If you need a text-based web browser that doesn't require a
graphical user interface (GUI), one alternative is the
Lynx
browser that is available for a variety of operating systems, including
Linux,
OS X/macOS,
DOS, and
Microsoft Windows. If you have the
Homebrew package management software installed on a
OS X/macOS system, you can use it to easily install the Lynx browser using the
command brew install lynx.
Advantages to using a text-based browser such as Lynx, in addition to it not requiring a GUI, making it suitable to be run in a Terminal window, is that it doesn't support Adobe Flash, which makes it invulnerable to malware distributed through vulnerabilities in Flash. Also, because it doesn't support JavaScript nor graphics, it prevents tracking software that uses JavaScript or web bugs, aka web beacons, which can track your web browsing activities via small graphics files that will be invisible to you on a webpage, from being used to track your browsing activities. It does support HTTP cookies, though, which are also used by sites to track visitors, but Lynx will prompt you if you want to allow cookies for a site when you visit the site and has whitelisting and blacklisting capabilities. E.g., when a site tries to place a cookie on your system, Lynx will prompt you as to whether it should be allowed. You can choose from "Y/N/Always/neVer."
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