Introduction

This chapter covers the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) and GNOME. Most of the chapter covers CDE but there is a brief introduction to GNOME because at the time of this writing GNOME can be downloaded from the HP Web site and runs on many HP servers. Information about GNOME and a download of GNOME for HP-UX can be found on www.hp.com/go/gnome. The following three major topics are covered in this chapter:

• Detailed CDE topics including X and Motif.

• CDE and Virtual Partitions (vPars.)

• An introduction to GNOME.

CDE represents the effort of major UNIX vendors to unify UNIX at the desktop level. CDE is widely used by X terminal and workstation users on many UNIX systems. Because you may be managing many UNIX variants that run CDE, I'll cover CDE on IBM's AIX systems, Hewlett Packard's HP-UX systems, and Sun Microsystems' Solaris systems. This chapter provides an introduction to CDE: It touches on the basics of CDE's look and feel, describes making changes to the CDE environment, and includes a bit of background about the X, Motif, and CDE relationships. CDE versions used to write this chapter are: AIX CDE 1.0, HP-UX CDE 2.1.0, and Solaris CDE 1.3. Newer releases will have enhanced features, but in general, they should still work the same.

Several features make it easy to customize CDE. The Style Manager, which every user has access to, makes it easy to customize CDE on an individual user basis. Sooner or later, however, you may want to provide some common denominator of CDE functionality for your users. If, for instance, you have an application that most users will run, you can set up environment variables , prepare pull-down menus , provide suitable fonts, an so on, that will make your users more productive. Users can then perform additional customizations such as defining File Manager characteristics and selecting backgrounds.

The following is a list of CDE-specific topics I'll cover in the upcoming sections:

1. Why a Graphical User Interface (GUI)?

2. CDE Basics

3. Customizing CDE

4. CDE: Advanced Topics

   • The Relationship Among X, Motif, and CDE

   • X, Motif, and CDE Configuration Files

   • The Sequence of Events When CDE Starts

   • CDE and Performance

First, I'll provide you with the reasoning behind providing a graphical interface rather than the more common, but also more cumbersome, line-by-line terminal interface. An overview of the CDE desktop workspaces follows . This is divided into two sections: AIX and HP-UX (because they are so similar) and Solaris. Each will give an overview of the front panel features. Next I'll guide you through making some CDE customizations. These customizations will give you a working basis for making more advanced changes on your own. I'll show you how to make some basic, simple changes, and then more complex changes, ending with modifying the login screen with a new logo and new welcome messages. Finally, I'll delve into the more advanced topics of X, Motif, and CDE relationships, configuration file usage and location, what happens internally when CDE starts up, and some CDE performance tips.