Since their birth, UNIX systems have been specially enhanced for network tasks, to efficiently handle communication protocols connecting computers across the net and of course the Internet. Being a GNU/Linux system, dyne:bolic offers a vast range of possibilities and applications, from the simpliest to the most advanced network software.
Given its variety, the Communication section is the biggest software category in dyne:bolic and is separated into various subsections, which we will further analyze in this chapter. Read on if you want to discover how to connect with people across the Net and the many ways to do that.
There are three different ways to access the WWW pages on the net using dyne:bolic, thanks to the variety of web browsers developed for the GNU/Linux platform.
The first and most familiar browser is Firefox which is developed by the Mozilla team in order to have a fully capable tool to access the web. Firefox offers an intuitive interface, bookmark handling and a couple of plugins that can be used to extend its functionalities.
Then we have Links which is a lightweight alternative to the previous: it runs much faster on old computers while still offering most of the crucial functionalities. It is remarkable its quality and speed in rendering web pages, making it a great tool for presentations.
At last there is Lynx which is a text-only browser capable to show the text on a web page without images, which can result in a faster access to the content, while being the faster tool available to browse the web.
Besides the browsers, dyne:bolic also includes a powerful "spider" to crawl and download entire websites: WGet, which is a commandline tool. As usual you can discover how it works by consulting the manual from an XTERM, typing man wget.