The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is a
desktop environment
In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...
for
Unix
Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
and
OpenVMS
OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Op ...
, based on the
Motif widget toolkit. It was part of the
UNIX 98 Workstation Product Standard, and was for a long time the Unix desktop associated with commercial Unix
workstation
A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...
s. It helped to influence early implementations of successor projects such as
KDE
KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...
and
GNOME
A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...
, which largely replaced CDE following the turn of the century.
After a long history as
proprietary software
Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...
, CDE was released as
free software
Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...
on August 6, 2012, under the
GNU Lesser General Public License
The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...
, version 2.0 or later.
Since its release as free software, CDE has been ported to
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
and
BSD
The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...
derivatives.
History
Hewlett-Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...
,
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
,
SunSoft
, is a Japanese electronics manufacturer, video game developer and publisher. They are known for their video games under the brand name Sunsoft.
History
In April 1971, Sun Electronics Corporation (alternatively called Sun Denshi) was founded i ...
, and
USL announced CDE in June 1993 as a joint development within the
Common Open Software Environment (COSE) initiative. Each development group contributed its own technology to CDE:
* HP contributed the primary environment for CDE, which was based on HP's
Visual User Environment (VUE). HP VUE was itself derived from the
Motif Window Manager
In computing, the Motif Window Manager (MWM) is an X window manager based on the Motif (software), Motif toolkit.
Overview
MWM is a lightweight window manager, having robust compliance and configuration of the features it has. MWM first appeare ...
.
* IBM contributed its
Common User Access model from
OS/2
OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...
's
Workplace Shell.
* Sun contributed its
ToolTalk application interaction framework and a port of its
DeskSet
SunView (Sun Visual/Integrated Environment for Workstations) is a discontinued user interface toolkit and windowing system from Sun Microsystems, launched in 1985, and included as part of its Unix implementation, starting with SunOS Release 3.0 ...
productivity tools, including mail and calendar clients, from its
OpenWindows
OpenWindows is a discontinued desktop environment for Sun Microsystems workstations which combined a display server supporting the X Window System protocol, the XView and OLIT toolkits, the OPEN LOOK Window Manager (olwm), and the DeskSet product ...
environment.
* USL provided desktop manager components and scalable systems technologies from
UNIX System V
Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, an ...
.
After its release, HP endorsed CDE as the new standard desktop for Unix, and provided documentation and software for migrating HP VUE customizations to CDE.
In March 1994 CDE became the responsibility of the "new OSF", a merger of the
Open Software Foundation
The Open Software Foundation, Inc. (OSF), was a not-for-profit industry consortium for creating an open standard for an implementation of the operating system Unix. It was formed in 1988 and merged with X/Open in 1996, to become The Open Group.
...
and
Unix International;
in September 1995, the merger of Motif and CDE into a single project, CDE/Motif, was announced. OSF became part of the newly formed
Open Group in 1996.
In February 1997, the Open Group released their last major version of CDE, version 2.1.
Red Hat Linux
Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004.
Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta release ...
was the only Linux distribution that proprietary CDE was ported to. In 1997, Red Hat began offering a version of CDE licensed from
TriTeal Corporation. In 1998,
Xi Graphics
Xi is the 14th letter of the Greek alphabet.
Xi may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Xi'' (alternate reality game), a console-based game
* Xi, Japanese name for the video game '' Devil Dice''
* '' Saw XI'', an upcoming film in the ''Saw'' ...
, a company specializing in the X Windowing System, offered a version of CDE bundled with Red Hat Linux, called ''Xi Graphics maXimum cde/OS''. These were phased out, and Red Hat moved to the
GNOME
A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...
desktop.
Until about 2000, users of Unix desktops regarded CDE as the ''
de facto'' standard, but at that time, other desktop environments such as GNOME and
K Desktop Environment 2 were quickly becoming mature, and became widespread on
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
systems.
In 2001,
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
announced that they would phase out CDE as the standard desktop environment in
Solaris in favor of GNOME. Solaris 10, released in early 2005, includes both CDE and the GNOME-based
Java Desktop System. The
OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system for SPARC and x86 based systems, created by Sun Microsystems and based on Solaris. Its development began in the mid 2000s and ended in 2010.
OpenSolaris was developed as ...
project, begun around the same time, did not include CDE, and had no intent to make Solaris CDE available as open-source. The original release of Solaris 11 in November 2011 only contained GNOME as standard desktop, though some CDE libraries, such as Motif and ToolTalk, remained for binary compatibility but Oracle Solaris 11.4, released in August 2018, removed support for the CDE runtime environment and background services.
Systems that provided proprietary CDE
*
IBM AIX
AIX (pronounced ) is a series of Proprietary software, proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM since 1986. The name stands for "Advanced Interactive eXecutive". Current versions are designed to work with Power ISA based ...
*
Digital UNIX
*
HP-UX
HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is a proprietary software, proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise; current versions support HPE Integrity Servers, based on Intel's Itanium architect ...
: from version 10.10, released in 1996.
*
IRIX
IRIX (, ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS architecture, MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD extensio ...
: for a short time CDE was an alternative to
IRIX Interactive Desktop.
*
OpenVMS
OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Op ...
: available in OpenVMS Alpha V7.1 and onwards,
referred to as the "DECWindows Motif New Desktop"
*
Solaris: available starting with 2.3, standard in 2.6 to 10.
