ELinks
Text-based web browser
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
ELinks is a text-based web browser for the operating systems DOS, Linux, and Windows. It is free and open-source software with a GNU General Public License (GPL) 2.0 only.
| ELinks | |
|---|---|
An older version of this article rendered in ELinks | |
| Original authors | Petr Baudiš, Jonas Fonseca |
| Developer | Witold Filipczyk |
| Initial release | March 2, 2002 |
| Stable release | |
| Preview release | 0.19.0rc1
/ December 6, 2025 |
| Written in | C, C++ |
| Operating system | DOS, Linux, Windows |
| Available in | English, Polish, Danish, French, Serbian, Hungarian, Czech, German, |
| Type | Text-based web browser |
| License | GPL 2.0 only |
| Website | github |
| Repository | github |
History
It began in late 2001 as an experimental fork by Petr Baudiš of the Links Web browser, hence the E in the name.[2] Since then, the E has come to stand for Enhanced or Extended.[3] On 1 September 2004, Baudiš handed maintainership of the project over to Danish developer Jonas Fonseca, citing a lack of time and interest and a desire to spend more time coding rather than reviewing and organising releases.[4]
On 17 March 2017, OpenBSD removed ELinks from its ports tree, citing concerns with security issues and lack of responsiveness from the developers.[5]
On 17 November 2017, ELinks was forked into another program named felinks, meaning forked elinks. On 1 December 2020, the felinks repository on GitHub was renamed to elinks, with permission from Baudiš, as the old ELinks was not being actively maintained.[6]
elinks is being actively maintained: preview version 0.18.0rc1 was released 7 December 2024,[7] while stable version 0.18.0 was released 25 December 2024.[8]
Features
- HTTP and Proxy authentication
- Persistent HTTP cookies
- Support for browser scripting in Perl, Python, Ruby, Lua and GNU Guile[9]
- Tabs (though still text mode)[9]
- HTML tables and HTML frames[9]
- Background download with queueing
- Some support for Cascading Style Sheets[9]
- Some support for ECMAScript by using Mozilla's SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine[9]
- Editing of text boxes in external text editor
- Mouse support, with wheel scroll
- Colour text display
- Protocols supported:
- local files, Finger, Hypertext Transfer Protocol HTTP, Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), File Service Protocol (FSP), Server Message Block (SMB), Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)
- experimental: BitTorrent, gopher, gemini,[4] nntp
