine with a regular GUI browser and it works well. Not all sites work though as some require javascript (such as this site) but if you want to read articles and not worry about fingerprinting and ads this looks like a nice solution and especially combined with a terminal browser such as Lynx.

Good way to eliminate fingerprinting.

A screenshot of using Lynx without FrogFind! (page 3 of 12 pages):

Same site with FrogFind! (only 1 page):

 

[KGIII]

I break out text browsers now and then. FrogFind has been a great addition. I want to say they're like five years old at this point and they are also aimed at old-school computers and not just text-based Linux browsers. They popped up on HN back in the day.

 

[blizzardfromoz]

I break out text browsers now and then. FrogFind has been a great addition. I want to say they're like five years old at this point and they are also aimed at old-school computers and not just text-based Linux browsers. They popped up on HN back in the day.

Which text browser do you use? It looks like Lynx is the only one I've seen that is still being updated. I saw on one forum that it was updated this year.

What is HN?

 

[KGIII]

Which text browser do you use? It looks like Lynx is the only one I've seen that is still being updated. I saw on one forum that it was updated this year.

What is HN?

I usually fire up links/links2 or elinks. I don't use them often, but it's fun to be reminded of my earlier years. (I'd say 'youth', but that's not accurate. LOL)

If you have Firefox installed, look into 'browsh browser'. I'd not use it as my plain-text browser, but it is a terminal-based browser. I think there's something similar that relies on Chromium being installed. I think there was even one that supported YouTube videos but that's a constantly changing landscape so they may be gone at this point.

I think my favorite is to browse Slashdot. That just feels right and Slashdot is keen on keeping their site functional for everyone. But, yeah... Slashdot isn't that old. We had graphical browsers when Slashdot was registered.

 

[blizzardfromoz]

If you have Firefox installed, look into 'browsh browser'. I'd not use it as my plain-text browser, but it is a terminal-based browser. I think there's something similar that relies on Chromium being installed. I think there was even one that supported YouTube videos but that's a constantly changing landscape so they may be gone at this point.

I did see some mentions of browsh when I was looking at terminal browsers. Might defeat the purpose of getting rid of trackers and fingerprinting by adding more functionality but as per some feedback on the below site it might help with battery life/power consumption.

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/lynx-is-dead-long-live-browsh-for-textbased-internet-browsing

"Imagine running your browser on a remote machine connected to full power while ssh'ing into your hosted browsh instance. I don't know about you, but my laptop is currently using 2 gigs of RAM for Chrome and it's basically just all fans. I might be able to get 12 hours of battery life if I hung out in tmux and used browsh! Not to mention the bandwidth savings. If I'm tethered or overseas on a 3G network, I can still get a great browsing experience and just barely sip data."

"I'm sold. A few times I've been away from a power point and my Macbook lasts about half a day, the biggest drain is web browsing but it's a serious impediment to productivity if you don't have access to Google (and a few things besides). I found just switching off Chrome and using Safari sporadically gave me an extra couple of hours so brow.sh looks like it could be a big win."

 

[KGIII]

"Imagine running your browser on a remote machine connected to full power while ssh'ing into your hosted browsh instance. I don't know about you, but my laptop is currently using 2 gigs of RAM for Chrome and it's basically just all fans.

You can forward your browser over SSH if you want to. You can do this already.

Enable x11 Forwarding With SSH (Remotely Use GUI Applications) • Linux Tips

In today's article, we're going to learn how to forward GUI application windows with SSH. x11 forwarding is easy and beneficial.

linux-tips.us

If you scroll down, there's even a small picture of this in action. I suspect it'd help battery life but I've never tested that. So, I can't really offer an opinion.

x11 has been forwarded for a long time. We used to use this back in the UNIX days to forward applications, or even a complete CDE desktop session. This was even common on early versions of Windows. UNIX, being multi-user, can process all sorts of users at once, each forwarding what they need to forward to their local desktop. As Linux uses x11 (or these days Wayland), that feature is still there today. (You will need additional software to do this with Wayland as it is not built in.)

 

[theLegionWithin]

if you're interested in the history of where frogfind came from