Retroarch, which provides a pretty graphical config fronted and file browser (more or less) to various programs that use its provided IO capabilities ("cores", implemented as dynamic libraries—mostly game console and computer system emulators, original games, and media-related programs) can run in the kernel's direct rending mode, which is, at least from the user's perspective, kind of like a framebuffer, though with 3d accelleration. If you could find a browser that can be packaged as a dynamic lib, output to a provided opengl interface, and accapt input programmatically, it could probably be ported to Retroarch very quickly by someone familiar with that process, and run without the x window system.

I remember using Awesomiun render to OpenGL, so this could be done.

Check out w3m (which has some graphics support).

There's also Netsurf, I've not used it but it. Looks awesome: http://www.netsurf-browser.org

Sadly neither of those can properly handle the kind of JS a modern site throws at a browser...

Netsurf is working on it by shipping with Duktape. Still very experimental, though.

No, this is true.

I wonder how hard that would be.

It's possible without X. Links (http://links.twibright.com/) did it via framebuffer for years.

Unless you mean in actual text/sixel mode. Then I haven't heard of one.

Links definitely works in text mode, in fact I've only used it that way.

I meant sixel, as in text pretending it's graphics.

Iirc, links do not use sixel but rather a trick of X. Meaning that it can only show images when run within certain terminal emulators (not anything derived from GTK or Qt).

The "trick of X" you speak of is that it figures out X window ID of the terminal, then asks the X server the coordinates of that window, then creates borderless windows at the correct coordinates above that window to show images.

However, in addition to this "trick of X" mode, links also supports rendering its own X window; with proportional fonts and everything; no terminal emulator needed.

However, the graphics system isn't based on X; X is just one backend; it can also render to the Linux framebuffer, so it doesn't even need X11 to be running, it can render full graphics straight in your TTY.