[SunRescue] CDE ramblings (was: Solaris on older Sparc boxes)

[ward at zilla.nu]

On Tue, Jan 18, 2000 at 09:27:57AM -0800, James Lockwood wrote:

> Most of the visual interface code for CDE came from HP-VUE.  It's their
> code, and yes I do believe that it is fastest under HPUX.  My little
> 712/80 feels like a GUI speed demon.

Thank God they finally fixed most of the problems in VUE.  It was a huge
resource hog (not like CDE isn't), and it liked to behave very strangely.  I
miss the 712/60 I used to use; then again, I've always been a sucker for NeXT-
related hardware.  Steve Jobs just can't seem to keep from getting angry and/or
bored, thus screwing everything up for everyone else.  The 712 was an excellent
successor to the NeXTStation; NeXT may not have ever used it, but HP sure made a
nice bundle of money off of it, and even used a lot of the design in their
future workstation lines.

Didn't CDE come out of IBM, DEC, Sun, and HP all bringing something to the table
to produce a common desktop with the OSF?  Seems to me that it's almost
entirely VUE, with a few minor additions.  Maybe IBM threw in the rights to some
esoteric code or something.  Then again, wasn't Motif originally designed to
look a lot like OS/2 and early MS Windows?  Maybe IBM loaned 'em some interface
design guys.

Is the CDE code the same across platforms?  Not at all.  Is the feel the same 
across platforms?  Almost, but not quite.  Is it really a common desktop?  I 
guess.  I always liked the version that Triteal put out until Redhat put a stop
to it.  The virtual desktop display was neat in that it showed a miniature of 
the desktop, not unlike the fvwm pager.  In my opinion, it worked better under 
HP-UX 9.07 than 10.20's CDE does; or at least it sure felt faster on a 735.

Reagen