[BRLTTY] Firelynx v0.1.0

[Dietmar Segbert]

Hello Nicko,

thanks for your answer.

I followed your instructions and now it works.

Regards.

Dietmar

> nico at fluxnic.net schrieb am 10.06.26:

> Hi Dietmar,

> The "selenium-manager not found" line was a false alarm from my launcher
> (it only looked for a standalone command and missed the copy bundled
> inside Selenium). It did NOT cause your failure ? in your virtualenv,
> Selenium's bundled manager actually fetched geckodriver fine; that's how
> you got far enough to hit the real error.

> That real error, "Failed to set preferences", was the bug: on a
> brand-new install the Firefox profile directory didn't exist yet, and
> the newer geckodriver refuses to start with a profile path that isn't
> there. Firelynx now creates it first. Fixed in v0.1.1, just pushed.

> On the setup: your virtualenv with `pip install selenium` is actually
> the right call on Debian ? the pip package bundles a working
> selenium-manager, whereas Debian's apt python3-selenium has a
> known-broken one and geckodriver isn't in the Debian repos. You can drop
> webdriver-manager though; Firelynx doesn't use it.

> So: in your venv, just update and reinstall ?

>     git clone https://github.com/npitre/firelynx.git
>     cd firelynx && ./install.sh

> If geckodriver ever fails to download, grab it from
> https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases and put it on your PATH.

> If anything else misbehaves, run with --debug and send the output.


> On Tue, 9 Jun 2026, Dietmar Segbert wrote:

>> Hello Nicko,
>>
>> thanks for your work.
>>
>> I have tried to install firelynx under debian trixie.
>> In Trixie python3-selenium ist version 4.24.xx and i become some errors
>> selenium-manager not found
>>
>> The install.sh installs under my user musik, but if i start firelynx thies
>> error will appear.
>>
>> In my ser-account segbertd if use a virtual Version of python and i
>> install pip3 install selenium and pip3 install webdriver-manager. The
>> install.sh ends without errors, but firelynx http://localhost ends with
>> the error:
>>
>> Using installed location: /home/segbertd/.local/share/firelynx
>> Warning: selenium-manager not found. Please install python3-selenium and
>> selenium-manager packages.
>> ERROR:src.firefox_backend:Failed to start Firefox: Message: Failed to set
>> preferences: unknown error; For documentation on this error, please visit:
>> https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/webdriver/troubleshooting/
>> errors#sessionnotcreatedexception
>>
>> In my virtual env python3-selenium ist 4.44.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Dietmar
>>
>>> nico at fluxnic.net schrieb am 09.06.26:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>
>>> That thing I teased is out. Firelynx bridges lynx and Firefox: a small
>>> local proxy runs your lynx requests through a headless Firefox, so
>>> JavaScript actually executes and modern sites render, then hands clean,
>>> semantic HTML back to lynx. You keep lynx's fast, braille-friendly
>>> interface ? your keybindings and workflow ? while getting a real shot at
>>> JavaScript-heavy sites that normally serve a blank page. Reddit, for
>>> instance, works (it even clears Reddit's JavaScript challenge). It all
>>> runs on your own machine; HTTPS, forms and logins, and basic handling
>>> for JavaScript dialogs and multi-factor auth may sometimes work too.
>>
>>> Honesty up front: this is alpha. It's slower than plain lynx (a full
>>> Firefox renders every page), content extraction sometimes trims too
>>> much, and the one thing I really wanted to crack ? Google Search ? still
>>> trips Google's bot detection and lands on a CAPTCHA. I tried a lot of
>>> approaches and couldn't beat it, so I'm not holding the release back any
>>> longer. DuckDuckGo is the default and works well; other engines are
>>> hit-or-miss (Bing sometimes stalls on a cookie-consent page). For
>>> everyday browsing plain lynx is still more reliable; reach for Firelynx
>>> when a site really needs JavaScript.
>>
>>> Linux only; needs Firefox, lynx, and Python/Selenium. It's a git clone
>>> plus ./install.sh ? Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu steps are in the README:
>>
>>>   https://github.com/npitre/firelynx
>>
>>> Enjoy !
>>
>>> Nicolas
>>
>>
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