I went perusing some of your older articles. RAM booting is especially good for storage drive longevity. Writing a home directory and some packages every once is a while is much less stressful, especially when using flash memory(, like with a usual Rasp. Pi or booting from USB). A couple of linux distros that pique my interest default to RAM booting, those being http://tinycorelinux.net/ and https://alpinelinux.org/.
The colors of the neocities logo are quite baked here. I recommend using a palette generated to suit your particular image.
I don't know any good command-line tool for doing this, however I do know that mtpaint is excellent for doing this in exactly a way you choose. Multiple palette generation algorithms, multiple dithering algorithms, custom palettes if you prefer, along with otherwise nice facilities for ediiting images.
This is maybe the second time I've read about an Xorg version of links, and the first time I've seen it given praise. I found links2 packages under the name "links+".
The graphical mode ain't half bad! I sorely miss CSS, however this seems just about perfect for you.
Hmm, i guess i will give st another try then.