GNOME & Firefox officially brain dead.

mer said:
Going by hazy memory, all the commercial Unix machines I've used (Solaris, HP-UX, Ultrix, others I forget) had 3 button mice and middle button was paste. Kind of fun when you got on a Mac with one mouse button and you had to hold down 6 different modifier keys to get multi-button behavior.
So this while not surprising given the source, but it's puzzling especially for FireFox.

I guess WaterFox, Librewolf are going to have optin enabled.





I would say ask cy@ for the definitive answer....
garaksarr

Other Thread 'CDE Users Unite!'

Does anyone use CDE as their daily driver here? If so, why?
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CDE is maintained.

I wouldn't say Motif is dead. Though I did ask upstream if there were any updates forthcoming. She replied by asking me if I had an issue to report. I had none.

There is a Motif fork. The developer emailed me last month. It had some issues, i.e. segfaults, when I installed it. However I used the libmap.conf "workaround" which may not have been sufficient. The upstream developer mentioned many API changes. That means many ABI changes as well and probably why I experienced segfults. I'll be testing it by reinstalling my motif ports with it. It will likely be installed separate to motif. If it's successful I'll look at making it default.
 
cy@ said:
CDE is maintained.

I wouldn't say Motif is dead.
Click to expand...
Good to hear about CDE, I always liked it. I haven't seen any new software developed using motif for many years now, but I guess that doesn't mean it isn't happening somewhere. Last thing I remember of motif was the 'hungry programmers' version of it, but that was a good while ago now.

Looks like the open group still has a version of motif available: http://www6.opengroup.org/openmotif/
 
cracauer@ said:
Is that just for middle-clicking in general areas?

Or will they disable middle-click on links to open them in new tabs?
Click to expand...
So the specific behaviour the phoronix article talks about removing is pasting text into entry fields and all other areas you can type text into, using the middle button to paste in the current contents of the clipboard.

It's very useful. Selection is by button 1, either single click, hold down and stripe, or double click to select a word, or triple click to select a whole line (eg in xterm). Other gui widgets also support selection this way. The selection is auto-copied to the clipboard. Then you just move the mouse pointer to the widget you want to drop the text on and click button 2, and it gets pasted in.
 
blackbird9 said:
So the specific behaviour the phoronix article talks about removing is pasting text into entry fields and all other areas you can type text into, using the middle button to paste in the current contents of the clipboard.
Click to expand...

Oh all text fields? Never mind, that is a bigger deal.

I thought only opening urls by middle-clicking with a URL in the copy'n'paste buffer.
 
The original design on X11 desktops was you can paste text into any gui element entry field or text box by button 2 click. For example, all the motif widgets that you could type text into supported this type of copy and paste. More recent widget sets/DE's (gnome, kde) and individual apps have also implemented ctrl-c/ctrl-v for windows compatibility, and software sometimes gets mixed up between supporting the two methods. That might be their motivation for removing it. But button 2 paste is super-userful. It's also very useful within one or multiple xterms for text manipulation (at least they're not talking about taking that away, that would be terrible). This stuff all came with X11, as someone said the original standard was a 3-button mouse on unix X11 boxes.
 
Personally I don't really care if they disable it on gnome, it's crap anyway and I don't use it. But I do use some gtk apps, so if they disable it inside the gtk widgets, which they would probably have to do to get it to work, it might stop working in those apps; unless they can selectively disable it only if the app is running under a gnome DE. Suppose they disable it in gvim, where button 2 paste currently works; gvim links to gtk3, so if its disabled in gtk3, that would break button 2 paste in gvim. Just one example. There are probably gui versions of emacs that use gtk widgets too. Or terminal emulators that use the gtk3 widget set. And I use firefox of course, and it's derivatives, so it will be annoying if it's removed there. Depending on how they implement it, the impact could be quite bad, and it could affect various apps even if you're not running gnome as your desktop. Hopefully they will have something like an environment variable or some setting under ~/.config that can be set so the user can switch the current behavour back on globally for the desktop.
 
blackbird9 said:
Good to hear about CDE, I always liked it. I haven't seen any new software developed using motif for many years now, but I guess that doesn't mean it isn't happening somewhere. Last thing I remember of motif was the 'hungry programmers' version of it, but that was a good while ago now.

Looks like the open group still has a version of motif available: http://www6.opengroup.org/openmotif/
Click to expand...
I don't think there's any new Motif software. New Qt and Gtk software is being developed but IMO it's irrelevant. In the world I work in professionally, back in the day most UNIX software was based on Motif. Today we rarely see any client software on Linux/UNIX. Even Windows based software is an anomaly. Most business software uses a browser or smartphone app as a front end.

IIRC Oracle used Motif until recently. Even then, they use a GUI for installation and nothing else after installation is complete.

CDE is built using Motif primitives. The mwm (Motif Window Manager) is installed by the port/package. And it can be used -- I used it for years. CDE, specifically CDE's dtwm, is a souped up mwm. Both use the same config file. Except for a couple statements, .dt/dtwmrc is the same as .mwmrc. I use a shell script to convert one to another. My menus are the same for the times I choose to use mwm.

There is also a emwm port/package. Its configuration is exactly the same as CDE and mwm, except for the two statements.

emwm uses Motif primitives and libraries just as CDE does.

Open Group still supports Motif for the various apps.
 
Yeah, I've noticed that, everything is getting shoved into the browser, and/or phone apps. I think open group owns the core IP for motif, I seem to remember them taking control of it back around the late 90's or early 00's. A lot of their stuff that was going to be in OSF/1, of course that never happened. We used their build system for years, for example.
 
When you try to imitate Apples' design language without understanding vertical integration - you get brokenness like this in the open source ecosystem.

