I managed to install NetBSD 5.0.2 (i386), and xfce4 with the Xorg from the default install seems to work on my old laptop, but the graphics performance is not very good. Following shep's suggestion, I have read the NetBSD wiki page about installing modular Xorg from pkgsrc, and that seems to be the best way to speed up the graphics performance. Also compiling the kernel with drm support for the Intel graphics chip seems to be necessary to get full graphics acceleration.
That requires some extra effort, but I'll try it when I have more free time to tinker with that laptop. The NetBSD Guide has nice tips about setting up wscons (setting TERM to wsvt25) and xfce4 (with rpcbind, famd, dbus and hal), that I didn't know before. I also tried installing binary packages with the pkgin program, which worked as advertised.
So, my initial impression of NetBSD as a candidate OS for my old laptop is positive, but I'll need to see yet if the modular Xorg and drm support for the Intel graphics chip in kernel will speed up the graphics performance before I'll make the final decision.
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