Internet on HP-UX

PA-RISC computers with HP-UX were often used for Internet services, but predate the popular Internet age of the 2000s slightly. Internet clients for HP-UX are mostly outdated today with browsers, mail clients and groupware solutions available since the 1990s.

Browsers Mail Groupware
Mosaic
Netscape
Mozilla
Firefox
Internet Explorer		 Lotus cc:Mail
Lotus Notes
Z-Mail
HP OpenMail
Thunderbird
Netscape Messenger
Outlook Express		 Lotus Notes
HP OpenMail
Netscape Directory

Browsers

Web browsers were needed since the mid-1990s to access the World Wide Web, simply called ’the web’ by most users, a system of interlinked information accessible through a consistent, simple interface. The main protagonists of the 1990s and early 2000s Internet Information Superhighway were available on HP-UX. Support for more modern browsers tapered off in the mid-2000s with few viable options remaining for HP-UX.

Mosaic

Mosaic
Mosaic
Mosaic © 1995

NCSA Mosaic was the original GUI web browser for the the 1990s World Wide Web, designed at NCSA and first released in 1992-93 in version 0. NCSA Mosaic for X was a graphical browser for X11 with Motif, HP-UX support was added in Mosaic 1.0 in 1993, a time when the most popular interface to the web is the Mosaic user interface.

National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) supplied source code for Mosaic but also provided, sometimes unsupported binary packages for Unix systems including HP-UX. The last Mosaic 3.0 was apparently never ported to HP-UX.

Netscape

Netscape now
Netscape 1996
Netscape 1996 © source

Netscape network navigator was the most popular web browser in the 1990s, first developed as Mosaic Netscape, soon after the initial NCSA Mosaic. Netscape is the first Internet tool that lets the average user with a 14.4 kb modem work with the Internet interactively.

Netscape supported Windows, Macintosh and Unix with X Windows since the mid-1990s. Netscape Communicator was a suite of Internet programs that included Netscape Navigator, the web browser and also Messenger, a mail program A few versions were available for Unix and HP-UX, starting in the mid-1990s, some directly from HP.

Netscape Communicator source code was made available for free in 1998, forming the basis for the Mozilla project(s). Binaries for Netscape are available in the Mozilla Archive.

Mozilla

Mozilla was an integrated internet application suite, founded by Netscape in 1998. The Mozilla Application Suite used the open-sourced software base from the Netscape Communicator and included a suite of programs: Navigator, Communicator and others.

The Mozilla browser was available on a range of Unix systems included HP-UX and PA-RISC in the late-1990s. There were official instructions from the Mozilla project to install Mozilla from source for HP-UX 11.22, HP-UX 11.0 (11.11) and 10.20 in releases from the early 2000s. The HP-UX Mozilla Build Project separately provided sources and binary packages for Mozilla on HP-UX from 1999 and 2000.

Firefox

Firefox is the web browser from the Mozilla foundation, first developed in the early-2000s as stand-alone browser forked from the Mozilla suite. There were Firefox binaries and packages provided both by HP and contributed by Firefox for HP-UX 11i and PA-RISC, starting in the mid-2000s until around 2010, when modern browser support on HP-UX phased out.

Note there are slightly newer Firefox packages on Linux/PA-RISC as part of Linux distributions, from around 2017. There might be newer options from source available.

Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer Unix
IE on Unix © Sunworld 1997

Microsoft ported Internet Explorer to a few Unix systems in the mid-1990s, including to HP-UX as Internet Explorer for UNIX. This resulted in two versions of Internet Explorer 4 and 5 being available directly from Microsoft between 1997 and 2001.

Internet Explorer was a free product and gained a bit of publicity, but never was a popular product, support ended in 2002. Also included in Internet Explorer for UNIX was the Outlook Express mail client.

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Mail clients

Besides the classic text-based mail clients like mutt, pine and others, there were a few graphical X11 mail clients and several notable groupware solutions available on HP-UX. Clients include Lotus cc:Mail, Z-Mail, Thundbird and Outlook Express plus some clients from groupware solutions.

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Groupware

HP-UX servers with PA-RISC were often used as directory and mail servers with standard internet protocols, but several specialized Groupware solutions were ported to HP-UX. This includes Lotus Notes and Domino, HP OpenMail and Netscape Directory Server. There was also deep NetWare functionality on HP-UX, including NetWare Directory Service.

Lotus Notes (Domino)

Notes
Lotus Notes 4, © 1996

Lotus Notes is a groupware and collaboration software, first released by Lotus in 1989 with a few Unix ports in the 1990s. Notes is a client/server software suites the provides enterprise messaging, directory and collaboration. Lotus was bought by IBM in 1995, which integrated Lotus products into the IBM portfolio. The Notes server software was renamed Lotus Domino in the 4.5 release (1996).

Lotus Notes consisted of different programs: the Notes client provided an integrated application for electronic mail, directory access, calendar, messaging and browsing. The Domino server provided the backend for all messaging, directory integration, calender, database and remote data access. Domino (Notes server) was the enterprise mail server and could interface to other directory servers.

HP OpenMail

OpenMail 1995
OpenMail 1995
OpenMail Admin, © 1995

HP developed its own groupware and enterprise mail solution, HP OpenMail, released in 1990 as industry-standard electronic mail system for UNIX system environments. OpenMail was a client-server messaging backbone. a core part of HP NewWave, a major 1990s HP activity.

OpenMail ran on HP-UX from inception and was ported by Uniplex to other Unix platforms beginning in 1991: IBM RS/6000 and DEC DECstation 5100 (MIPS) for $325 per user.

Being standards-based mail server with X.400-based mail service, OpenMail integrated with X.500 directories. It used a HP-custom message store. Several third-party clients (mail user agents) were able to connect to OpenMail, from Lotus cc:Mail, Microsoft Mail for DOS and Windows, Clarity Rapport to HP NewWave Mail.

HP and Lotus planned a OpenMail Exchange Facility for Lotus Notes in 1995 to facilitate Lotus and OpenMail integration, with earlier VIM API support to enable Lotus Notes clients to use cc:Mail to access the HP OpenMail backend.

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Documentation

Browsers

Mail

Groupware

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