Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

And is also the one which has changed the least over the past decade... but has been relegated to 2nd fiddle by iOS.

hamei, the other place is Integrated Computer Solutions, I wrote about the schism between them and The Open Group over the future of Motif in this post: http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16727601&p=7359004&hilit=helicopter+crash#p7359004

And yes you get the SGI "New and Enhanced Widgets" with IRIX, the files in the Sgm directory are demo programs designed to show you how they work.

So the other Nekothread points to a fixunix.com thread that dates from five years ago. Any idea of the intervening four minor versions (2.3 -> 2.3.4) have addressed the problems in the initial branch?

sm - out of curiosity, what "enhancements" did the fork bring ?

There are 10 new widgets in Motif 2.2, a button box, color selector, column, data field, list, font selector, icon box, icon button, tab stack and tree, and tooltips are built into the Xm base class now.

With regard to the incompatibilities with earlier versions of Motif, they claim the most recent release fixed 76 bugs but there are almost 1600 bugs in their Bugzilla, only 133 of which show as resolved.

So we have an LGPL version of Motif 2.x that's bug-competitive with KDE and GNOME? I suppose 2.1.x is still restricted? I guess not, having poked around opengroup.org -- so long as it's delivered on an "open source" platform. Sorry if I'm repeating things previously mentioned. Hey, at least you can register and download a bunch of stuff...

Hooray, binary packages from 2000!!

EDIT: Hrm, "THE OPEN GROUP PUBLIC LICENSE"

You can download the source code for 2.1.32 at the X Designer website: http://www.ist-inc.com/motif/download/motif_files/openmotif-2.1.32_IST.source.tar.gz Likewise they recommend against using Motif 2.2.x and pretty much manage rip it to shreds in this article: http://www.motifdeveloper.com/tips/Motif22Review.pdf

Despite all that my pal Dušan Peterc is doing some amazing things with the 2.3 widgets in his loom software, look through some of the explanations at his website and be amazed: http://www.arahne.si/ And like he says, his software doesn't try to fly helicopters so there's far less risk!

The Open Group is anything but...

With both CDE and Motif now available under the LGPL as truly free software, it looks like 2013 is gearing up to be the year of Linux on the desktop!

I can't wait to see everyone's grandma customizing their ~/.Xdefaults file to get that perfect shade of lavender for their MWM window handles and titlebars.

Toolshest -> Desktop -> Customize -> Color Schemes -> Inverness

I'm afraid the Linux desktop is pretty much owned by Gnome and KDE...

Neither desktop has really "gotten it right" and won over the majority of the community yet. Gnome 2 came really close, but then threw it all away. KDE has never really won over that many people, and has remained the "other" desktop environment. "Unity" ironically fractured the community even further, as have forks of Gnome 3 like Cinnamon. The Linux desktop is in shambles these days, and there is plenty of room for alternative environments like XFCE to pick up the slack. For those who want a modern full-featured window manager, for example, Openbox is an outstanding choice.

For my own part, I'm starting to value stability and consistency from year to year, so can't commit myself to a big desktop environment like Gnome 3. My guess is that many others are the same way. Even as the big desktop environments go through their revolutions every few years, the smaller window managers will keep working like they always have.

Unfortunately, the GUI is just something that Unix has never done all that well. GUI components have not had the same consistency and modularity that has been characteristic of Unix command line utilities. Using an ordinary shell, it's possible to use pipes, redirect output, and script everything that could be done by a human being. Graphical applications for Unix stand in clear contrast to the eloquence of command line tools. The right set of GUI primitives was never developed, and part of the problem is the X11 software itself, which does not adhere to the Unix philosophy.

back when I was using linux, I ran xmonad and really liked it... tiling managers seem to be an ideal compromise between windowing managers and the modern iphone/tablet paradigm.

But not mine (luckily). I prefer Xfce, use it on both Linux and FreeBSD.

I used 5dwm (early MaXX desktop) while its binaries were compatible with Slackware (which is the only Linux distribution I've ever used, when you've got the best why mess with the rest), after which I went back to the same WM I started out with on Unix 25 years ago[1], mwm, although I did copy over the 5dwm sgi-like root window colors into my .mwmrc, like so:



Note that you have to have the line "Backgrounds" f.menu "Backgrounds" in your .mwmrc DefaultRootMenu section for this to work.

[1] Yeah, I know, I'm one of those old dudes...

Man, you are so old .

Did you consider getting a patent on those settings ... http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16727693

XFCE is a nice desktop environment that is more evolution than revolution. Perhaps the coolest feature is being able to change the window manager decorations to the Motif style.

Part of me wishes, though, that they had continued XFCE as a CDE clone... From what I've seen in the newer versions, it's not possible to create the same type of "drawers" that CDE uses in its dock.

Frightening that my X11 setup has the same basic look & feel as AIX did 20+ years ago.

Still, it looks better than OS X and whatever glass crap Windows looks like these days.

There's no (Aero) Glass in Windows 8. If you like minimalism then you will like Windows 8's window decorations.

You have not run AIX until you have run it on the original Apple Network Server. -- Gorkon the system adminstrator