Date: Sat, 16 Dec 1995 00:22:51 -0800 (PST) From: Jake Hamby <jehamby@lightside.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org, jdc@crab.xinside.com, velte@cdrom.com Subject: Re: Interested in CDE, anyone? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.951216000951.237A-100000@localhost> In-Reply-To: <6090.819146105@time.cdrom.com>
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On Sat, 16 Dec 1995, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> CDE, in case you've been living under a stone for the last 5 years, is
> the Sun/IBM/... (COSE?) Common Desktop & Development Environment -
> reputedly the best thing since sliced bread and an attempt to finally
> standardize the X desktop. I wouldn't really know since I've yet to
> actually see what it looks like, but I've read about it a fair bit and
> was intrigued enough to follow a recent lead..
I've tried out CDE on a SPARCstation 20 running Solaris 2.4 and
(recently) Solaris 2.5. I have VERY mixed feelings about it. On the one
hand it looks pretty enough, and it has the advantage of being a
"standard" across platforms. Also, it has a pretty toolbar on the
bottom, a number of Motif-based tools (similar to the Openwindows
"Deskset" stuff), and virtual consoles.
Those are the pros. But the disadvanatges are so big, that I doubt it
will be a big seller on FreeBSD (or Linux for that matter). First of
all, Motif is big, and so are the CDE programs. Even with 48MB of RAM,
and the fastest (single-CPU) superSPARC 75MHz, most programs take a
noticeable five seconds or so to start. And, although there are plenty
of pretty pictures, once you actually start to USE (or even worse try to
customize) CDE, you're stuck back in the Unix command-line world. Nearly
every program has an option to pop up a "Terminal" (DEC must've written
this one, it looks and works more like a DECTerm than an xterm), and as
for customizations, forget it! Although it's easy to change things like
wallpaper and background colors, customizing things like menu bars either
takes five or six separate non-intuitive steps, or involves editing .rc
files... All in all, this is an environment which fairly reeks of
"designed-by-committee" thinking and not enough usability testing...
With all of these problems, I think I'll stick with my finely honed fvwm
configuration on the SPARC, it starts up MUCH faster, the menu bar with
commonly used programs is always within reach, the desktop panner gives me
quick access to 9 virtual desktop, and it matches my configuration on
FreeBSD at home. Although CDE is a far cry from the ugly non-intuitive
(IMHO of course) Sun Openwindows stuff (is it just me or is olwm the
UGLIEST window manager?), it's barely worth the 28MB it takes up on disk
(40MB if you install the developers stuff!). And, unless it was $99 or
less (unlikely), I doubt many FreeBSD/Linux users would want it,
ESPECIALLY if it didn't come with the Motif developers kit. Add in the
fact that it needs AT LEAST 16-24MB of RAM to work well, and I vote no on
the whole idea...
Am I totally wrong, or is there a fundamental flaw in the idea of porting
CDE to a "tight" platform like FreeBSD? If you want it, you're just as
well off to run Solaris for x86, IMHO, and upgrade your system to 32MB of
RAM... :-(
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Jake Hamby | E-Mail: jehamby@lightside.com
Student, Cal Poly University, Pomona | System Administrator, JPL
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