Common Desktop Environment
Encyclopedia
The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is a desktop environment
Desktop environment
In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface derived from the desktop metaphor that is seen on most modern personal computers. These GUIs help the user in easily accessing, configuring, and modifying many important and frequently accessed...

 for Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 and OpenVMS
OpenVMS
OpenVMS , previously known as VAX-11/VMS, VAX/VMS or VMS, is a computer server operating system that runs on VAX, Alpha and Itanium-based families of computers. Contrary to what its name suggests, OpenVMS is not open source software; however, the source listings are available for purchase...

, based on the Motif widget toolkit
Motif (widget toolkit)
In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems. It emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstations were on the rise, as a...

.

Corporate history

SunSoft, HP
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

 and USL
Unix System Laboratories
Unix System Laboratories was originally organized as part of Bell Labs in 1989. USL joined with the UNIX Software Operation, also a Bell Laboratories division, in 1990. It assumed responsibility for Unix development and licensing activities...

 announced CDE in June 1993 as a joint development within the Common Open Software Environment (COSE) initiative. The primary environment was based on HP's VUE
VUE
In computing, Visual User Environment was Hewlett-Packard's Desktop environment for the X Window System. It was a rival and precursor to the Open Group's CDE. Work began on VUE in 1988 at Apollo Computer for use with Domain/OS, as an alternative to Apollo's standard DM and wmgr...

 (Visual User Environment), itself derived from the Motif Window Manager
Motif Window Manager
In computing, the Motif Window Manager is an X window manager based on the Motif toolkit.MWM is a lightweight and, by today's standards, extremely minimalist window manager. MWM lacks support for desktop icons or virtual desktops. A plain text file is used to generate a root menu that the user can...

 (mwm). IBM contributed its Common User Access
Common User Access
Common User Access is a standard for user interfaces to operating systems and computer programs. It was developed by IBM and first published in 1987 as part of their Systems Application Architecture...

 model and Workplace Shell
Workplace Shell
The Workplace Shell is a object-oriented desktop shell produced by IBM's Boca Raton development lab for OS/2 2.0. It is based on Common User Access and made a radical shift away from the Program Manager type interface that earlier versions of OS/2 shared with Windows 3.x or the...

. Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...

 provided desktop manager components and scalable systems technologies from UNIX System V
UNIX System V
Unix System V, commonly abbreviated SysV , is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by American Telephone & Telegraph and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, termed Releases 1, 2, 3 and 4...

. Sun contributed its ToolTalk
ToolTalk
ToolTalk is an interapplication communications system developed by Sun Microsystems in order to allow applications to communicate with each other at runtime...

 application interaction framework and a port of its DeskSet productivity tools, including mail and calendar clients, from its OpenWindows
OpenWindows
OpenWindows was a desktop environment for Sun Microsystems workstations which handled SunView, NeWS, and X Window System protocols. OpenWindows was included in later releases of the operating systems SunOS 4 and Solaris, until its removal in Solaris 9 in favor of Common Desktop Environment and...

 environment.

In March 1994 CDE became the responsibility of the "new OSF", a merger of the Open Software Foundation
Open Software Foundation
The Open Software Foundation was a not-for-profit organization founded in 1988 under the U.S. National Cooperative Research Act of 1984 to create an open standard for an implementation of the UNIX operating system.-History:...

 and Unix International
Unix International
Unix International or UI was an association created in 1988 to promote open standards, especially the Unix operating system. Its most notable members were AT&T and Sun Microsystems, and in fact the commonly accepted reason for its existence was as a counterbalance to the Open Software Foundation ,...

;
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.

Until about 2000, users of Unix desktops regarded CDE as the de facto
De facto
De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning fact." In law, it often means "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but not officially established." It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or...

standard, but at that time, other desktop environments such as GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...

 and KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...

 were quickly becoming mature, and became almost universal on the Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 platform, which already had a larger user base than most commercial Unixes in total. Red Hat
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....

 is the only Linux distribution to which CDE has been ported, although it has since been phased out in favour of GNOME. However CDE code can still be bought and compiled on any UNIX or UNIX-like OS.

In 2001, Sun Microsystems announced that they would phase out CDE as the standard Solaris desktop environment in favor of GNOME. Solaris 10, released in early 2005, includes both CDE and the GNOME-based Java Desktop System
Java Desktop System
OpenSolaris Desktop, formerly Java Desktop System , is a desktop environment now developed by Oracle Corporation available for Solaris, and formerly Linux....

. Future releases of Solaris will be based on the OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris was an open source computer operating system based on Solaris created by Sun Microsystems. It was also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around the software...

 open source project, which states that there is no plan to make the Solaris CDE "consolidation" (OS component) available as open source.

