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Common Desktop Environment "CDE" 2.5.3 Released After Two Years

posted by jelizondo on Tuesday December 09 2025, @06:03AM   Printer-friendly
Software

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.phoronix.com/news/CDE-2.5.3-Desktop

Two years and one week since the prior point release, Common Desktop Environment 2.5.3 is now available as the latest iteration of this Unix desktop environment built around the Motif toolkit. CDE has been open-source for more than a decade now but its development not exactly brisk. But for those resisting the likes of Wayland and other modern display tech -- especially with KDE announcing today Plasma 6.8 will be Wayland-exclusive -- CDE 2.5.3 is now available.

CDE 2.5.3 ships with various bug fixes, dtwm now supporting more mouse buttons, some compiler fixes and resolving some warnings, a systemd service file for dtlogin is added, and other mostly minor changes. Besides the dtlogin systemd service file, perhaps most notable otherwise are the fixes for satisfying the GCC 15 compiler.

CDE 2.5.3 downloads and more details on this new point release can be found via SourceForge. Yes, another sign of its times.

While on the topic of CDE, you may also recall the separate NxCDE as a modern CDE effort. NxCDE hasn't seen any release since June 2023 nor any commits to its GitHub repository now in two years.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday December 09 2025, @05:56PM (2 children)

    by VLM (445) on Tuesday December 09 2025, @05:56PM (#1426318)

    Its NsCDE "Esssssss" not "Eckssss"

    Its basically a FVWM mod for modern systems to look (and act) exactly like CDE, whereas CDE is ... old CDE that compiles on modern systems.

    I'd prefer NsCDE. I use the heck out of https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-webtop/ [linuxserver.io] and in my infinite spare time I like to think I'd create something like a "alpine-nscde" tag. Would I be better off starting from the alpine-i3 or alpine-mate tag?

    Very superficially I think I could start with https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-webtop/blob/alpine-i3/Dockerfile [github.com] and it would not be a major conceptual leap from that branch to having a working nscde.

    The "full" list of packages I'd need to install or generally mess with seems a bit large: https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE/blob/master/INSTALL.md [github.com]

    Lets be realistic I'm never going to do this, but its nice to think of a hot pot of tea during a blizzard and by the time I have to shovel snow, I'd have a working NsCDE.

    Most "modern desktop features" are things I'd either not need, not want, or would prefer to actively avoid, whereas hyperminimalistic WMs (tile based, etc) are a bit too far, and something like CDE back in the 90s is juuuust about what I'd like in a desktop. I use XFCE a lot.

    Look at KDE's feature list they're trying to show off their programming abilities not actually appeal to real end users like myself who could use it. "fuzzy search" shut that privacy violation performance killer down. "auto light dark switching" yeah F that if I wanted someone else to F with my display settings to change them from what I actually want, I'd let my kids play with system-settings. System settings essentially the GUI of systemd no thanks I don't want anything Fing with my Ansible configuration. A file manager doesn't sell to CLI guys and also does not sell to casual computer users that has all the appeal of a dot matrix printer. An email program, no thanks I use a web browser like a civilized caveman. The connect thing that bridges to my phone, no thanks actively avoid. "i wanna be imovie when I grow up" no thanks davinci resolve all the way. "kate the text editor" are you kidding I'm going to run vim or emacs or an IDE. Kdevelop ha ha no. Kcalc are you kidding? A weird "I wanna be OBS Studio when I grow up" clone I already use OBS I don't want or need a K-OBS wanna be. Wayland ... (flushing toilet sound.mp3) KDE's entire marketing effort is just a steaming pile of "I don't want it". Its like how Android isn't that awful but forcibly installed bloatware that comes with android is a burning dumpster fire. Gnome, somehow, is even worse. NsCDE... now thats a usable daily driver. For something that mostly starts the program I want, easily, then gets out of the way...

    The main problem with linux on the desktop is the people setting the direction are entirely focused on keeping up with technical achievements of the groupthink, nobody in the entire ecosystem cares about the user or the user experience. "Oh Apple applies 110V to the keyboard when they feel like it? Well hold on to my beer, KDE's gonna apply 220V to the keyboard!" Meanwhile nobody wants none of that IRL.

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