On 26 Aug 2001, Iggy Drougge wrote:

> I think we've established this as a sad but inevitable fact already. The
> Mozilla Netscape rumour must have been but a wild rumour.

[There used to be a port, which we had here at Stanford in '96 or so, and
which I used before my Ultrix disk died. It is my intention not to mention
this fact ever again, as the code seems to be gone forever, in spite of
sightings here and at Berkeley.]

Regardless, application support on netbsd/pmax is lacking in several
areas:  no web browser (e.g. current netscape, mozilla or konqueror,) no
java (e.g. kaffe,) no current KDE (e.g. kfm, konqueror, koffice, etc.) and
no xemacs binary. In general, "client" or "desktop" software is not
supported - e.g. kde/gnome, koffice/openoffice, etc.. Indeed, it's a
challenge just to find a program to write a letter or simple report using
netbsd/pmax (my choice is Ted - otherwise try troff, TeX, or enscript, or
perhaps LyX and AbiWord - LyX works better, in my experience.)

Unfortunately, the netbsd "ports" of desktop programs require significant
work to get them to compile on netbsd/pmax, and then additional work to
get them to run. This is reminiscent of Linux, where everything works
great as long as you are on an x86 machine.

Although vintage computing seems to be my hobby, it is extremely
time-consuming trying to compile anything on a pmax (even my blazing-fast
260 - fortunately I haven't up(?)graded to the molasses-like netbsd/pmax
1.5) and it's also difficult set up a cross-development environment on
anything except perhaps another netbsd machine...