connect to the internet with text only
 

I wish to connect to the internet without using a browser or search engine,using command or terminal only......so far no one has been able to answer this
question
wjamesie

Welcome to LQ!

I may be misreading your question, but if you are asking about command line tools for accessing the internet then you have:
1. File transfer tools such as wget, lftp, rsync (for rsync enabled servers)
2. Command line based browsers (also useful for browsing html documentation) such as lynx and links

You can use text-based Web browsers such as Elinks, Lynx and Links.

http://thesmithfam.org/blog/2006/05/.../#comment-4847

"Just in case anyone still comes across this blog post…

Don’t use this hack. Use netcat or socat. There is a reason that Debian has this disabled.

This is a security risk on a multi-user system. It is easy to restrict access to socat, netcat, wget, and curl. It is impossible to disable this feature of the shell without changing the shell. This is a feature transparent enough that many administrators could overlook, allowing into their otherwise-secure chroots.

While I admit that on a single-user system, this is less of an issue than on a multi-user system, the fact that the security issue exists requires the expectation (and subsequent reality) that many systems have this disabled.

On the other hand, it is true that netcat also doesn’t exist everywhere, if you must make the choice between programming for netcat or bash sockets — choose netcat. It isn’t that difficult to install and it doesn’t necessitate the creation of unnecessary security concerns.

I would be very upset if a vendor told me that I needed to have a bash enabled with sockets; while I wouldn’t at all mind a vendor telling me to install netcat. At least I can restrict netcat."

There were security concerns with this technique in 2007.

I disagree with that security reasoning. It appears to apply only in chroot jails where the user cannot write any files.

Perl and all sorts of other languages have a network capability - why shouldn't bash?

If the user can write files then they could install their own copy of nc.

To constrain user actions you want OS security features - not try to deny them access to programs that perform those actions.

example
 

yes you are correct in your assumption.....as you can guess i am a newby and i would like to use text based surfing.....but i dont know what the commands are or how to enter them......iam running Zorin 06 on one machine and win 7 on the other......could you give me an example on how to send a picture to a family group using only text.? for instance i would click on <terminal> in zorin and command prompt in windows...or would i.? ans then type what.....? thankyou all for your assistance in advance.
wjamesi

Never used it, but mutt is a text-based mail client that might do what you need; it might be in zorin's repositories.

PS
If you really want to go hardcore, you can connect to servers using telnet (e.g. telnet http://www.google.com 80) and simulate the protocol(s).

Technically, this is not an answer to your question, as you are explicitly looking for a way to connect to the Internet "without using a browser or search engine". I still believe, however, that you should try a text-based web browser for that purpose.

Not sure about Windows, but on Linux there are several text-based browsers. The most known ones are Lynx, w3m, and Elinks. The above are links to the Wikipedia pages for each of them, where you can see how they look and there are also links to their official web pages. Virtually every Linux distibution includes those text-based browsers in their repositories, so you shouldn't have problems installing them.

In general, expect faster browsing, to the cost of an interface that looks strange in the beginning, but you will soon figure out how to use it. Pictures are not seen by default, although at least w3m has a way to (optionally) show pictures as well. As far I know, Elinks is the most popular browser of that kind, although I prefer w3m. I would suggest to give them a try and decide which one you like most.

lynx, w3m ...

If you have a mail server configured for sending mail to external addresses

thanks i will try everything
wjamesie

when i type in telnet alli get is " not a file type or command "and the same with w3m,rsync,netcat,elinks ans lynx.....thats using command prompt in windows..i havent tried Zorin because my modem is not exceptable to linux versions. and i cant update yet.

Apparently, you have to install those applications first ("installing" might mean just extracting a compressed file to a directory and run the application from there). As far I know, Lynx is the only text web browser I mentioned above that has a Win32 version, although I never used that one. You might want to try Lynx then (Dos/Win32 version can be downloaded here, and should run on modern Windows as well. I repeat, however, that I never used the Windows version myself.

In a way, w3m and Elinks also have a "Windows version", but needs Cygwin installed and I wouldn't recommend that one, as it would need more effort to get it working and will probably confuse beginneers.

Most of the stuff mentioned here is for Linux. Even then, it might not be installed by default. In windows, you can also use putty instead of telnet; you start it from the gui but will (can) further behave like telnet.