Nekoware is a community project targeting IRIX 6.5.21 or later (most commonly .22 and .30) MIPSIV systems. IRIX is a discontinued, System V based UNIX OS for MIPS-based workstations. Nekoware is a high performance, well-optimized group of LTS supported software. Each package has a maintainer. Nekoware is released on a quarterly basis, with the newest iteration of it starting at 2025-Q2 (Codenamed HaveBlue) Each quarter, the entire base release is rebuilt. Not all packages are turned over, but many are.
IRIX is a 20+ year old motif-based OS running on MIPS hardware with the very fastest, rarest systems running at about 1GHz. Nekoware is designed to run okay on a median-50 of systems. Even if we had these things, it would be a poor experience.
GNU/Linux systems use a single X visual and colormap for all windows by default; IRIX does not. As a result there are a variety of bugs lurking in the source code where programmers have, for example, allocated colors in the wrong colormap or assumed that all windows have the same depth. Try making your default X server visual 24-bit TrueColor by adding “-depth 24 -class TrueColor” to /usr/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers. (Run xdpyinfo first to make sure your server supports this visual, and be sure to restart the X server after making a change. Logging out may not be enough!)
Many of these are derived from IRL military projects. Others are references to Arknights or other video games. The primary maintainer, Raion, is a fan of this stuff.
This project is designed to give a decent set of semi-up-to-date software that works well. GCC is a great compiler, but has caveats to use with IRIX. C++ libs don't link with system libs, it has some bugs that require reduplication of libraries, and performance-wise it is unimpressive at times.
Make a thread on https://forums.irixnet.org's nekoware board, or open an issue on the Nekoware Codeberg repos.
We welcome all contributors for packages that meet our guidelines, as well as donations.