Enabling framebufferr without X

I’d like to view images and graphics in a shell/terminal/command line without X.

Because I’d like to set up a fully remote development environment, and Emacs’ Org-Mode uses PNG files to render LaTeX and of course to plot images, I’d like to be able to view simple PNG files in terminal mode.

Now, I can install a desktop, like Unity or a more lightweight one, and then use that to run GUI Emacs (or surf the internet for that matter). That works for rendering images. But it is more resource-heavy than I’d like.

I know this can be done with ImageMagick, Dvipng, or more probably fbi or fim, if I can get the framebuffer to work. Those tools work from the command line without an X window.

Is this possible? I’m working on an Ubuntu 14.04. Thanks!