I had a similar problem getting netsurf to run, but managed to fix it thanks to persistence and blind luck.
Problem 1: init mouse failed
Solution: Add myself to the input group (the group that owns /dev/input/mice
Problem 2: Unable to set video: Could not set console screen info fbdev
Solution: Install the xserver-xorg-video-fbdev and fbset packages
Problem 3: Running netsurf causes the screen to go blank and the system to hang, requiring a hard reboot
Solution: I ran it in verbose mode and redirected standard error to a file, and I saw that netsurf was complaining about not being able to find DejaVuSans.ttf. I copied the file from /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu to /usr/share/netsurf