Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

alexott wrote: I suggest to sign petition on freeing IRIX Interactive Desktop: http://www.change.org/petitions/silicon ... ve-desktop .

Need one to get the OS itself released.

This is really excellent news, looking forward to getting CDE up and running on my newly arrived Raspberry Pi.

It is ironic that nowadays Motif+CDE is considered lightweight!

A big thank you to zizban.

zizban wrote: I am the documentation lead for the CDE project. It's been a wild few months.

CDE runs on Linux. Here is a list of supported distributions:

https://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/w ... Platforms/

The code isn't from 1999. It's from 1995

It's pretty stable on my Ubuntu 12.04 box. Somethings don't work but a lot does.

Out of curiosity, why was this released on sourceforge instead of github ?

To be contemporary, it should have been a CVS repository...

Sourceforge wasn't my decision. It had already been decided.

It takes about 5 hours to build on the Pi.

bluecode wrote:

porter wrote: To be contemporary, it should have been a CVS repository...

rcs?

RCS if they were forward looking and progressive. SCCS otherwise...

This is of course very interesting and I've been following the developments a bit. What isn't entirely clear yet to me, is what this will mean for operating systems which still bundle CDE (and Motif), like HP-UX and VMS. Can anyone perhaps enlighten me?

Winnili wrote: What isn't entirely clear yet to me, is what this will mean for operating systems which still bundle CDE (and Motif), like HP-UX and VMS.

Why would it mean anything to them? I can't see any reason why software being re-released under an open source license would have any impact on prior licensees. Was there some particular issue you were worried about?

I assume the reason behind the question was: "will platforms that have CDE now benefit from the changes made by the open source community that manages it now".

The answer there would probably be "yes", since it's not GPL. But I'm not an expert in license law.

jpstewart wrote: Why would it mean anything to them? I can't see any reason why software being re-released under an open source license would have any impact on prior licensees.

DECwindows PAKs come to mind; although they should nowadays (with VMS I64 and the licensing overhaul since) be integrated with the base OEs.

Winnili wrote:

jpstewart wrote: Why would it mean anything to them? I can't see any reason why software being re-released under an open source license would have any impact on prior licensees.

DECwindows PAKs come to mind; although they should nowadays (with VMS I64 and the licensing overhaul since) be integrated with the base OEs.

The re-release of code under an open source license doesn't automatically affect code that was previously released under a different set of licensing terms. So DECwindows will continue to be licensed the same way it always has been AFAIK. The only way that will change is if somebody at HP decides to re-release it under new license terms.

It's actually fairly common for software to be released under multiple licenses simultaneously, and AIUI that's what's happening with CDE. It is now open source in addition to still being available under whatever previous licenses there were.

I've been thinking a lot about CDE since it was open sourced. I've even had dreams about it several times in the last month! One of these dreams even included a new CDE theme used by IBM, which was darker than the default colors, and had the dock mostly hidden at the bottom of the screen except for the arrows at the top of each icon. Of course, such an arrangement would be cumbersome and ridiculous since there would be no labeling or icons to indicate what the arrows were for. Dreams are strange like that, though...

Around 10 years ago when I was in high school, I basically coveted IBM and HP Unix workstations, but of course I didn't have one myself, as they were far too expensive. I had never used any genuine SVR4 Unix system, but I knew that it must be more awesome than anything I could possibly imagine. At that time, I built my own Linux box, but it sadly still wasn't the same as the "real thing," and CDE was basically the symbol of everything I was missing out on. Of the many pieces of Unix software, CDE was the only major standard software that had no equivalent or replacement in Linux or the BSD's.

When I finally got to college as a CS major, I worked in a lab of Apple G4 systems, along with a small row of Sun workstations. I bugged the local admin for an account on the Sun machines, but he basically just ignored me (he was a big Apple fanboy). Each time I worked there, I saw the CDE login screens, but even after a few years of working there, I never saw more than that -- I never saw anybody even log in to the Sun workstations, although they probably cost a few thousand apiece. I can, however, remember using those stupid G4's to look up screenshots of CDE running on AIX and HP-UX.

Even after all these years, CDE has still been at the back of my mind, and I was stunned when it went open source. It still seems almost unbelievable! I downloaded the source code and created a new VM on my local machine just for running CDE on Debian. After following the instructions exactly, I ran "dtlogin", and was startled to see a full CDE desktop in front of me, on my own machine! It's still almost unbelievable, and the novelty has definitely not worn off. To me, nothing looks better than the default CDE (although sadly, many people say that it is ugly).

So yeah, I am definitely a CDE lover. Now I just need to learn how to actually use it.....

jwp wrote: Around 10 years ago when I was in high school, I basically coveted IBM and HP Unix workstations, but of course I didn't have one myself, as they were far too expensive.

10 years ago was after MS marketing got to my undergrad school and managed to convince someone there that "NT4 can do anything UNIX can do, and do it better". They dumped a 1.5 year old cluster of 3 Enterprises for a bunch of PCs that would be "much more reliable" (though I never remember the Sun being down much).

I thought (and still think) that the more art-decoey look of VUE is a bit slicker than CDE, but they're both OK and pretty straightforward environments. Customizing them is a bit more work than some of the newer environments. 4Sight/Indigo Magic always seemed to be a bit more polished, though.

jwp wrote: Around 10 years ago when I was in high school, I basically coveted IBM and HP Unix workstations, but of course I didn't have one myself, as they were far too expensive. I had never used any genuine SVR4 Unix system, but I knew that it must be more awesome than anything I could possibly imagine. At that time, I built my own Linux box, but it sadly still wasn't the same as the "real thing," and CDE was basically the symbol of everything I was missing out on.

That's so funny - that almost exactly mirrors my experience, although I did actually get a login that worked on the Sun workstations at our Uni... I really wanted my Linux desktop to more closely look like a "real Unix" and spent ages playing with enlightenment themes, running XFCE (back when it actually did look like a CDE clone) and so on. Eventually I managed to get Solaris x86 installed (after having to purchase a commercial X Server from Xi graphics to support my Voodoo card) and basked in the glory of a real dtlogin and CDE

sgi_mark wrote: Eventually I managed to get Solaris x86 installed (after having to purchase a commercial X Server from Xi graphics to support my Voodoo card) and basked in the glory of a real dtlogin and CDE

How much did you pay? I bought Xi Graphics' Xaccel for $99 version 1.3 I think; to support my matrox card. Good software; I assume their business discontinuity "freed up" CDE and motif, to some extend.

Actually I think it was the utterly collapsed revenue stream for The Open Group and ICS that freed it up. I remember back in the day when a source code license for Motif was $50,000...