OpenWindows is a discontinued

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 graphica ...

for

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or 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 systems. The term ''workstat ...

s which combined SunView,

NeWS News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different Media (communication), media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, postal systems, broadcasting, Telecommunications, electronic communication, or through the tes ...

, and

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

protocols. OpenWindows was included in later releases of the

SunOS SunOS is a Unix-branded operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems. The ''SunOS'' name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4, which were based on BSD, while versions 5.0 and l ...

4 and

Solaris Solaris may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

s, until its removal in Solaris 9 in favor of

Common Desktop Environment The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is a desktop environment for Unix and OpenVMS, 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 ...

(CDE) and

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

2.0. OpenWindows implements the

OPEN LOOK OPEN LOOK (sometimes referred to as Open Look) is a graphical user interface (GUI) specification for UNIX workstations. It was originally defined in the late 1980s by Sun Microsystems and AT&T Corporation. History OPEN LOOK was created at a ...

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

specification. OpenWindows is made of four components: the OPEN LOOK Window Manager (

olwm olwm (OPEN LOOK Window Manager) was the default stacking window manager for OpenWindows, the original X11 desktop environment included with SunOS and Solaris. Its unique characteristic is its implementation of the OPEN LOOK look and feel. Sco ...

), the

DeskSet SunView (Sun Visual Integrated Environment for Workstations, originally SunTools) is a discontinued windowing system from Sun Microsystems developed in the early 1980s. It was included as part of SunOS, Sun's UNIX implementation; unlike later U ...

productivity tools, the

XView XView is a widget toolkit from Sun Microsystems introduced in 1988. It provides an OPEN LOOK user interface for X Window System applications, with an object-oriented application programming interface (API) for the C programming language. Its in ...

and

OLIT OLIT (OPEN LOOK Intrinsics Toolkit ) is a widget toolkit from Sun Microsystems introduced in 1988, providing an OPEN LOOK user interface for X Window System applications. It provides an Xt application programming interface for the C programmin ...

widget toolkits, and the underlying X11/NeWS window server.

History

OpenWindows 1.0 was released in 1989 as a separately licensed addition to

4.0, replacing the older SunView (originally "SunTools")

windowing system In computing, a windowing system (or window system) is software that manages separately different parts of display screens. It is a type of graphical user interface (GUI) which implements the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) paradigm for ...

. Its core is the "xnews server", a hybrid window server that as its name implies supports both

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

and

-based applications. The server can also display legacy SunView applications, although this functionality was not well-supported. (A standalone NeWS windowing system was also available for a time, but was never the primary SunOS windowing environment.) Starting with SunOS 4.1.1 in 1990, OpenWindows 2.0 was bundled with the operating system. Solaris 2.0, the first release of the successor to SunOS 4, included OpenWindows 3.0.1. Starting with Solaris 2.3 in late 1993, Sun switched to a standard

X11R5 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

release of X11. It was still called OpenWindows (now version 3.3), but the NeWS protocol was replaced by support for

Display PostScript Display PostScript (or DPS) is a 2D graphics engine system for computers which uses the PostScript (PS) imaging model and language (originally developed for computer printing) to generate on-screen graphics. To the basic PS system, DPS adds a num ...

. Support for SunView applications was removed. The graphical look and feel of the window manager and tools is still based on

. Solaris 7 featured OpenWindows 3.6.1, with an X11R6.4 server. In 1993, Sun and the other major Unix vendors of the time formed the COSE alliance, seeking further standardization among their Unix releases. The alliance chose the Motif look and feel as its standard, and Sun announced it would phase out OpenWindows in favor of the new COSE desktop environment, which came to be known as CDE. The last release of OpenWindows is version 3.6.2, included in Solaris 8. With the release of Solaris 9 in 2002, the removal of OpenWindows support from Solaris finally began, as the OPEN LOOK DeskSet tools, OLIT and XView development tools, and olwm were removed. Support for running and displaying applications built with XView or OLIT remains in both Solaris 9 and Solaris 10, but the necessary libraries are no longer included in Solaris 11 and later releases.

Open source development

A project called "OWAcomp", the "OpenWindows Augmented Compatibility Environment", aims to make it possible to use the OpenWindows Deskset environment on Solaris 9, 10 (Sparc and x86) and Linux (x86). There is also a project hosted at

SourceForge.net SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

called "openlook" that is based on OpenWindows. As of July 2007, it is quite

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

-centric. Some OpenWindows applications were never released as open source by Sun, so some of these have been rewritten and some are still missing.

References

#
OpenWindows 1.0 announcement
# tp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/Solaris2/FAQ Solaris FAQ

External links

* * {{X desktop environments and window managers Sun Microsystems software Desktop environments

History

Open source development

See also

References

External links