Browser

Have you ever wondered what happens when you are surfing the www? How does the text show up so pretty in your web browser?

$ telnet yashy.com 80

and once you see

Trying 206.248.137.44... Connected to yashy.com. Escape character is '^]'.

then type

GET / HTTP/1.0

hit [ENTER] twice, and watch the text scroll by. This is the information (HTML) that is sent to your web browser. You may also be interested in the extra information transfered when using SSL. You can verify this by running a sniffer and then browsing a webpage.

Debian
To change your default browser in a debian based distribution like Ubuntu:

sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

and choose the one you want from the list of your installed browsers.