The NetSurf browser the author tried out has multiple frontends. Two run on OpenBSD that I know of, the “default” GTK frontend and an SDL‐based framebuffer frontend. As was pointed out, GTK has a rather sizeable number of dependencies; building the framebuffer frontend instead would save a lot of time.
I don't think these machines achieved much popularity in China either, as standard PCs were far more common and compatible with the existing software base.
the keyboard and trackpad are internally PS/2.
Interesting that the PC influence is still there, although I'm pretty sure a MIPS doesn't have them on port 60h/64h, or indeed any I/O ports. I remember having a similar moment of surprise when I played around with an ARM VM and discovered it had a "VGA-compatible" GPU emulating an old ISA-class chip.
To be fair to that there wasn't really any other viable mass-market interface that the keyboard manufacturers in China/Taiwan could standardize on. The PS/2 keyboard interface was backwards compatible with an AT keyboard through the user of a passive physical pin adapter. And USB didn't exist yet.
Oddly enough, the SGI Fuel (also the Tezro, I think) had PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports but also offered USB ports and support for HID devices in IRIX.
I have no idea whether the keyboard and mouse that shipped with those later SGIs were PS/2 or USB devices.
edit: IMO there was nothing wrong with preferring PS/2 to USB 20-some years ago. Higher theoretical refresh rate on the PS/2 mouse at that time and the PS/2 keyboard offered better n-key rollover, although I question whether any of that mattered one way or the other to an SGI owner
In x86 i386 world there was a good long overlap of ATX/MicroATX motherboards shipping with both PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports and also USB ports on them, starting from 1998 era Pentium 2/3 systems when USB first became commonplace and continuing until probably 2010 or so.
The wsconscfg problem with multiple screens, whatever it exactly is, is decidedly odd. According to this, the display is being driven as smfb0 in what is largely a dumb framebuffer mode, no acceleration, no GPU, no fancy high jinks whatsoever. wscons/wsdisplay should have no difficulty with multiple screens on that sort of thing.
I think they're also super useless, to be honest. Incredibly slow. Linux support continued to degrade the entire time I owned mine. The keyboard and display are far too small to be usable. The graphics chip accelerates basically nothing.
I sold mine [1] on eBay back in October. I hope the new owner enjoys it more than I did :)
I think because it's RMS champion of digital openess using using an archaine Chinese laptop, it's the dichotomy of China providing a product that's essentially more free (of binary blob firmware) then a western equivalent laptop. Take heed and dispare oh ye providers of win modems!
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