The keyboard issue on an O2 is supposedly because it uses the PS/2 command set 3 rather than the more widely used 2. Even in Irix the keyboard handling isn't perfect.
NetBSD is just as bad. I took the pragmatic approach of putting a keyboard faker on the PS/2 port and installing a USB PCI card, with a PS/2 to USB converter. Xorg is pretty slow on the O2 as it's unaccelerated. NetBSD is a lot faster in X but their port is 32 bit.
