Numerous people ask this question on lynx-dev periodically. This page is an attempt to answer some of the questions and direct you to the resident Lynx-genius for a particular platform in case you're having trouble. Most of us will try to be helpful, but please be considerate when asking questions.
Amiga | Atari | BeOS | DOS/Windows | Macintosh/Rhapsody | OS/2 | OS-9 | Unix | VMS
You can get lynx for Amiga at any AmiNet site, such as http://www.aminet.org/pub/aminet/ in the comm/www directory. FrEdY <maniac (at) mx3 (dot) redestb (dot) es> is the person who compiles and uploads recent lynx versions to aminet.
There is also a Lynx port for Amiga which seems to be quite successful, though it is showing its age. ALynx 1.29 is the most current version and is based on a port of Lynx2.4-FM. From all acounts, ALynx runs on Amiga without any major problems. More information is available at the Amiga Lynx pages.
Atari users have been able to build Lynx on their machines.
Lynx will compile on BeOS with very minor modifications. More details are avialable at John Brajkovic's page
Wayne Buttles has been working with the Lynx team on creating a true port of Lynx. Lynx 2.8 now contains two real ports of Lynx to the Wintel world, one for Win32 (95 and NT) and another for DOS running on a 386 or later processor. More information is at http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/lynxport.htm Wayne has a wealth of information on various DOS web browsers at http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/
DOS-Lynx is a completely different browser that runs on DOS. It has it's own development list called DOSLynx-dev. You can subscribe to it by sending a message to listproc (at) listproc (dot) cc (dot) ukans (dot) edu with SUBSCRIBE DOSLYNX-DEV <YOUR NAME> in the message body.
Those interested in the future development of DOSLynx might wish to contact Wayne Buttles <buttles (at) wsb (dot) champlain (dot) edu> directly. Most questions/queries should be sent to the DOSLynx-Dev list though. Wayne's most recent statement on the feasability of making a Lynx binary for DOS elucidates some issues. Meanwhile, we hear that Lynx 2.5 has successfully been ported to GNU-WIN32 by Sergey Okhaskin <sos (at) prospect (dot) com.ru>.
The DOS-Lynx page at UKans has some useful info about DOS-Lynx. F-DISK's DOS-Internet page has information on using DOS to get to general network services, including the web. The F-DISK page is maintained by Wayne. You might also want to consider using Bobcat which is an alternative text browser for DOS.
Lynx runs on Rhapsody, a pre-compiled binary is available from http://www.bow.net/rhapsody.html
Olivier Gutknecht <gutkneco (at) lirmm (dot) fr> has made available the first beta of MacLynx. It runs on both M68K and PowerPCs, and binaries are available. The alphas were quite robust, though there are a few quirks with the curses application. You can get MacLynx from http://www.lirmm.fr/~gutkneco/maclynx/
It's reportedly easy to build Lynx for mklinux, just use the linux-ncurses argument for make (but you must have ncurses installed). There's a binary available through LYBiDO
There are Lynx executables for mklinux available from ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/Linux/mklinux/mkarchive/comm/browsers/index.html In addition, it may be possible that someone has compiled Lynx on MachTen (Unix for the Mac) but we haven't heard about it yet.
There is a version of Lynx ported to the PowerPC running BE's Be Operating Systems. BeOS is shipping with Mac clones as of early 1997. The Lynx port was/is-to-be accomplished by John Jeffy Lin <jjl (at) columbia (dot) edu> and more information can be found at BE's BeWare: Planned Communications page.
There is a port of Lynx 2.7.1 available at http://studentweb.tulane.edu/~jmcbray/lynx/. The port was accomplished by Jason McBrayer <Jason (dot) McBrayer (at) tulane (dot) edu> and is being used successfully on systems at Tulane.
Another option is "Lynx/2", a divergent text browser for OS/2 based on a very old Lynx. It has seen extensive development (code which has not been publicly released for inclusion into the "mainstream" Lynx) and can do tables and java reasonably well. Binaries and info are available from http://www.iglou.com/DeckerAutomation/products.html#lynx Lynx/2 is developed by Derek Decker <derek (at) decker (dot) net>. We would suggest that users encourage Derek to release the source for Lynx/2 so it can benefit the "mainstream" Lynx.
We have heard of one success story as far as compiling the Unix/VMS distribution of Lynx on an OS-9 machine goes. The modifications made were quite comprehensive though, and the person who made them decided not to submit them for inclusion into the generic Unix/VMS distribution. For more information contact "Scott McGee (Personal)" <smcgee (at) sol (dot) slcc (dot) edu>.
Lynx runs on most *ix operating systems without a problem. The Lynx 2.8 distribution should compile out of the box for most flavours of Unix. The autoconfigure script is pretty smart at generating a sensible Makefile for most Unixes. Most Unix/Linux distributions come with a Lynx binary. If your system has an old version of Lynx, you might want to inform your vendor, and request that they upgrade future distributions.
There are known problems with compiling for certain hardware/software combinations. If you are having trouble compiling, or trouble running the Lynx executable immediately after compiling it, please read the PROBLEMS file that came with the distribution. The PROBLEMS file for Lynx 2.8.2 is available here. If you can't find a solution in either of these places, feel free to send e-mail to lynx-dev@gnu.org with a complete, detailed descripton of your woes.
Lynx 2.8 will compile for VMS with DECC, VAXC, or Pat Rankin's VMS port of GNUC, on AXPen or VAXen, and any of the TCP-IP agents for VMS (including MultiNet, UCX, TCPware, SOCKETSHR_TCP, CMU_TCP and WIN_TCP).