Last couple of months, NsCDE is in the “release candidate” stage of versioning. 1.0rc18 is the latest.
Soon, in a few days maybe, NsCDE 1.0rc20 will be released under releases tab on github. It will contain graphical color modificator for color themes in a Color Style Manager, localization support, Font Style Manager rewritten almost from scratch, floating graphical pager positioning improvements and some fixes.
Not so Common Desktop Environment - NsCDE 1.0rc21 is out.
It can be downloaded on GitHub.
Some major improvements, fixes and documentation update. This should be considered 1.0 (or maybe I will name it 1.1) without “rc”.
It is intended to be used with FVWM 2.6.7 - 2.6.9 or newer from 2.6 major branch of FVWM.
It can be used experimentally with a few glitches also with FVWM3, which is still in development, but once authors make it’s design known for final release, NsCDE will for sure support it and make use of it’s new features.
Here is the changelog:
Thanks a lot!
Nscde looks great on my netbook. Its fast and my fav openTTD feels at home with it.
NsCDE 1.0rc24 is released.
NsCDE 1.0rc24 (pre)release notes
Two and half months after 1.0rc22 prerelease, new release candidate again has
extended functionality of the NsCDE. There will be no more new functionalities
before 1.1 release, just couple of months for fixing and polishing existing
code. NsCDE 1.1 (1.0 was actually long ago), will be released probably in
december, on the day when all started 2 years ago.
Here are the highlights of what has changed and what is added between 1.0rc22
and 1.0rc24
NProcMgr: NsCDE Process Manager: application which shows NsCDE FVWM and
other processes, their pids and running/presence state. Processes can be
started, stopped and restarted. It also has capabilities for rereading
various parts of the configuration: Menus, Functions, Style, Keybindings
etc. NsCDE Process Manager is present by default on the Desktop Settings
submenu (7) of the Front Panel, but it can also be found on the Workspace
Menu NsCDE submenu, as well as from Watch Errors and Fvwm Console contextual
part of the Window Options Menu.
GeometryMgr: Before 1.0rc22, “Save Geometry” option on the Window Options
Menu or Meta+F6 directly called function which saved current window
geometry, so windows will be positioned and sized on exact geometry
coordinates next time when they appear on the page and workspace for the
first time, or with “Reposition Window” option of the Window Options Menu.
Needles to say, this option was easy to catch with mouse by mistake, and
even more with key binding.
New FvwmScript application brings dialog with window class and resource
names, and exact coordinates when Save Geometry is called, plus info about
previous remembered pixel size and position if any. Here, user can inspect,
tune, cancel or confirm that new saving. Clearing all values and choosing
save clears that and any before existing geometry mapping for that screen
resolution.
Custom Front Panel Launchers: from the beginning until now, Front Panel
had fixed number of launchers (big icon or applet plus optional submenu)
on the left and right side of the Workspace Manager. Now, with a usage of
Front Panel Controls menu and it’s “Number of Launchers …” submenu, user
can reduce to 0, or extend to 20 number of launchers. As in CDE, default
is 10 launchers (5 left, and 5 right), which gives 10. This can be doubled
or reduced to 4, 3, 2, 1 or no launchers at all. This allows user to make
configurations with Workspace Manager leftmost or rightmost on the Front
Panel, to make minimal only Workspace Manager plus handlers Front Panel
without launchers, or to make really wide Front Panels with 18, 19 and
with maximum 20 launchers (screen resolution must support such stretching
of the Front Panel). All new custom launchers can be customized to contain
icons or applets, to have or not subpanels.
Wide or Eco Workspace Manager: together with custom launchers on the Front
Panel, Workspace Manager (WSM) now by default has fixed width of workspace
buttons. This means that shrinking workspace to 2 workspaces will shrink
Front Panel, and expanding workspaces to 6 or 8 will expand it. This is
in contrast to fixed WSM on which until now the buttons themselves where
shrinked (6, 8) or expanded (2), but WSM frame remained of the same width.
New behaviour is in sync with visual CDE behaviour and gives a chance for
wider workspace names in 6 or 8 workspaces mode. Old fixed width WSM can
be used if InfoStore variable wsm.eco is defined and set to 1 in
$FVWM_USERDIR/NsCDE.conf
Splash screen: NsCDE has now splash screen on startup. It displays logo,
information about system on which it is running, NsCDE and FVWM version,
licence and such. It lasts some 6 seconds on start, but can be speed up
with Control+C or by clicking on the text.
Show Workspace functionality: called by the Root Menu as “Clean/Restore
Workspace”, by Ctrl + Left click on the root window and with Meta+Alt+W
keybinding. It will iconify all windows on the page or restore them on
subsequent calls. Already iconified windows prior to calling this function,
as well as newly opened windows on the page will not be affected by this
group iconify / deiconify (show desktop) action. During this action, any
animation which may be configured with Window Style Manager for FvwmAnimate
will be temporary disabled to avoid long dance on the screen if there are
many windows on it.
