Beginner's problems with old hardware

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jul 14, 2022, at 14:36, Eckard Brauer wrote:

> just subscribed to the list, and just reactivated an old Powerbook G4,
> only beacuse I noticed that Macports is around (usually I'm a Gentoo
> Linux user with only few *BSD background, so don't mind me stupid
> questions).

Welcome!

> Installing Ports on Sorbet Leopard went fine, but as everything (except
> App packages) is installed in /var/local,

It's /opt/local by default.

> how is it possible to provide
> some of the system packages with fresh frameworks, most important, SSL?
> I'd need that for Mail (even TenFourBird doesn't work) and a working
> browser...
> 
> Is there a good guideline on how to get all that running? Its somehow
> complicated to start. If there's any help, hint or howto, please notify
> me.

MacPorts doesn't attempt to provide any way to update the Apple software on your Mac. Instead, it provides a way to install other software that is hopefully more up-to-date than what Apple provided.

I'm not sure if we have any good GUI mail clients or web browsers in MacPorts. These are typically large projects which have been difficult to build. We used to have thunderbird and firefox ports but they were removed because they were out of date and we were not able to update them. Tickets have been filed requesting that they be re-added but to my knowledge no work has been done about that:

https://trac.macports.org/ticket/63175

https://trac.macports.org/ticket/63174

https://trac.macports.org/ticket/63219

If you or anyone feels motivated to work on that please do!