Links2 in tty
I found it myself in search of a solution, so perhaps someone else will too.
So an update: I found that under 12.04 two things helped get links2 -g working in framebuffer right after installing links2:
installing gpm (not sure if #2 would have worked already on its own - I installed gpm before)
sudo dpkg-statoverride --update --add root root 4755 /usr/bin/links2