
CDE – Common Desktop Environment - chungy
https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
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TheAceOfHearts
I dislike CDE. IMO, Motif was sabotaged by Microsoft's involvement. This is a
very minor point, but I will never accept ALT+F4 as a sensible hotkey for
exiting apps. I think macOS picked the best hotkey defaults.

Anyone interested in this should also check out OpenStep [0]. I've been
researching this area heavily during the past year and I'm constantly amazed
by all the revolutionary work that got done at NeXT and Sun. It's a damn shame
they didn't win bigger mindshare.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep)

~~~
jrs95
Cmd+Q is awful IMO. It's too easy to hit accidentally trying to do Cmd+Tab.

~~~
busterarm
Every time people tell me they like MacOS shortcuts I look at them with a bit
of stink eye. They're about as anti-muscle memory and as "shortcuts that
shouldn't be next to each other" as key combinations can get.

Great, they're very easy to learn, but not so great to retain and use. I'm
going to be spending the rest of my career looking up on SO the bottom 75% of
the shortcuts I need to use. Thanks guys. Thanks Steve.

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
I disagree that they're difficult to retain and use. I've learned how to use
both sets of shortcuts, as I sometimes move between macOS, Linux (Ubuntu), and
Windows. Regardless, macOS shortcuts are my favorite.

In my experience, shortcuts are more consistent on macOS than on Linux and
Windows.

When I first tried macOS I thought its shortcuts were the worst thing ever.
But after giving it a genuine try for a few weeks, I immediately fell in love
with em.

You can find the macOS shortcuts on the Mac keyboard shortcuts [0] support
page. If you're interested in more details, you can learn about the guiding
principles by reading the Human Interface Guidelines Keyboard article [1].

Even if you disagree with some of their design decisions, I'd still highly
recommend reading through their Human Interface Guidelines articles. It's an
amazing resource.

[0] [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT201236)

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/macos/human-interface-
guidelines...](https://developer.apple.com/macos/human-interface-
guidelines/user-interaction/keyboard/)

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malux85
The nostelgia is strong with this one.

Every 6ish or so months I see a link like this and spend a lazy Sunday trying
to get CDE (or another equally retro package or system, my last hit was
Desqview)

It usually ends up either me aborting because of some dependency hell trying
to get all the old versions in sync, or I get the system up, take a pleasant
trip down memory lane, then 10 minutes later get annoyed by the
impracticalities of it, and go back to my current system with renewed
appreciation

I don’t know where I’m going with this, I’m not complaining I love doing it,
and I can’t imagine I’m the only one, anyone wanna share some stories?

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CandidlyFake
> It usually ends up either me aborting because of some dependency hell trying
> to get all the old versions in sync, or I get the system up, take a pleasant
> trip down memory lane, then 10 minutes later get annoyed by the
> impracticalities of it, and go back to my current system with renewed
> appreciation

Hah. I go a bit overboard with windows managers/desktop environments from
icewm to fluxbox to KDE to GNOME. I've settled on XFCE but I have a VM solely
to muck around with desktop environments and get my fix.

The worst for me is VIm color schemes. Can't seem to choose one I can stick
with.

~~~
busterarm
> The worst for me is VIm color schemes. Can't seem to choose one I can stick
> with.

[http://vimcolors.com/290/CandyPaper/dark](http://vimcolors.com/290/CandyPaper/dark)

Been using for years at this point. Very pleased.

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sebnukem2
It looks like outdated shit, and that makes me happy. I worked on CDE HP
systems for many years, and I liked it. The fact that it looks bad now is
proof that we've come a long way and that great progress has been made, hence
the happiness.

~~~
ashleyn
It wasn't until relatively recently that software engineers took the opinions
of artists and designers seriously. Apple was probably the original and first
to do so, with Jobs' own background in artistry. It's why Mac OS looked above
and beyond better than anything else in 1984, an era still typified by
command-line interfaces and overwhelming GUIs that simply vomited everything
at you.

~~~
netbeef
_" It's why Mac OS looked above and beyond better than anything else in 1984,
an era still typified by command-line interfaces and overwhelming GUIs that
simply vomited everything at you."_

I'm sorry, but it's not Steve's artistry, it's his ability to "steal like an
artist". Look at the Xerox Star, it had everything the Mac had (and more)
years earlier. The difference was in its price. At the time, nobody needed
convincing that GUIs would be great to work with, they needed convincing that
they were worth the price.

~~~
robbrown451
While I don't think it was his artistry per se, it was, to a good degree, his
taste. And I don't think he was so much stealing as he was hiring the very
people who produced the Xerox Star, so their work could see the light of day.
And it improved pretty dramatically under his management as well.

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thenewwazoo
Whoa, crazy, is CDE still alive? I remember back in the day I wanted to build
a GUI application, and was utterly defeated by Motif as a toolkit. I wasn't a
very sophisticated programmer (I think I was like 12 or 13), but I still
remember how opaque it was. Qt was a breath of fresh air!

Oddly, I still really, really, really like the aesthetic of the CDE. I think
if there were a modern, HiDPI version of it, I might even use it.

~~~
tlburke
You could probably get very close with a well-configured twm or fvwm2

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ggm
Yea.. click to type. Like.. why. This is why a bunch of us stuck to uwm -> twm
-> tvtwm

~~~
drewg123
I'm right there with you, until tvtwm. I went with ctwm. The reason why is
lost in the mists of time. Probably because another grad student had already
set it up, and had shared a nice .ctwmrc

~~~
ggm
I diverted to fvwm and regretted it and my Emacs friendly friends forced tvtwm
down my throat? Improved my experience but I stuck with a modal editor!

If you do the right magic to bind 'jump sideways' in units of the virtual
desk, it's like moving entire panes painlessly. I had to load 3rd party stuff
into OSX to get the same experience.

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shams93
This was my first exposure to Unix desktop I used CDE on irix in that late 90s
with Softimage for 3d animation. CDE had no bells and whistles but it enabled
you to devote all your processing power to the task at hand.

~~~
wsh
You may have been using CDE, but the default on IRIX in the 1990s was Indigo
Magic Desktop (later called IRIX Interactive Desktop), with SGI’s own port of
Motif. This used the 4Dwm window manager, which had window decorations like
those of mwm, but with window title bar labels in bold, italic type.

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cmrdporcupine
Man OpenWindows was so much better looking and XView much nicer to program
for.

And anyways by the time Motif didn't have ridiculous licensing and costs it
was already too late. The world had moved on.

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bringtheaction
I remember Solaris 10 shipped with CDE as one of two available desktop
environments. The other one that it came with was based on GNOME.

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LarryDarrell
I feel like there should be a Ubuntu based CDE distro out there.

I spent so much time in front of CDE that I can't help but feel nostalgic for
it.

~~~
segmondy
I feel nostalgic for it too but only because I'm looking at if for a few
seconds. I'm on Unity now, and I rather stare at Unity all day than CDE.

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nickh9000
Yeah, but nope. Just get xfce, it has similar ideas and it is so much better.

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djsumdog
I think the last time I used CDE was on a Solaris/Intel box. At least I think
it was CDE .. looked like it ... took over 30 minutes to load (literally).

