Classic Common Desktop Environment coming to OpenBSD

32 susam 7 7/31/2025, 1:42:58 AM undeadly.org ↗

Comments (7)

anyfoo · 23m ago
What serendipity. I just bought an old Alpha on eBay, and installed both Tru64 and OpenBSD on it. Tru64 came with CDE, and I was once again admiring how ugly it is, and lamenting with friends at work how this eyesore could replace OpenLook. But CDE kind of "belongs" to Tru64.

Looks like I now get to "enjoy" CDE on the OpenBSD partition as well!

sugarpimpdorsey · 1h ago
So it will feel like Real® UNIX® again.

Solaris just wasn't the same after they switched to GNOME.

Now you just need that utility that replicates HDD clicking noise through the speaker when your SSD is accessed.

Is there a Firefox skin that looks like Netscape 4? For extra realism have a script that randomly kills the process every 15 minutes to simulate Netscape crashing.

LeoPanthera · 54m ago
There is a hardware solution for clicking SSDs: https://www.serdashop.com/HDDClicker

(Though it does require your computer have a drive access LED.)

For a modern "Netscape", look into Seamonkey.

hexagonwin · 1h ago
Nice. Though it wasn't on the ports tree, seems like it was possible to build already. https://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/wiki/OpenBSDBuild/
ryao · 50m ago
Have the known security issues in CDE been fixed?
dlachausse · 41m ago
It doesn't look like it...

> I wouldn't use is as a daily driver, it's old unsecure code but it's fun if you want to bring back memories.

malux85 · 1h ago
I have a vm with NsCDE installed for when I what that childhood nostalgia hit

https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE

One of my mentors when I was very young gave me an Alphaserver 2100A running OpenVMS with CDE on it, and I remember using the installed scientific software (cant remember the name) to do 3D graphs, and so began a lifelong love of scientific computing!