Martin Steigerwald:
> Karl - 04.10.24, 20:56:21 CEST:
...
> > Yes, life was a log simpler then...
> >
> > CDE is motif window manager (mwm) + some buttons etc. down mid to start
> > a few programs with and a set of standard (for CDE) programs.
>
> I used it under AIX with IBM PowerPC based workstations at university back
> then. Back then I did not really understand what it was composed of, so
> thanks for clarifying that. Despite "Desktop Environment" in its name its
> basically a WM + a toolbar and a few programs using a common toolkit /
> appearance if I understand it correctly.

Yes. there might some guidelines etc. also involved, don't really
rememeber. But what I remember was that when Bell/ATT made a deal with
Sun, and the other contenders in the unix market became angry at the deal
wich they thought would give Sun priviledges, so they bandied togher and
CDE became their "desktop" thing. Sun had open look which I kind of liked
better. Both CDE and Open look (olvwm) was previously installable in
debian, at least up to 2012.

> But I do remember that those IBM PowerPC based workstations, I think they
> were using from PowerPC 601, 603, 604 or something like that processor, I
> bet even 604 already, were rock stable. They just worked. Period.
>
> Some faculties of the university were using x86 PCs with some old Windows
> version (95/98?) and I have been told by university admins: These caused a
> lot of trouble. But those faculties that were using those IBM PowerPC
> based workstations: No trouble at all.

No surprise there, I heard that if you let thoose old MS-Windows stay
rinning for more the, was it 47 days, they crashed since no one thested
them for uptime.

> > At that time there were no cups and you could choose between bsd or
> > sysV style printing, and yes, printers were either PostScript or thoose
> > where one byte to printer mostly meant one character printed.
>
> Just for clarity. I just described the status quo at it is.
>
> I did not judge it. Yes, having a simple desktop without a crazy chain of
> nested dependencies can be a desirable goal. No doubt about it.

Sorry if I sounded terse, it seem that I express myself to terse and
then people wrongly thinks I picks on them, which isn't the case.

> I started using a GUI desktop with the Amiga. With AmigaOS 1.2/1.3. It was
> very simple. I can still tell you what every file in the OS does. Even with
> AmigaOS 3.1 or the new 3.2. Take that for clarity.

Yea, Amiga was my first own computer, though it was painful to swap
discettes all the time.
I remember when the first IBM store opened and I asked the salesperson
what its response time was, we didn't understand each other at all.
Also there was a big culture chock when I was to admin a Netware server,
so I sat down at the console and wanted to look at the docs on the
cd for how to set up the pcs... it took some time till I realized that
that wan't possible.

> I just commented on how realistic it would be when using a modern desktop
> environment within Debian, Devuan or another Debian, RHEL, SLES based
> distribution. And a lot of other distributions.

Yea, up till udev was introduced in debian, I did fully trust debian.
It just worked as it should and I wasn't afraid of upgrading running
system. That took an abrupt end.

...
> Not all got better in the past decades. On the other hand a modern Plasma
> desktop can do a lot more than a CDE desktop. And I am using quite some of
> its power user features.

I have not ever found the desktop like thing attractive, so I havn't
learnt what is good about them. What features in plasma are important
to you ?

Regards,
/Karl Hammer