CDE - Common Desktop Environment Reviews

I'm writing this review on a PPC G4, running CDE. It has a special flavor, it's very solid, and i'm very glad it's in the way of becoming 100% free (as in freedom) (motif c'mon). I hope this gets more and more work from the community and I am very commited to help!

This software is perfect. But I got the issue when installing CDE on Ubuntu 10.4 . After installation, I tried to use but mouse and keyboard cannot use anymore. What's it here ?

I was jazzed when I heard about this. I've always had the habit of making my systems look old school (everything looks like OPENSTEP, IRIX desktop, CDE, etc, even Windows XP is themed like old UNIX). I have MaXX Desktop (SGI's IRIX look) installed on Debian Squeeze but longed for the real CDE since Solaris 8. On Debian Squeeze x64 CDE built with little trouble (needed jpeg dev files) and seems to run fine so far. Can't wait for this to become stable.

CDE is very lightweight compared to GNOME/KDE. Although the interface looks quite outdated in comparison to today's desktop managers, CDE is to-the-point and only takes up 90 MB of memory on my computer. Good job to everyone who has made this possible!

Fantastic, CDE has been a favorite of mine since using it in the late 90s on Solaris. After owning a bunch of old SPARC stuff over the years, I've realized it was CDE that I missed, not Solaris. XFCE foot the bill for a long while, alas, I always pined for CDE. So happy to have it back, and running it on hardware of the late 90s variety with up to date software via Debian is simply beautiful. Thank you to all who worked to bring this wonderful code to the free software community!

Can't wait to see how developers re-vamp the CDE environment. I still love the crazy garish look of the desktop, which is weird because most i think are drawn away from it. Bets are there will be at least one Linux Distro that will release this as their primary Desktop Environment. Its never to late for an old dog to show some new tricks! This desktop has the potential to kick the butt (sense) out of the current environments if developers do the right thing..!

Although I'm more than happy with current desktop environments, there is always a niche for this legendary fellow. I will try to get it running on my Rasperry Pi, see how it performs compared to modern "lightweight" environments. It is a wise decision to make the sourcecode available under an open-source license. I very much appreciate this. Thank you!

i have only one thing to add: *finally*! i've been waiting for this to happen for decades.. the desktop environment i grew up with (beside mac os classic), and the one that, though dated, is still innovative and fits almost every traditional *nix perfectly. from the bottom of my heart: thank you to everyone who made this possible.

Great fun installing this. One tip: copy sys.dtwmrc to ~/.dt/dtwmrc; then bind f.next_workspace and f.prev_workspace to something. This lets you switch workspaces by keyboard.

Happy days. gonna spin up debian and try this. 1995, here we come! cheers.

It has been a long time since I used CDE! I would very much like to see an active project spring up. To be honest I think this old dog has some tricks left up it's sleeves that could prove useful with some TLC. CDE may look Odd... but it is one seriously SANE desktop. In an age were insanity seems to be running amok, this could be refreshing.

This is great news for us that love those retro desktops as a nice change from those bling-y desktops such as KDE and GNOME. Definitely will be installing this on my Debian Sid system to play with :)

It's down to do business, no wobbly windows here.

for users of window managers like Fluxbox or LXDE, this is never too little or too late - i'm really curious how soon people will create a .deb binary package of it! :)

Too little, too late. Now we have awesome desktops like KDE Plasma so there is not much use for CDE. Except for some history exploration :)