NetBSD on a PowerBook G4

[Taylor R Campbell <campbell%mumble.net@localhost>]

Hello!  Last night I installed NetBSD 4.0 on my PowerBook G4 1 GHz,
12-inch, and, despite the apparent complexity of the installation
instructions, once I understood how to follow only one thread through
the instructions for six different installation media and three
different major Open Firmware versions, the installation went
pleasantly smoothly.  Thanks!

I'd like to be able to experiment with this laptop as a primary work
machine.  There are two show-stopping issues with this proposition
that a preliminary Googling answered with disappointing results,
though, as did the INSTALL file for the 4.0 distribution.  This
PowerBook has an AirPort Extreme card, which is listed as unsupported;
and if I am to use this for general-purpose work, support for sleep
would be very convenient, but appears to be absent.  Is there work in
progress in it, and is this likely to change soon?  Supposing that you
were to stumble upon someone with a great deal of free time and
interest in making it change soon, what would the changes entail?

A third issue of somewhat less importance -- since I can, and shall
anyway, just use screen -- is whether tty-switching with wscons is now
supported.  I stumbled across a discussion on this list in the archive
from December of 2005, in which was discussed a new virtual console
driver that should adequately deal with Open Firmware, mentioned in
<http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-macppc/2005/12/07/0008.html>.  Is
this, or anything, supported in 4.0, or in -current; or shall I just
use screen solely for now?

Finally, I may want to install X eventually.  I know that I can
install XFree86 from the distribution sets, but then I suspect that it
will be an inevitable pain later to move to X.org.  However, I
stumbled across a bug report for X.org on NetBSD-current/macppc at
<http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-bugs/2008/01/19/msg000373.html>,
which concerns me -- is X.org supposed to work on NetBSD/macppc 4.0,
and if it does, and I install it now on 4.0, is it likely to continue
to work if I upgrade to 5.0 when it is released?  Or, since the
follow-up to the bug suggests that this problem is probably common to
XFree86 and X.org, is XFree86 just as likely to fail in 5.0, rendering
the question moot?  (Any XFree86 users on -current?)

As a postscript, does anyone have any further thoughts or advice on
the use of NetBSD on a PowerBook for a general-purpose work machine?
Anything other important snags that will make me stumble?  Anything
especially spiffy that I ought to know about?