Eliminating the scroll wheel click only makes sense when you give users something like the Apple Magic Mouse.

In fact, Red Hat wants to be Apple so bad in so many ways they've singlehandedly fractured and ruined the open source ecosystem. A trend I've come to notice over the years.

Wayland -> bastardized Quartz clone
systemD -> bastardized launchd clone
GNOME -> bastardized Aqua/Finder clone
pulseaudio -> bastardized CoreAudio clone
etc.. etc.

The GNOME devs need (or should've) to take Gnome2 (which was really the only differentiating desktop UX outside of Windows/macOS) and refine it.
 
AlfredoLlaquet said:
... it seems that most people like ... the Finnish gentleman, ...
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I would politely disagree. I know lots of people who have met him (like for dinner, a few beers, a long chat in the hallway), including myself, and I think the widespread agreement is that he is not a nice person. I would even claim that he has got less nice in the last 30 years; I first met him when he was still an undergraduate, and not married.

His technical and managerial achievements are a different debate.

And his taste in DEs should not be given terribly much weight.
 
hardworkingnewbie said:
GNOME is dead for me since the arrival of GNOME 3.0 back in 2011.

Back then they axed a very nice working and sane desktop environment into a bad iOS ripoff - on the desktop.

Of course that didn't go well, and since not much has changed GNOME sucks still today with its "our devs know best" approach, still putting menus behind those dumb hamburger bars and so on.

So in short: who the fuck cares about what these idiots are again up to, who thought it was good idea to make a tablet GUI for a *NIX desktop?

Or as a disgruntled former GNOME user (Linus Torvalds) put it: "This 'users are idiots, and are confused by functionality' mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it."
Click to expand...
I completely agree.

I use twm. And I use the middle mouse button (wheel) to grab parts of the screen with XV.

(I used GNOME DE for a long time. Then I returned to CDE, then switched to fvwm3, and then to twm, which I started with in the 90s).
 
Beastie7 said:
In fact, Red Hat wants to be Apple so bad in so many ways they've singlehandedly fractured and ruined the open source ecosystem. A trend I've come to notice over the years.
Click to expand...
Possibly. But I detect the hand of microsoft, making damn sure that linux doesn't become too good, stretching right back to the days of mono, and gnome 3, and probably before that; "embrace, extend, and extinguish".
And for redhat, you can just read "IBM" nowadays; there is no redhat, to all intents and purposes, and hasn't been since 2019; it's just another ibm brand now.
 
cy@ said:
I don't think there's any new Motif software. New Qt and Gtk software is being developed but IMO it's irrelevant. In the world I work in professionally, back in the day most UNIX software was based on Motif. Today we rarely see any client software on Linux/UNIX. Even Windows based software is an anomaly. Most business software uses a browser or smartphone app as a front end.

IIRC Oracle used Motif until recently. Even then, they use a GUI for installation and nothing else after installation is complete.

CDE is built using Motif primitives. The mwm (Motif Window Manager) is installed by the port/package. And it can be used -- I used it for years. CDE, specifically CDE's dtwm, is a souped up mwm. Both use the same config file. Except for a couple statements, .dt/dtwmrc is the same as .mwmrc. I use a shell script to convert one to another. My menus are the same for the times I choose to use mwm.

Open Group still supports Motif for the various apps.
Click to expand...
So, if freebsd is now to adopt CDE as the default desktop, its betting on something that is really on life support. What happens if opengroup decides to drop motif? They have already open-sourced motif, so they probably aren't getting much in the way of license revenue from it. As you say, Oracle has now dropped motif. What happens if the small number of people keeping CDE going decide to stop? Who is going to add new feature requests, and/or keep it current? Anyway, I don't dislike CDE, I used to like using it a lot on AIX. I just think choosing it as a default desktop for freebsd in 2026 (as was suggested) has a few question marks. Freebsd needs to choose something that is actively being developed and growing, imho. Although I suppose the counter-argument to that is that using something active will force freebsd to drag in more of the linux enshittification. Anyway, it's not a clear cut choice in my mind. Still, this belongs in another thread.

en.wikipedia.org

Common Desktop Environment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
sourceforge.net

CDE - Common Desktop Environment

Download CDE - Common Desktop Environment for free. The Common Desktop Environment, the classic UNIX desktop. The Common Desktop Environment was created by a collaboration of Sun, HP, IBM, DEC, SCO, Fujitsu and Hitachi. Used on a selection of commercial UNIXs, it is now available as open-source...
sourceforge.net sourceforge.net
 
Well, maybe it's got a bit more legs than I thought. There is a reasonable size list of members here, although it's not clear how many are developers. It's certainly a nice desktop. Adopting it for freebsd would give freebsd a nice default desktop. But no-one is writing software in motif nowadays, and it's very complicated to write code in, which is part of the reason it didn't succeed, although maybe it's improved if they are now using xcb in place of xlib and Xt, although I don't know if that is the case. Anyway, this is o/t.

CDE - Common Desktop Environment / Wiki / Home

sourceforge.net sourceforge.net
 
I threw in CDE because it is way too old to be dependent on active patents, it is not a "cool thing to leave your mark on" (says the dog to the new fence), and it is STABLE. No more features added? Fine. Less breakage, less maintainance. Who wants KDE or Gnome can do that, but when someone thinks FreeBSD needs a GUI, lets have a small one that is, well, ours. And maybe we can have things like the Haiku User Shell directly on f.e. vulkan and be done with X11 or wayland in the base install.
 
Sure I agree, CDE is stable, it works well, nice to use, its not going to pull in lots of dependencies. I think it can be argued both ways. Please, just don't let it be Gnome...!
 
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