thanks for the reply...

perhaps i was a little hasty/brief in the inital mail -- i have installed several different versions of GD.pm, libgd, libpng, freetype, and libtiff, all on several different linux kernels (2.0.*, 2.2.*) and distros (debian slink, potato, mandrake 7.0, 7.1), and including the autoconf patching process you mentioned.

even so, i am stumped. i have even written to lincoln stein, the author of GD, but hey, he's a busy man.

guess i should try him again...