Terminal programs to replace desktop programs

What are the programs you use from a *nix terminal to be able to communicate in today’s desktop world?

Suggestions:

Terminal web browsers
Terminal e-mail clients
ASCII art renders
Text rtf/pdf/etc readers
Text chat clients

C. Ross

Posted 2009-12-01T13:46:43.377

Reputation: 5 284

Answers

For web browsing, Lynx is my browser of choice.

Kevin M

Posted 2009-12-01T13:46:43.377

Reputation: 2 396

Some people fix ads with adblock, others stop it at the source - images, and flash. Lynx is a brilliant lightweight browser. – Phoshi – 2009-12-01T15:25:01.463

2i don't like Lynx - mor a fan of elinks myself – warren – 2009-12-03T10:09:07.493

For editing files, I use Vim. I keep meaning to use emacs a few times just to see what all the fuss is about; I believe that you shouldn't bash something if you haven't tried it. There wouldn't be a holy war if it didn't have some substance to it.

Kevin M

Posted 2009-12-01T13:46:43.377

Reputation: 2 396

I don't see why there's a Vi/Emacs holy war. I use both. Vi is great for editing config files and Emacs is great for writing code. – Brian Knoblauch – 2009-12-01T15:27:00.557

Finch - a terminal messaging app based on the same libpurple library as Pidgin.

C. Ross

Posted 2009-12-01T13:46:43.377

Reputation: 5 284

I use the following:

Mutt for email -- I'd still use gmail, but with the IMAP interface.
Vim for text editing
mpd / ncmpc for music
LaTeX for typesetting (also viewed as word processing)
catdoc for extracting word document text
W3M for web browsing (even supports images in the right environment)
irssi for IRC
I'd also set up a jabber/IRC bridge for IM
OpenSSH for "remote desktop"
naim or CenterIM for IM connetivity
The ruby twitter gem which provides a CLI twitter app

Benson

Posted 2009-12-01T13:46:43.377

Reputation: 101

Crunchbang comes setup witha good assortment of terminal applications for functions normally considered 'gui only' My faves:

Vim text editor
MOC audio player
Mutt email clientr
Lynx web browser

DaveParillo

Posted 2009-12-01T13:46:43.377

Reputation: 13 402

elinks for browsing.

warren

Posted 2009-12-01T13:46:43.377

Reputation: 8 599

tpp for presentation (powerpoint)
wyrd and remind for calendar and todo
w3m and surfraw for web
irssi for chat (irc and xmpp)
vim for editng text and code
toilet for ascii artish textual content
tmux for "window" management
qalc for and advanced calculator
curl and transmission-cli for downloading stuff
pianobar and cmus for music
nethack for fun
weather-util for weather forcasts

K. Mandla'a blog has a lot of good stuff in it.

kzh

Posted 2009-12-01T13:46:43.377

Reputation: 3 213

Clearly Lynx, CenterIM and irssi are my basic tools if I ever need to switch to the terminal for some reason.

Bobby

Posted 2009-12-01T13:46:43.377

Reputation: 8 534

For all your gaming needs, you can replace regular GUI tetris with bastet

Jonno_FTW

Posted 2009-12-01T13:46:43.377

Reputation: 1 280

2What, no mention of nethack? The ultimate terminal gaming experience? – Geoff Fritz – 2009-12-01T17:40:38.047