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OpenWindows was a desktop environment
Desktop environment

In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface that is based on the desktop metaphor which can be seen on most modern personal computers today....
 for Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational corporation vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982....
 workstation
Workstation

A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems....
s which handled SunView
SunView

SunView was a windowing system from Sun Microsystems developed in the early 1980s. It was included as part of SunOS, Sun's UNIX implementation; unlike later UNIX windowing systems, much of it was implemented in the system kernel ....
, NeWS
NeWS

NeWS was a windowing system developed by Sun Microsystems in the mid 1980s. Originally known as "SunDew", its primary authors were James Gosling and David S....
, and X Window System
X Window System

The X Window System is a computing software system and network protocol that provides a graphical user interface for networked computers. It implements the X Window System protocols and architecture and provides windowing system on raster graphics Visual display units and manages Keyboard and pointing device control functions....
 protocols. OpenWindows was included in later releases of the SunOS
SunOS

SunOS is a version of the Unix 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 of SunOS....
 4 operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
 and the Solaris operating system
Solaris Operating System

Solaris is a Unix-based operating system introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1992 as the successor to SunOS.Solaris is known for its scalability, especially on SPARC systems, and for originating many innovative features such as DTrace and ZFS....
 until its removal in Solaris 9 in favor of CDE
Common Desktop Environment

The Common Desktop Environment is a desktop environment for Unix, based on the Motif widget toolkit. Hewlett-Packard OpenVMS uses CDE as its standard desktop environment....
 and GNOME
Gnome

A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus....
 2.0.

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

SunOS is a version of the Unix 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 of SunOS....
 4.0, replacing the older SunView
SunView

SunView was a windowing system from Sun Microsystems developed in the early 1980s. It was included as part of SunOS, Sun's UNIX implementation; unlike later UNIX windowing systems, much of it was implemented in the system kernel ....
 (originally "SunTools") windowing system
Windowing system

A windowing system is a component of a graphical user interface , and more specifically of a desktop environment, which supports the implementation of window managers, and provides basic support for graphics hardware, pointing devices such as mice, and keyboards....
.






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Encyclopedia


OpenWindows was a desktop environment
Desktop environment

In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface that is based on the desktop metaphor which can be seen on most modern personal computers today....
 for Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational corporation vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982....
 workstation
Workstation

A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems....
s which handled SunView
SunView

SunView was a windowing system from Sun Microsystems developed in the early 1980s. It was included as part of SunOS, Sun's UNIX implementation; unlike later UNIX windowing systems, much of it was implemented in the system kernel ....
, NeWS
NeWS

NeWS was a windowing system developed by Sun Microsystems in the mid 1980s. Originally known as "SunDew", its primary authors were James Gosling and David S....
, and X Window System
X Window System

The X Window System is a computing software system and network protocol that provides a graphical user interface for networked computers. It implements the X Window System protocols and architecture and provides windowing system on raster graphics Visual display units and manages Keyboard and pointing device control functions....
 protocols. OpenWindows was included in later releases of the SunOS
SunOS

SunOS is a version of the Unix 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 of SunOS....
 4 operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
 and the Solaris operating system
Solaris Operating System

Solaris is a Unix-based operating system introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1992 as the successor to SunOS.Solaris is known for its scalability, especially on SPARC systems, and for originating many innovative features such as DTrace and ZFS....
 until its removal in Solaris 9 in favor of CDE
Common Desktop Environment

The Common Desktop Environment is a desktop environment for Unix, based on the Motif widget toolkit. Hewlett-Packard OpenVMS uses CDE as its standard desktop environment....
 and GNOME
Gnome

A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus....
 2.0.

Description


OpenWindows was a desktop environment that implemented the OPEN LOOK
OPEN LOOK

OPEN LOOK is a graphical user interface specification for UNIX computer workstations. It was originally defined in the late 1980s by Sun Microsystems and AT&T....
 GUI specification. The name was actually an umbrella term used by Sun to describe several components: the underlying X11/NeWS window server, the OPEN LOOK Window Manager (olwm
Olwm

olwm is the default window manager for OpenWindows, the original X11 windowing environment included with SunOS and Solaris . Its unique characteristic is its implementation of the OPEN LOOK look and feel....
), the DeskSet productivity tools, and the XView
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 for the C ....
 and OLIT
OLIT

OLIT 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 , providing an easy way for those familiar with Xt programming to implement the OPEN LOOK look and feel....
 widget toolkits.

History


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

SunOS is a version of the Unix 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 of SunOS....
 4.0, replacing the older SunView
SunView

SunView was a windowing system from Sun Microsystems developed in the early 1980s. It was included as part of SunOS, Sun's UNIX implementation; unlike later UNIX windowing systems, much of it was implemented in the system kernel ....
 (originally "SunTools") windowing system
Windowing system

A windowing system is a component of a graphical user interface , and more specifically of a desktop environment, which supports the implementation of window managers, and provides basic support for graphics hardware, pointing devices such as mice, and keyboards....
. Its core was the "xnews server", a hybrid window server that as its name implies supported both X11 and NeWS
NeWS

NeWS was a windowing system developed by Sun Microsystems in the mid 1980s. Originally known as "SunDew", its primary authors were James Gosling and David S....
-based applications. The server could 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 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

Display PostScript is an on-screen display system. As the name implies, DPS uses the PostScript imaging model and language to generate on-screen graphics....
. Support for SunView applications was removed. The graphical look and feel of the window manager and tools was still based on OPEN LOOK
OPEN LOOK

OPEN LOOK is a graphical user interface specification for UNIX computer workstations. It was originally defined in the late 1980s by Sun Microsystems and AT&T....
. 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
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....
 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
Common Desktop Environment

The Common Desktop Environment is a desktop environment for Unix, based on the Motif widget toolkit. Hewlett-Packard OpenVMS uses CDE as its standard desktop environment....
.

The last release of OpenWindows was 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.

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 and 10. There is also a project hosted at SourceForge.net
SourceForge.net

SourceForge.net is a source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development....
 called "openlook" that is based on OpenWindows. As of July 2007, it is quite Linux
Linux

Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license...
-centric. Some OpenWindows applications were never released as open source by Sun, so some of these have been rewritten and some are still missing.

See also

  • Xsun
    Xsun

    Xsun is an X Window System server implementation included with the Solaris operating system, developed by Sun Microsystems. It replaced the older "Xnews " server, which supported the display of not only X11 applications, but also NeWS and SunView programs....


External links