This is a bug in compilation. After ./configure with xft libs, src/Makefile has this line in it: XFT_LIBS=-lXrender -L/usr/lib/1 -linux-gnu -lXft this causes the build to fail at link time when linking with Xft. I believe that XFT_LIBS is being set correctly by a line in the configure script. XFT_LIBS=`$PKG_CONFIG --libs "xft >= 0.13.0"|sed -e 's,///*,/,g'` But maybe somewhere in the toolchain this is getting mangled before it makes it's way into src/Makefile? Maybe some command in the chain is searching and replacing anything with -l in it? I seemed to have fixed it in my sources by replacing "-L/usr/lib/1 -linux-gnu" with "-L/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu" In GNU Emacs 23.3.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) of 2011-06-05 on dv7 Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11001000 configured using `configure '--with-tiff=no'' Important settings: value of $LC_ALL: nil value of $LC_COLLATE: nil value of $LC_CTYPE: nil value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil value of $LC_MONETARY: nil value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil value of $LC_TIME: nil value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8 value of $XMODIFIERS: nil locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix default enable-multibyte-characters: t Major mode: Fundamental Minor modes in effect: tooltip-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Recent input: M-x M-x M-x r e p o r t Recent messages: For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. call-interactively: Command attempted to use minibuffer while in minibuffer Quit Making completion list... Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort mail-extr message sendmail regexp-opt ecomplete rfc822 mml mml-sec password-cache mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mailcap mail-parse rfc2231 rfc2047 rfc2045 qp ietf-drums mailabbrev nnheader gnus-util netrc time-date mm-util mail-prsvr gmm-utils wid-edit mailheader canlock sha1 hex-util hashcash mail-utils emacsbug help-mode easymenu view tooltip ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel x-win x-dnd font-setting tool-bar dnd fontset image fringe lisp-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select scroll-bar mldrag mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core frame cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev loaddefs button minibuffer faces cus-face files text-properties overlay md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote make-network-process font-render-setting x multi-tty emacs)