I've been told that hobbes contain to much old/obsolete stuff so it's out of the question to even be considered.
That is one of the main advantages. It has the old, as well as the new, and it is all well organized. There is also a very good search engine for it. If you ignore HOBBES, you are ignoring the very best, and most complete, repository for OS/2 software. If a developer is not posting their work at HOBBES, complain to them. HOBBES has been the OS/2 "store" for a lot of years, and I see no reason to stop using it.
but not yum/rpm because of the above problem with links
I don't understand what your problem is. When you use any version of any browser, on any platform, to download the ANPM installer (it is WarpIn), the WarpIn installer (it is self installing), and Firefox, or Seamonkey, then make them available to OS/2 (you probably need a USB stick, formatted as FAT32), you can install WarpIn, then ANPM. ANPM will detect that RPM/YUM is not installed, and it will install it. If it is installed, but out of date, you may need to follow the instructions at
https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/anpm/ (page down a bit). Once ANPM gets everything up to date, and you install FF, or SM, the world is at your finger tips. ANPM will give you as much information about what the RPM packages contain as anything else can. I will admit that the information is somewhat limited, but that is a limitation of the RPM packaging system. I will also admit that RPM/YUM is a terrible way to do it, but that is what was chosen, so we are stuck with it. The alternative is to do it manually, and that is pretty well impossible. I guarantee that you will get some of it wrong, no matter how hard you try. You must remember that RPM packages contain more than just DLLs, there are also programs that a lot of software uses.