Other CDE Users Unite!

CDE (Common Desktop Environment) once had OLWM (OpenLook WM) as its window manager, and it used the XView (OpenLook) Toolkit. http://www.xwinman.org/olvwm.php

x11-toolkits/xview is the old depreciated port. It wasn't supported on 64 bit processors.

XView/OpenLook can be seen in this diagram:
500px-xlib_and_xcb_in_the_x_window_system_graphics_stack-svg-png.13930
 
I use CDE in everyday work.
I have 2 window managers: CDE and Gnome.

We (our very small company) develop operating systems on micro-controllers (smart cards), which are used as a hardware crypto-modules in applications.
A client side application sends its plain data to our smart card (in APDU - throughout card reader, using PCSC).
Card does crypt/sign the data, and returns the result to application. On a server side, card is used to decrypt/verify sign the data received.
My work is to develop (in C/C++) libraries which are using by applications to communicate with our smart cards. Also I develop bunch of tests.
I rarely use Gnone. I do all my work in CDE, especially testing (tests in CDE run twice as fast as in Gnome).

Edit: I use this CDE.
cde_works.png
 
We're working in a secure perimeter, and I haven't explored that closely. I think that things are not so good there, if you do not take additional actions on network protection. Here is an article, for example (very old) -

Watch out for dangerous CDE vulnerability in UNIX

Internet Security Systems discovered a potentially harmful flaw in the Common Desktop Environment (CDE), a common UNIX GUI. One major UNIX vendor has disputed the flaw, and another has yet to release a patch. Get the details on this flaw and its fix.
www.techrepublic.com www.techrepublic.com
 
Boy CDE brings back memories. The first "desktop environment" I ran across. Old Sun, Dec machines. Toolbar, multiple workspaces, animated icons. Really is it a big leap from CDE to say MacOS? Not for me. Motif window manager/decorations: not the prettiest but certainly functional.
If one looks at something like classic CDE and compares against newer DE's like KDE, Gnome, etc, you realize "modern DE's are basically the systemd of the graphics world".
 
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Alain De Vos said:
How does CDE relates to security, open ports, services etc ... ?
Click to expand...
Honestly, I am not a network security officer. I am an ordinary C/C++ programmer with knowledge of applied cryptography. My knowledge of networking is limited to TCP/IP Illustrated v1-2 (old editions) , and UNP v1 , 2Ed.

mer said:
Boy CDE brings back memories. The first "desktop environment" I ran across. Old Sun, Dec machines.
Click to expand...
I worked with CDE on Solaris 2.6 - 10 (2000-2010). It was very cool;)
 
Andrey Lanin said:
Honestly, I am not a network security officer. I am an ordinary C/C++ programmer with knowledge of applied cryptography. My knowledge of networking is limited to TCP/IP Illustrated v1-2 (old editions) , and UNP v1 , 2Ed.
Click to expand...
CDE is actually completely impenetrable from the outside if you just ensure you set up rpcbind to listen only on localhost and same with inetd ( -a <address>)

You can use sockstat -4 -l or netstat -nat | grep LISTEN to find this out (also note that Xorg hasn't listened on a TCP socket for decades, so this shouldn't be visible either).

With these disabled externally; there is good reason to suggest it is safer than Gnome and KDE with dbus and avahi leaking access everywhere.
 
Andrey Lanin said:
I use CDE in everyday work.
I have 2 window managers: CDE and Gnome.

We (our very small company) develop operating systems on micro-controllers (smart cards), which are used as a hardware crypto-modules in applications.
A client side application sends its plain data to our smart card (in APDU - throughout card reader, using PCSC).
Card does crypt/sign the data, and returns the result to application. On a server side, card is used to decrypt/verify sign the data received.
My work is to develop (in C/C++) libraries which are using by applications to communicate with our smart cards. Also I develop bunch of tests.
I rarely use Gnone. I do all my work in CDE, especially testing (tests in CDE run twice as fast as in Gnome).

Edit: I use this CDE.
View attachment 14455
Click to expand...
Really cool!
 
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Reactions: _al
My only beef with CDE/mwm is that I cannot hide the window frame when I'm watching a video in full screen mode.
 
Ages ago (as part of OpenCDE) I made some hacks to Motif/mwm to adhere to a few of the EWMH requests. I will see if I can track down the old patches. Perhaps parts of them can be applied against CDE/mwm/dtwm.
 
msplsh said:
Didn't HP-UX use CDE by default? Last time I used that was early 2000s.
Click to expand...
Only if you selected X in the installer ; but yes it was default desktop env (if I recall correcly it was never on the first installation media; I'm using custom depot for many years so I'm not 100% sure). But tools such as ignite and sw* actively check for DISPLAY var which can be annoying if not straight irritating.
 
kpedersen said:
Ages ago (as part of OpenCDE) I made some hacks to Motif/mwm to adhere to a few of the EWMH requests. I will see if I can track down the old patches. Perhaps parts of them can be applied against CDE/mwm/dtwm.
Click to expand...
I remember when OpenCDE was released back in 2012. It was just after Christmas! Are you the original author of OpenCDE?
 
