CDE for Slackware on the horizon?

wigry · 08-15-2012, 01:15 AM

I would really like to see CDE as it is, absolutely minimal touch on the visual side (maybe antialiased fonts). On the backend though it should be buildable with modern tools and modern compilers and maybe refactor the architecture to remove things that were neccessary on its day.

Richard Cranium · 08-15-2012, 01:27 AM

CDE? shudders

I couldn't wait to start using FVWM (and didn't, for that matter) when CDE was my other choice.

eXpander_ · 08-15-2012, 02:04 AM

Wow, I can see the potential in this. How is the border and the background of the "widget" styled? Does it use GTK or is it hardcorded in the source code?

*EDIT: Ah, should read better. The "Motif" toolkit I see.

bassplayer69 · 08-15-2012, 05:48 AM

I know I'm looking forward to using CDE one day. Brings back many memories of using it on SCO UnixWare 2.1.x back in the 90's (No rock throwing, please

)

brianL · 08-15-2012, 05:58 AM

(brianL switches to troll-mode)
What's the attraction here? Apart from nostalgia? Looks ugly and crude to me, compared to up-to-date DEs and WMs.

wigry · 08-15-2012, 06:07 AM

I for one love boxy and serious desktop environments. Even on Windows 7 I use win2k interface. CDE is better than that even as the colors are nicer than plain gray.

brianL · 08-15-2012, 06:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wigry

as the colors are nicer than plain gray.

Yeah, except for that orange.

Jeebizz · 08-15-2012, 09:48 AM

I dunno, I thought TWM was pretty ugly:

twm-system.gif

Then again the only thing I don't like about CDE is the taskbar itself in the middle of the screen, just looks a bit oversized. Still I think it is rather interesting in it's own way.

chrisretusn · 08-15-2012, 06:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeebizz

Then again the only thing I don't like about CDE is the taskbar

The front panel is one of the features that I found most appealing when I first encountered CDE. In fact the Xfce panel reminds me of CDE. I would probably be using Xfce today except for lack of single click on the desktop; which was finally fixed in 4.10.

ReaperX7 · 08-15-2012, 06:34 PM

If I read right once, Xfce was originally written to replace CDE.

Soderlund · 08-16-2012, 06:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brianL

(brianL switches to troll-mode)
What's the attraction here? Apart from nostalgia? Looks ugly and crude to me, compared to up-to-date DEs and WMs.

I bet it's much lighter than DEs with equivalent functionality.

I thought the point with Slackware was to not replace ugly and crude things as long as they work. Isn't that why we get teTeX?

ponce · 08-16-2012, 06:18 AM

partly.
for that I think the reason is that texlive is over 1 Gb of stuff (packaged).

sycamorex · 08-16-2012, 06:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ponce

partly.
for that I think the reason is that texlive is over 1 Gb of stuff (packaged).

...and over 6Gb (IIRC) of temp space if you want to build it

bsdunixdb · 08-16-2012, 08:37 AM

XFCE was an open source clone of CDE originally but has since gone its own way.

I for one like the idea of CDE. There is talk of Motif being open sourced in the future.

madshib · 08-17-2012, 01:16 PM

I've been looking at old sreenshots and it reminds me quite a bit of Magic Workbench for the Amiga. The color scheme and window controls are similar. I always wondered why there wasn't a type of MagicWB for Linux DEs....but I am a mega noob and there could be..

I, for one, am waiting for it and will support the effort however I can. I can't seem to find a DE for Linux that has everything I'm looking for in one package.