Old attractive window manager 'dtwm' or 'mwm/cde' with pager scope arrays
Resurrection of classic window manager 'dtwm' or 'mwm/cde' with pager scope arrays:
Suse and Solaris distributions are very user friendly and consistent in managing library dependencies for open source and 3rd party applications as longer as you know basic unix commands. Whilst I am quite content with Suse 11 and Sun Solaris 10, at the same time found a nich of resurrecting old Window Managers.
FVWM2-2.2x and MWM1.2 were very easy and viable on glibc 2.2x or even 2.4x but I hit a hard rock reviving TriTeal Dtwm - a part of Redhat/TriTeal TED CDE 4.2 built under libc.so.5.3.2
It won't install on Redhat 9 nor Fedora. Difference in C library set are too far between and causes segfaults after satisfying all dependencies reported by kpackage or simply rpm -i --test xxx or ldd xxx.
Redhat 1998 documentation claims that it would install both on libc5 and libc6 (glibc-2.X) with numerous compatibility modules on installation CD.
Yes, have old linux distribution CDs from Redhat 5.1 up to Fedora 9 but earlier Redhat does not support USB, SATA, nvidia display and the like up to Redhat 8.
I also have all Suse from version 7x, Caldera from 1.2 but none supports USB mouse and kbd. Caldera SCO 3.1.1 was able to run all known apps on FVWM2-2.2x and MWM 1.2 except dtwm (Redhat modified MWM 1.2) from TriTeal TED CDE.
Is there a lot to do with X server to determine compatibility of WM? None of these old distribution including Caldera-SCO detect nvidia GE-Force, therefore I had to get XF4.8.0 server. Plain FVWM2-2.2x , MWM 1.2 run well and even KDE2 runs with some serious glitches like losing mouse and keyboard or dcop blow-ups during long disk writes.
Of course when you install newest XF server it overwrites Xlib set but Dtwm itself may be looking at old Xlib in compatibility lib. Would it cause X lock ups?
Another thing I have experienced is when you upgrade X server from XF86.org, it does not update or preserve font binding and C locale on some Linux like Caldera. Years ago I had to depend of commercial Metro-X server and it preserved font and X port in impeccable order more so than xi graphic X server. More often than not, Metro-X solved X server problem in any platform. But they no longer exists today.
Examining TriTeal binary files in /dt/bin, it reveals worst possible hurried implementation of features added on to plain MWM. That is perhaps why they survived only 2 or 3 years. But TriTeal CDE panel design was distinctively attractive - the best in its kind and I hate to let it go.
On close examination of equivalent binary in Soars 8, 9 and 10 CDE reveals that they are perfectly clean without such mixed or patched implementation but less visually appealing and less functions.
Sun continue to ship old dtwm/mwm1.6.3 and new java-wm on Solaris and new gnome-wm with Solaris Express today.
For the CDE app launcher panel functionality, you can attain something close to it by using XFCE 3.1.X on plain MWM1.2X or FVWM2-2X (FVWM2 can add sound to mouse and window motions) but the panel and pager is not as attractive as dtwm.
I do not need chooser, xdm nor dtlogin. In fact I used to run on a laptop from xinitrc pointing directly to 'exec dtwm' by invoking 'startx' bypassing securetty and pam.d at ease of FVWM95. It still run on any conventional machines without uhid, Geforce and SATA today but I want to prepare it to run on newer machines for future. My goal is to preserve that distinctive CDE front panel with pager scope array of 4 work spaces uniquely represented in the bottom centre.
Does anyone has any idea? or how to implement it on plain motif or other lib/widget? or to simplify its unused security deamon calls that I may not aware of. I appreciate any suggestion.
pinecloud
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