Andrey Lanin said:
I use CDE in everyday work.
I have 2 window managers: CDE and Gnome.

We (our very small company) develop operating systems on micro-controllers (smart cards), which are used as a hardware crypto-modules in applications.
A client side application sends its plain data to our smart card (in APDU - throughout card reader, using PCSC).
Card does crypt/sign the data, and returns the result to application. On a server side, card is used to decrypt/verify sign the data received.
My work is to develop (in C/C++) libraries which are using by applications to communicate with our smart cards. Also I develop bunch of tests.
I rarely use Gnone. I do all my work in CDE, especially testing (tests in CDE run twice as fast as in Gnome).

Edit: I use this CDE.
View attachment 14455
Click to expand...

I like it very much. And I would like to install "your" version. What are the steps to do that ? just grab the package,unrar it and the run make ?
 
ziomario said:
I like it very much. And I would like to install "your" version. What are the steps to do that ? just grab the package,unrar it and the run make ?
Click to expand...
Initially I did install CDE using FreeBSD pkg.

It looks like that:

sudo pkg install cde

create ~/.Xresources :
Code: 
xterm*faceName: Monospace
xterm*faceSize: 10
XTerm*selectToClipboard: true

create ~/.xinitrc :
Code: 
setxkbmap -layout us,ru -option grp:alt_shift_toggle &
(sleep 5 && xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources) &
exec /usr/local/dt/bin/Xsession

add to /etc/rc.conf the following lines:
Code: 
rpcbind_enable="yes"
dtcms_enable="yes"
inetd_enable="yes"

add to /etc/inetd.conf the following line:
Code: 
dtspc stream tcp nowait root /usr/local/dt/bin/dtspcd /usr/local/dt/bin/dtspcd
add to /etc/services the following line:
Code: 
dtspc 6112/tcp
If you planning to use dtlogin, create /usr/local/etc/X11/Xwrapper.config and put to it
Code: 
allowed_users=anybody
.

I do not use dtlogin - I start X and WM from startx.

If you want to install CDE from tar.gz, then you can do the following steps:
get tarball from here, following instruction from here
i e
sudo pkg install xorg git iconv ksh93 open-motif tcl86 auto{conf,make} libtool gettext-runtime gmake bdftopcf opensp
Code: 
mkdir ~/inst
cd ~/inst
gzip -d cde-2.5.0.tar.gz
tar xfv cde-2.5.0.tar
./autogen.sh
./configure --with-tcl=/usr/local/lib/tcl8.6 MAKE="gmake"
gmake
sudo gmake install

~/.Xresources,, ~/.xinitrc, /etc/rc.conf - the same as above,
but edit path to CDE in ~/.xinitrc, (it is /usr/dt/bin/Xsession now)
Also edit path to dtspcd in /etc/inetd.conf and add another one line to it:
Code: 
cmsd/2-5 dgram rpc/udp wait root /usr/dt/bin/rpc.cmsd rpc.cms
 
oh my god,how many steps. I will try for sure ! what's the version of CDE more secure ? from the source or from the pkg ?
 
I had a little problems with the localization of interface. This helped me:
forums.freebsd.org

Solved - Installing Truetype fonts on FreeBSD

Hello, I would like to install a Truetype font, namely Monoisome-Regular.ttf from https://larsenwork.com/monoid/. I have done some searching of the archives here and Google, as well as consulting the FreeBSD handbook, specifically the section at https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/x-fonts.html...
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org
forums.freebsd.org

X.org and Fontpath

Hi guys, it is strictly necessary these days adding the "fontpath" to Xorg as the handbook suggests or this is something that can be ignored? Thanks in advance, TGL
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org
(I only started working on FreeBSD again in 2022. A lot has been forgotten since 1999...).
The problem was solved by adjusting font.alias file.
In CDE 2.4.0 your own copy of font.alias must be in /usr/local/etc/dt/config/xfonts/xx_XX.UTF-8/, and you should configure interface for your locale manually :(
In CDE 2.5.0 I corrected the system wide /usr/dt/etc/cde/fontaliases/font.alias.
In CDE 2.5.0 I did not configure localization at all - only add two linens to .dtprofile (for my locale):
Code: 
LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8
export LANG

ziomario said:
what's the version of CDE more secure ?
Click to expand...
I dont know...
 
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