HP's
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

 OpenVMS
OpenVMS
OpenVMS , previously known as VAX-11/VMS, VAX/VMS or VMS, is a computer server operating system that runs on VAX, Alpha and Itanium-based families of computers. Contrary to what its name suggests, OpenVMS is not open source software; however, the source listings are available for purchase...

 uses CDE as its standard desktop environment.

The Open Group released Motif in 2000 as OpenMotif under a "revenue sharing" license that does not fully meet either the open source
Open Source Definition
The Open Source Definition is a document published by the Open Source Initiative, to determine whether or not a software license can be labeled with the open-source certification mark....

 or free software
Free software licence
A free software licence is a software licence which grants recipients rights to modify and redistribute the software, which would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law. A free software licence grants, to the recipients, freedoms in the form of permissions to modify or distribute copyrighted work...

 definitions. (The Open Group had wished to make it open source, but did not quite succeed in achieving this.) In 2006, a petition was created asking The Open Group to release the source code for CDE and Motif under a free license.

The Xfce
Xfce
Xfce is a free software desktop environment for Unix and other Unix-like platforms, such as Linux, Solaris, and BSD – though recent compatibility issues have arisen with regard to BSD Unix platforms...

 desktop at one time took part of its look and feel
Look and feel
In software design, look and feel is a term used in respect of a graphical user interface and comprises aspects of its design, including elements such as colors, shapes, layout, and typefaces , as well as the behavior of dynamic elements such as buttons, boxes, and menus...

 from the CDE environment, but no longer does.

OpenCDE, an open source project to replicate CDE, was started in early 2010. The project intends to reproduce the look and feel
Look and feel
In software design, look and feel is a term used in respect of a graphical user interface and comprises aspects of its design, including elements such as colors, shapes, layout, and typefaces , as well as the behavior of dynamic elements such as buttons, boxes, and menus...

, organization, and feature set of CDE without using any CDE-derived code.

Operating systems using CDE

  • AIX (IBM
    IBM
    International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

    )
  • Digital UNIX
    Tru64 UNIX
    Tru64 UNIX is a 64-bit UNIX operating system for the Alpha instruction set architecture , currently owned by Hewlett-Packard . Previously, Tru64 UNIX was a product of Compaq, and before that, Digital Equipment Corporation , where it was known as Digital UNIX .As its original name suggests, Tru64...

     / Tru64 UNIX
    Tru64 UNIX
    Tru64 UNIX is a 64-bit UNIX operating system for the Alpha instruction set architecture , currently owned by Hewlett-Packard . Previously, Tru64 UNIX was a product of Compaq, and before that, Digital Equipment Corporation , where it was known as Digital UNIX .As its original name suggests, Tru64...

     (originally Digital Equipment Corporation
    Digital Equipment Corporation
    Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...

    , now Hewlett-Packard
    Hewlett-Packard
    Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

    )
  • HP-UX
    HP-UX
    HP-UX is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on UNIX System V and first released in 1984...

     (Hewlett-Packard)
  • OpenVMS
    OpenVMS
    OpenVMS , previously known as VAX-11/VMS, VAX/VMS or VMS, is a computer server operating system that runs on VAX, Alpha and Itanium-based families of computers. Contrary to what its name suggests, OpenVMS is not open source software; however, the source listings are available for purchase...

     (originally Digital Equipment Corporation, now Hewlett-Packard)
  • Solaris (Sun Microsystems
    Sun Microsystems
    Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

    )
  • UnixWare
    UnixWare
    UnixWare is a Unix operating system maintained by The SCO Group . UnixWare is typically deployed as a server rather than desktop. Binary distributions of UnixWare are available for x86 architecture computers. It was originally released by Univel, a jointly owned venture of AT&T's Unix System...

     (Univel
    Univel
    Univel was a joint venture of Novell and AT&T's Unix System Laboratories that was formed in 1991 to develop and market the Destiny desktop Unix operating system,...

    )
  • IRIX
    IRIX
    IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version...

     (For a short time Silicon Graphics
    Silicon Graphics
    Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...

     offered CDE as an alternative to IID
    IRIX Interactive Desktop
    IRIX Interactive Desktop is a desktop environment normally used as the default desktop on Silicon Graphics workstations running IRIX. The IRIX Interactive Desktop uses the Motif widget toolkit on top of the X Window System found on most Unix systems. The default window manager on the IRIX...

    )

External links

  • AIX
    AIX operating system
    AIX AIX AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced "a i ex" is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms...

     -
  • HP-UX
    HP-UX
    HP-UX is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on UNIX System V and first released in 1984...

     - CDE
  • Solaris - CDE
  • Tutorial for the CDE
  • Open Group - CDE
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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