Before we give this bug any attention, two things:

1. It's not a high-priority bug, and I think you know that.

2. We work our asses off for this distro. The least you could do is show a little friggin respect and diplomacy when reporting issues or concerns. If you're having a bad day because pacman wanted you to install Xorg, don't take it out on us. Deal with it or go find another group of volunteer developers that enjoy adjectives like "idiotic".


With that said, passing the bug to dorphell so he can take a look.

It just seems backwards to need an X server for a text based browser. Plus, links is something many rely on quite frequently.

And I'm not having a bad day because of pacman. I'm having a bad day because I'm vomiting about twice an hour. :( Sorry if I was harsh.

Links has the following shared library dependancies:

linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
libSDL-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libSDL-1.2.so.0 (0xb7f60000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7f49000)
libtiff.so.3 => /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3 (0xb7ef9000)
libjpeg.so.62 => /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62 (0xb7edb000)
libpng.so.3 => /usr/lib/libpng.so.3 (0xb7ea8000)
libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0xb7e96000)
libssl.so.0.9.7 => /usr/lib/libssl.so.0.9.7 (0xb7e65000)
libcrypto.so.0.9.7 => /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.7 (0xb7d5f000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/libdl.so.2 (0xb7d5c000)
libgpm.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgpm.so.1 (0xb7d56000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/libm.so.6 (0xb7d33000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0xb7c19000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0xb7b48000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb7a7c000)
libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0xb7a6e000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7feb000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb7a65000)
libncurses.so.5 => /usr/lib/libncurses.so.5 (0xb7a25000)

Being that it is not compiled with X11 support, it does not make sense to compile it with these dependancies.

For example:

# links -g
Could not initialize any graphics driver. Tried the following drivers:
fb:
Could not get VT mode.

I recommend either recompiling it with only textual support, or recompiling it with full X11 support and updating the dependancies. Being that dillo is a far better "ultra-light" X11 browser, it makes sense to not require X11 for Links, or provide a links-graphical package.

The configure line is as follows:

./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-javascript --enable-graphics --without-x

Apparently the --enable-graphics is forcing the need for the X11 sub-system, although it is strange that the X11 sub-system is not in fact available, only FrameBuffer output is supported.

I have talked to dorphell and he'll take a look when he has time. In the meantime to Sasha, simply install SDL without Xorg (tell it to ignore the dependancy), SDL is not very large.

One other note:

Is there any possibility of Arch Linux using the "Links-hacked" version ?

It is superior to regular Links in many ways, including a much improved hierarchical configuration system with dozens more options (such as changing background and foreground colour schemes), support for URL and text copying to the X11 clipboard, tabbed browsing, etc.

http://xray.sai.msu.ru/~karpov/links-hacked/

And don't listen to that warning of "This code is still experimental and buggy!!!", heh. It is rock solid, I've used it for dozens of hours both in text and graphics mode, without the slightest issue.

I came here to report a bug related to this, but I'll just add a comment here since it's very related. Since links doesn't work without SDL (for better or worse, I don't mind personally), shouldn't SDL be a dependency for links? I got the "error while loading shared libraries" myself, so this seems obvious. Reading the other comments it seems this is being looked into already, but anyway, just my 0.2 Norwegian kroner :)

Getting rid of SDL means no graphics in FB which is the only reason I ever use links. (I use w3m for non-graphics console-browsing) This takes out the spunk that links is all about but it's either that or remove x-server from the sdl deplist which I don't want to do.