Re: Kde 1 or 2 on NetBSd 5.x

[David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost>]

On 1 April 2015 at 13:55, Larry Stotler <larrystotler%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> Since I managed to get NetBSD running on my Workpad Z50, I'm now
> working on adding in programs.  Compiling from source is not very
> realistic on this machine, so I was planning to install NetBSD on
> something faster & try to cross compile.


Another thought might be to try installing a NetBSD mips port under
qemu or gxemul on a fast machine and build natively on an emulated
mips box with fast IO and lots of memory.

>
> Couple of questions:
>
> 1.  Can I compile binaries for 5.x using a 6.x install?  or do I need
> to use 5.x?


Probably, but it would be quite awkward are you would need to link
them against 5.x libraries and suchlike. As a general rule anything
built under NetBSD will run on that version or anything later, but not
the other way around.

As an aside - did you have a chance to try NetBSD-7 or current to see
if the issues you saw under -6 have been fixed?

> 2.  If I can find older versions of programs, like KDE1 or KDE2, would
> it be possible that they could be compiled for 5.x & ran?


Again probably, but likely to be a lot of work. You might have more
luck with xfce or one of the other "light weight" modern environments.
For a very quick and simple window manager I quite like jwm.

> 3.  Since there are older versions of NetBSD available, & since I
> probably won't have this machine connected to the internet much, would
> an older, unsupported of NetBSD be any faster on this hardware?


Gcc from an older NetBSD would definitely compile faster  (the older
gcc versions used much less memory and CPU to build. Newer gcc will
generate better code, though its not necessarily significantly better
given the additional memory and cpu cost).

> 4.  Does anyone know if there are older versions of software archived
> for older versions of NetBSD?  If so, where?

Um, pass.

>
> I still have old copies of some Linux distros that I use on older
> hardware, but these have programs with them, where as the NetBSD iso
> files don't seem to have anything other than the basic install.  Does
> anyone master a more full install of NetBSD that can be downloaded and
> installed?
>
> I'm guessing that the probably aren't that many precompiled binaries
> for hpcmips versus i386 or x64 or powerpc.....


Generally any NetBSD/mips binaries would be fine - modulus the endian
and if any specific target processor options have been given. Not that
I suspect NetBSD/pmax binaries are any easier to find :-p