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Comment by angusgr | Hacker News Reader

You CAN also run NetSurf inside a X terminal like xterm or xfce

Really, you can render the framebuffer into an X terminal session? That is not possible, is it? Or is there some other port besides the GTK port, that you're referring to?

Everybody knows this is for Framebuffer...

Well, I for one didn't. I clicked through thinking it might be a console web browser like lynx, and wondering how it would be graphical. "Command line" is not a good descriptive term.

Looks like a neat lightweight browser, though. I've been stuck with lynx on a linux virtual console enough times to want this. :)

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You'll forget lynx, elink or w3m the moment you start using NetSurf. It's much more sophisticated. As to the former part of your comment, I should state that as far as I'm concerned there are only two NetSurf frontends for Unix-like systems (GTK and Framebuffer) and the article is just about Framebuffer version.

You'll forget lynx, elink or w3m the moment you start using NetSurf.

So the situation is, I don't have X, but I do have a mouse attached? That happens a lot...

My netbook almost never runs X, but it still has a trackpad.

How's that working out for you?

@jrockway {removed}

Mate, I can see that you really like this software. Which is great. It looks like a really neat project. However, there's no need to be this defensive or rude. The criticisms are mild, but they are valid and they appear to be correct.

Every project has some shortcomings, and everyone makes some mistakes. They're not personal or fundamental criticisms, and nearly everyone here (myself included) seems to see value in the software.

Sorry about that glib comment, I deleted it.

So, let's say that I'm ssh'ed into a headless Linux box (my linode). How can I run NetSurf?

I spend most of my day ssh'ed into one box or another, writing code in vim, so being able to run NetSurf would be a huge improvement over links, which is what I currently use.

You won't be able to use the framebuffer on a machine that doesn't have a monitor attached to it. So the framebuffer version of NetSurf won't work.

You could, instead, try ssh's X forwarding feature or maybe use something like VNC to display X applications on you local machine. Then you could run any browser that uses X.

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