*
Tru64 UNIX
Tru64 UNIX is a discontinued 64-bit UNIX operating system for the DEC Alpha, Alpha instruction set architecture (ISA), currently owned by Hewlett-Packard (HP). Previously, Tru64 UNIX was a product of Compaq, and before that, Digital Equipment Corp ...
*
UnixWare
*
UXP/DS
*
Red Hat Linux
Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004.
Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta release ...
: Two versions ported by Triteal and Xi Graphics
License history
From its launch until 2012, CDE was proprietary software.
Motif, the toolkit on which CDE is built, was released by The Open Group in 2000 as "Open Motif," under a "revenue sharing" license. That license did not meet either the
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
or
free software
Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...
definitions. The Open Group had wished to make Motif open source, but did not succeed doing so at that time.
Release under the GNU LGPL
In 2006, a
petition
A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer called supplication.
In the colloquial sense, a petition is a document addressed to an officia ...
was created asking The Open Group to release the source code for CDE and Motif under a free license. On August 6, 2012, CDE was released under the
LGPL-2.0-or-later license.
[ The CDE source code was then released to ]SourceForge
SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...
.
The free software project OpenCDE had been started in 2010 to reproduce the look and feel
In software design, the look and feel of a graphical user interface comprises aspects of its design, including elements such as colors, shapes, layout, and typefaces (the "look"), as well as the behavior of dynamic elements such as buttons, boxes ...
, organization, and feature set of CDE. In August 2012, when CDE was released as free software, OpenCDE was officially deprecated in favor of CDE.
On October 23, 2012, the Motif widget toolkit was also released under the LGPL-2.1-or-later license. This allowed CDE to become a completely free and open source desktop environment.
Shortly after CDE was released as free software, a Linux live CD
A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete booting, bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than lo ...
was created based on Debian
Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...
6 with CDE 2.2.0c pre-installed, called CDEbian. The live CD has since been discontinued.
The Debian-based Linux distribution SparkyLinux offers binary packages of CDE that can be installed with APT. As of March 2023, CDE is also included in the NuTyX GNU/Linux distribution which offers an ISO download image with it, in FreeBSD and in source form in pkgsrc
pkgsrc (''package source'') is a package management system for Unix-like operating systems. It was forked from the FreeBSD ports collection in 1997 as the primary package management system for NetBSD. Since then it has evolved independently; in 1 ...
which is the default package manager of NetBSD.
Development under CDE project
In March 2014, the first stable release of CDE, version 2.2.1, was made since its release as free software.
Beginning with version 2.2.2, released in July 2014, CDE is able to compile under FreeBSD 10 with the default Clang
Clang () is a compiler front end for the programming languages C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, and the software frameworks OpenMP, OpenCL, RenderScript, CUDA, SYCL, and HIP. It acts as a drop-in replacement for the GNU Compiler ...
compiler
In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...
.
Since version 2.3.0, released in July 2018, CDE uses TIRPC on Linux, so that the portmapper rpcbind does not need to be run in insecure mode. It does not use Xprint anymore, and can be compiled on the BSDs without installing first a custom version of Motif. Multihead display support with Xinerama has been improved.
Since its release as free software, CDE has been ported to:
* Linux distribution
A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...
s including:
** Debian
Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...
** Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial Linux distribution developed by Red Hat. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop version for x86-64. Fedora Linux and ...
** Slackware Linux
Slackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. Originally based on Softlanding Linux System (SLS), Slackware has been the basis for many other Linux distributions, most notably the first versions of SUSE Linux distribu ...
** Ubuntu
Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...
** Arch Linux
Arch Linux () is an Open-source software, open source, rolling release Linux distribution. Arch Linux is kept up-to-date by regularly updating the individual pieces of software that it comprises. Arch Linux is intentionally minimal, and is meant ...
* FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...
* NetBSD
NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was fork (software development), forked. It continues to ...
* OpenBSD
OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...
* OpenIndiana
* Solaris 11 (x86-64
x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...
)
Future project goals of the CDE project include:
* Increased portability to more Linux, BSD, and Unix platforms.
* Further internationalization
Internationalization or Internationalisation is the process of increasing involvement of enterprises in international markets, although there is no agreed definition of internationalization. Internationalization is a crucial strategy not only for ...
into other languages.
Gallery
File:CDE 2012 on Linux.png, CDE File manager
File:CDE Manual Pages.png, Reading Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...
man pages
A man page (short for manual page) is a form of software documentation found on Unix and Unix-like operating systems. Topics covered include programs, system libraries, system calls, and sometimes local system details. The local host administ ...
in CDE
File:HP-HP9000-C360-Workstation 01.jpg, HP 9000 C360 displaying the CDE login manager, '' dtlogin''
File:HP-HP9000-B180-Workstation 37.jpg, HP 9000 model B180L running HP-UX
HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is a proprietary software, proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise; current versions support HPE Integrity Servers, based on Intel's Itanium architect ...
and CDE
See also
* dtlogin
* IRIX Interactive Desktop
* Motif
References
External links
*
Open Group – CDE
* Modern and functional CDE desktop based on FVWM.
{{Open Group standards
1993 software
Desktop environments
Formerly proprietary software
Open Group standards
OpenVMS
Software that uses Motif (software)
Sun Microsystems software
X window managers