Solaris Express Developer Edition is a free, quarterly release of Sun's next generation Solaris Operating System built from the source code repository at OpenSolaris.org. The release includes the latest tools, technologies, and platforms to create applications for the Solaris OS, Java Application Platforms, and Web 2.0. "Major highlights: new Solaris installer - the first major rewrite of the Solaris installer since Solaris 8 makes installation much easier; D-Light, the GUI tool to bring the power of DTrace to a broad developer audience; service offerings have been augmented with the addition of installation and configuration support." Update: Review here.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Can someone point to some links or provide some info regarding the "high" points of CDE, and its advantages?
I used to use it on my Solaris box, but never really got past using it to simply launch numerous terminal sessions. The other tools weren't particularly compelling to me.
So, I'm just curious what I'm missing.
Member since:2005-07-08
Here is a starting point:
http://xwinman.org/cde.php
If you used multiple commercial versions of UNIX, CDE made it easy to move from one OS to another without a great deal of pain and have a standard set of applications as part of the environment.
People used to complain about the amount of memory CDE used, but this was back in the 32-bit days when a SPARC 20 with 128 MB of RAM was considered huge. Compared to Gnome (JDS), CDE is light. I only just recently switched from CDE to JDS for my Sun Ray sessions, mostly because of improvements in the Sun Ray software and the Sun Ray 2.
Member since:2005-07-06
Can someone point to some links or provide some info regarding the "high" points of CDE, and its advantages?
Not very many. Yes, many found it quite an easy to use thing, but that's basically because it never did very much. It was quite clear that when Windows 95 and subsequent versions of Mac OS appeared that CDE need huge investment and improvements, and nothing happened. Like a lot of stuff in the old Unix world, the whole thing got bogged down in discussions about whose standards were standards to be used and discussions that lead to nothing. Motif was also a bone of contention for developers as well as users in with its stagnant API and looks, but many Motif applications are still around.
I know of no one who used CDE and stuff like Open Look on Unix systems who wasn't desperate to use and try anything else when it came along. It just didn't move with the times and the competition.
Member since:2006-05-14
I say this out of respect, i hope not to offend. i have noticed that the CDE Guys are in the same boat with the BeOS guys, and the MacOS 9 guys (OS/2 guys, etc). People who came to an OS, and everything "Just Worked(tm)" for what they were doing, and had what they needed. Unfortunately these OSs/GUIs also have something else in common, they are no longer developed for, or put in legacy mode.
Member since:2006-10-08
From the GUI gallery: http://toastytech.com/guis/sol.html
As it has been mentioned before, CDE was available on the most important commercial UNIX OSes and made it easy to deal with the OS and applications without needing to know particular OS habits.
Member since:
2006-10-08
"CDE might look like a non-wiped ass after a ten minute diarrhea session, but by god, usability-wise, it is such a good desktop environment. Everything makes sense, everything is exactly there where you expect it to be, and there are never any surprises. It has some really cool gimmicks and features."
Indeed, it is. It may look very old fashioned, but I found out that especially "computer illiterate" users who were introduced to CDE (using Sun Sparcs and Ultras running Solaris in our old psychological testing cabinet) didn't have that much problems using the desktop and the apps as their colleagues had in the "Windows" department. CDE has been in use on the HP servers running HP-UX, too - two different OSes, similar look and feel.
"Seriously, use it sometimes, and look beyond the exterior. I used it extensively on my Ultra V machine (Solaris 9) and would love to see CDE with a modern appearance - but with the same excellent usability. "
You can (nearly) get a clue about how CDE is if you install XFCE version 3 on a Linux or BSD system, and apply some of the CDE look and feel. It even may run faster because it does not use the Motif toolkit. :-)