[ Thanks to John
Steinfeld for this link. ]
“Five years ago my first attempt at “Real UNIX” was a version of
Solaris x86 that used the Open Group’s CDE, or the Common Desktop
Environment as a GUI. At that time, the Linux desktop left a lot to
be desired and, after my first experience with the CDE, I thought
that it would become the defacto desktop for all unix and unix
variants out there. Silly me. Who knew that in just a few short
years the Gnome crew and the KDE folks would redefine desktop
functionality for the Linuxistas and the rest of the Freenix
afacianados?”
“Like visiting a friend after years apart, I was eager to see
what XIG had done with the old stalwart. What I got from my editor
was a copy of the MaXimumCDE/OS – the desktop software and XIG’s
version of Linux. The real bonus, however, is the Motif
Developer’s Kit that comes on the second cdrom. Included with THAT
is the motif runtime libraries, the widgits and a couple of demos
so you can see what the kit is capable of.“
“I did a little investigation on the Open Group’s website and
found that Motif can function on more than 200 different platforms
using gui’s created from the Developer’s Toolkit. This means that
an application GUI developed on CDE with Linux can probably be
deployed across the spectrum of ” Real Unix.” This is a great thing
for developers who need to interface with legacy systems like those
from SUN and HP. One thing that some Linux users have squalked
about is the lack of drag-n-drop between apps in the XF86/ Linux
combination. In Motif-based windowing systems this is a trivial
exercise – almost a reason to switch. The widgets available have
some object-oriented properties available to them, too. The
resources available to one superset of widgets can be inherited by
other widgets, or new definitions can be written by the user.”