When comparing Lynx vs Slimjet, the Slant community recommends Lynx for most people. In the question“What are the best web browsers for UNIX-like systems?” Lynx is ranked 14th while Slimjet is ranked 34th. The most important reason people chose Lynx is:
Being a text-only browser that runs inside the terminal makes Lynx very lightweight and minimal since it doesn't need much resources to run and too many things to render (pictures, videos etc...).
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Lightweight
Being a text-only browser that runs inside the terminal makes Lynx very lightweight and minimal since it doesn't need much resources to run and too many things to render (pictures, videos etc...).
Pro Useful for web developers
Since lynx does not load images or any graphical content (just like crawlers) one of these could be to test their website and see how search engine crawlers 'see' each page. Lynx can be used by web developers to test their websites for different reasons and applications.
Pro Get up-to-date web info for other apps like e.g. conky
Since lynx is a command line application, it might not be for every one. But for the curious it is a must-have tool. Have a conky? And you want some specific info in there that really matters to you? Well, let lynx to scrap it (anonymously) of the web for you. Stock quotes and exchange rates every couple of minutes in your conky? Sure you can! Just create your custom bash script to let lynx scrap it of the page of your choice and let it work with sed, grep and awk for example. What do you have to loose? ;)
Pro Useful in case of an UI failure
In case the UI, graphics driver or shell crashes you can still use lynx.
Pro Fast and stable
Lower memory footprint and CPU usage than Chromium.
Pro Built-in adblock
Supports adding lists in ublock, adblock, adblockplus, and peerblock/peerguardian text formats.
Pro Allows for no tracking
Has advanced settings to reduce web presence footprint.
Pro Built-in download manager
Multi-threaded streaming download manager with resume functionality. Interrupted downloads will resume when the program is launched again; number of threads and download location customizable on a per-download basis. Actually downloads Linux ISO's from most popular distributions faster than deluge, utorrent, transmission, etc.
Pro Still compatible with Google's ChromeSync functionality
Sign in to back up your extensions and settings, just like always.
Pro Notes plugin available
Pro Easily customize to stop spying verified by OpenSnitch
Just have to dig into all the Settings and disable them starting with SlimJet search.
Pro Customizable options to add additional buttons next to the address bar
Optional buttons such as go to home page, reopen closed tab, go to downloads, go to history and many more.
Pro Built-in Youtube/html5/flash downloader
Allows for downloading both video and extracted mp3 audio, a la Youtube2mp3.
Pro Cross-platform, with zipped portable application available for Windows
You can still bring it with you on a flash drive, even when you're not on Linux.
Pro Screen recording tools built in
Pro Separate from Google's servers and tracking
Pro Integrated shopping and share-to-social-media function
Button is linked to cookies, so doesn't work if signed out (for security/privacy), and also doesn't include any additional tracking like a browser extension would (Facebook, Amazon, etc.)
Pro Verbose resource management
Has a setting to unload tabs from RAM and CPU usage after a customizable threshold number of tabs are open built in.
Pro Idle tab unloading and other advanced features not found in Chrome/Chromium
A lot more configuration options for everything from built in "share to facebook" buttons to options meant to enable optimization on low powered/low RAM systems.
Cons
Con Text-based only
Lynx is a text-based only web browser and it's the oldest browser still in use. Being text-only, it's not very useful anymore outside some niche use cases.
Con Still based upon Chromium/Chrome
Can yield to bloat if clogged with too many plugins and apps from the webstore.
Con Has some CSS issues on some websites
Has problems loading Sourceforge.com