[workingclasshacker]

Hi, I was wondering if there are anyone working on porting a newer web browser for Irix? If so, where is the project, I would like to contribute. If not, I will consider getting one up and running

/Espen

[gijoe77]

last effort I am aware of was Firefox3, and from what I recall reading on nekochan it was a real pain

[Raion]

We are stuck with Firefox 3 and Dillo 3 as the most up to date browsers for a few reasons:

Firefox requires a later GTK2 port and a lot of other crap that is just a pain to update and port. Additionally, with Firefox moving to Rust that makes it 100% infeasible to maintain or spend anymore time on.

WebKit is possible. It would be difficult as both GTK and QT toolkits are obsolete on IRIX plus shit like dbus doesnt work.

The best idea is either a simple html5 browser, or a WebKit browser that can use motif or fltk or another common IRIX compatible toolkit.

The IRIX toolchain has three big issues:

No modern compiler. GCC support was removed after 4.7.4

IRIX LD linker is BAD and GNU ld is shit. we would need a new linker, either gold linker or Solaris linker.

IRIX has ancient libs. This can be mitigated to some degree with libs from a modern BSD.

[Trippynet]

To be honest, you might be better off trying to work on and/or improve WebRenderingProxy. This is a tool that runs on a modern machine and can download and render webpages before turning them into a static image with an imagemap for the links. You take an ancient browser on IRIX, set the proxy to your WRP machine and every time you request a webpage, the WRP machine does the rendering and your old browser just needs to display an image/image map.

Problem is, I could never get it to work properly for me - it's very much a simple hobbyist project with little/no support. Hence, a more solid/flexible version would be useful and would allow a fair degree of modern web browsing under IRIX (static content only obviously).

[stormy]

Has anyone considered a port of Netsurf? This seems to be the browser aimed at low end vintage machines. It's ported to many platforms including even older ones like Atari and Amiga.

[Raion]

Its been discussed but it depends on gtk2 and we would need someone to port a very recent port of that. And that limits it to higher end machines. An indy won't run GTK well at all.

[stormy]

Its been discussed but it depends on gtk2 and we would need someone to port a very recent port of that. And that limits it to higher end machines. An indy won't run GTK well at all.

Probably a stupid question but why does it run on Atari/Amiga when they don't use GTK? Is it because they have their own ancient frameworks that they used for porting? But if that is the case then surely X has its own form of framework.. Sorry if this question is stupid.

[Raion]

I'm not an Amiga or Atari expert, but those ports were handled by specific groups who have far more developers behind them. We could probably do a Motif or FLTK version of NetSurf, but that is going to require a developer with a high level of skill. We simply don't have that talent handy here.

[commodorejohn]

I can't remember, is there a functional port of ELinks for IRIX? That's my go-to for web browsing on vintage systems.

[Jacques]

I'm not an Amiga or Atari expert, but those ports were handled by specific groups who have far more developers behind them. We could probably do a Motif or FLTK version of NetSurf, but that is going to require a developer with a high level of skill. We simply don't have that talent handy here.

Could Irix run the Framebuffer implementation of Netsurf? Just a question in the wild...

Framebuffer

The framebuffer front end lets NetSurf run on any system that can provide a framebuffer surface and user input. It has no operating system or GUI toolkit requirements.