Just another question, is there a way to dynamically link the SDL library in linux so each binary I make(like map editor and game for instance) don''t need to have the extra 200 some odd kb attached to them?

It seemed to me that every problem you''ve has so far has been caused by the lack of a dynamically built SDL library (you wouldn''t have had to explicitly link to X and such if you were using a properly built dynamic library). The default is to link dynamically. Check if you have the dynamic library and make sure it''s symlinked properly (normally done by ldconfig). Using the sdl-config script is preferable to manually linking SDL, as it''ll handle other potential dependencies properly for whichever platform it was built.