I think the problem was that I did not install the distribution sets for building X11 applications
http://www.netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/us...l#requirements
I also wonder about wip part of pkgsrc, more specific xmonad in wip-pkgsrc. That requires libX11>= 1.2.x but there is only libX11 1.1.y in pkgsrc. Does that mean that I cannot use it in Netbsd.
Finally how manageable is netbsd 5 for the below layperson, I have not even tried Freebsd 8, so I can only imagine what netbsd 5 would be like.