Common Desktop Environment

Desktop Environments
1

Anyone have any secret tips for getting CDE running? I have installed it but I cannot get my EndeavourOS system to log with it.

Thanks,
-Jonathan

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2

Check to make sure there is a .desktop file for CDE installed in /usr/share/xsessions.

As for the login screen, you probably need to select CDE from a pulldown. Depending on the DM, the pulldown is probably an icon either on the title bar or next to your username.

3

The AUR package hasn’t been updated for 23 months; there are a couple of comments on the AUR page that might give you a bit of help, or possibly a bit of despair…

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/cdesktopenv/

cheroveobosco commented on 2021-12-16 19:11

Missing file /usr/dt/bin/dtlogin makes it unviable to start the display manager. Referenced in https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=270606

Kadzi commented on 2021-08-02 09:53

Hi, file startxsession.sh doesn’t have execution bit set after installation. You install it with ‘install -Dm644 …’ at the end of PKGBUILD.

The Arch wiki page on CDE mentions that it can be started with startx:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Common_Desktop_Environment

CDE can be directly launched with startx (install xorg-xinit):

$ export PATH=$PATH:/usr/dt/bin $ export LANG=C $ startx /usr/dt/bin/Xsession

4

dtlogin is CDE’s own display manager. It should be possible to start CDE from lightdm or even gdm.

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5

Hopefully.

Man, the last time I saw CDE…it was Unix, and the late 90s.

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6

So you got my curiosity up and I decided to install CDE… and initially got to about where you did.

As near as I can tell, the ‘cdesktopenv’ package from the AUR is somewhat broken. It builds but it seems like some executables are missing.

The ‘cdesktopenv-git’ package is even more broken as the author has not been able to make it work with changes in the way CDE is now built.

All is not lost, however… Following the directions at the CDE wiki, it is possible to build and install CDE on EndeavourOS.

You’ll need to install the ‘rpcsvc-proto’ package prior to building CDE. (I don’t think it’s listed as a requirement, but it should be.) Also you’ll need to install ‘rpcbind’ and do a “systemctl enable rpcbind.socket”.

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7

Just as a side note though, I got it working real quick on FreeBSD just to try it out and I’d say its not worth trying to use it for much at this point. It’s outdated. If they would get it to have more of the features and functionality that modern DE’s have I might use it full time… but it’s kinda cumbersome as it is.

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8

There is a project call NsCDE which recreates the look-and-feel but with more modern components. I haven’t gotten around to really trying it, however.

9

Oh, cool! Thanks for the info!