New keybindings:
Dunst support: A nice FVWM-friendly notification daemon dunst(1) is probably
the best choice for custom DE environments and classis Window Managers. It
is now tightly integrated with NsCDE in the same was as stalonetray: it can
be enabled or disabled with InfoStore variable nscde_use_dunst 0/1 in user’s
$FVWM_USERDIR/NsCDE.conf. Configuration is provided and partially managed
(Color Style Manager and Font Style Manager) by the NsCDE as
$FVWM_USERDIR/Dunst.conf
This means that handling of dunst(1) and stalonetray(1) can be removed from
$FVWM_USERDIR/libexec/colormgr.local, because this is now handled
internally.
New Palettes and Backdrops:
Merge of the VUE Palettes and Backdrops: there is no need to install this as
addon. It is merged with other palettes and backdrops, because it is fully
compatible, no matter that this comes from pre-CDE era.
New finder for Audio Volume Control application: gives it’s best to find
working audio mixer app on the subpanel of launcher 9 on the Front Panel.
Installer.ksh: support staged installation (for packaging) with -D
Fix possible indefinite Wait in share/templates/NsCDE-Functions.local sample
Fix WSM truncating WSM.conf bug after initial creation before first restart
Style fixes for Gkrellm, Sysinfo, menus etc …
Removed xscreensaver splash
Iconify Event function fix when PipeRead gets dash(1) shell on Debian, which is
aliased to /bin/sh (called by the system()) users will not have ‘=’ and ‘60’ empty
files in their homedir anymore.
Better error handling for sysinfo.py (Workstation Information)
Python syntax fixes (warnings noticed on Debian)
Major works on higher DPI corrections for font handling
Localization fixes
Fix Splash Screen under fvwm3 (hopefully) on multi display
Fixes for monitor enumeration, preparations for FVWM3 support
Fix default Front Panel Iconified IconBox position not to overlap stalonetray
Stop using FvwmBanner (removed in FVWM3) - we have Splash now
Removed Black.dp, BlackWhite.dp and White.dp obsolete nonworking palettes
Documentation revision and update, new sections and corrections
Consolidated Delete/Close/Destroy Window Options menu actions
Front Panel Controls menu consolidation and help
Add Solaris Earth Watch icon in the icon set, document example how to use it
on the Front Panel as a custom applet.
Init and setup procedure polishing
Also, on the Github wiki page, there is FAQ, link to videos and work in progress to make usefull snippets of advices, solutions and such quick documents for faster problem resolving or start.
NsCDE 1.0rc25 is out
Basically rc24, but with important installer fix.
https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE/releases/download/1.0rc25/NsCDE-1.0rc25.tar.gz
Release Notes:
NsCDE 1.0rc25 release
Fix nasty stopper in Installer.ksh which misconfigures NSCDE_ROOT in interactive setup.
Reworked the way “Version” builtin variable is used in FVWM configuration, it will go
away in FVWM3.
Added checks on the basis FVWM_IS_FVWM3 environmnent variable to functions,
Sysinfo and Splash. This is not yet full FVWM3 support.
Hi,
I’m announcing new release candidate for NsCDE - rc28. Hopefully the last before non-rc release, which should happen at the end of the year, two years after initial development started.
This pre-release focuses on 5 major points:
Color Style Manager in “Number Of Colors …” dialog now offers two new
(sub)options: to use color 8 of the palette for icon background on Front
Panel and interior Icon background as on some versions of CDE on HP-UX
and AIX. Further, some versions of UNIX systems had Workspace Manager in
the color 6 of the palette, which is also offered as an option in NsCDE
now. Both of this features are available only in 8-colors mode, not in
4-colors. Because of necessary internal changes, (Colorset 23 addition)
$FVWM_USERDIR/NsCDE-Colorset.conf must be rebuilt. After upgrade, Color
Style Manager and popup message with that info will appear on screen
after upgrade from pre-1.0rc28 and (re)start of FVWM. Select existing
or any other color scheme to get Front Panel properly colored again.
Icons can now be focused and browsed with up/down arrows on the one page
with Meta+Alt+i. Pressing Meta+Alt+i selects back last non-iconic window on
the current workspace/page.
Smooth use with FVWM3 as much as this can be, during this still “young”
phase of FVWM3. On system with both FVWM2 and FVWM3 installed, FVWM2 will
still be used by default, but this can be overriden by putting FVWM_BIN
variable in startup or login profile to point to main FVWM2 or FVWM3 binary.
Occupy Workspace and Occupy Page dialogs has been merged into one app. When
called as “Occupy Workspace” initial behaviour and list is workspaces, and
when called as “Occupy Page” initially list of pages will be shown. By
pressing workspace or page radio button, or space key shortcut, mode of
operation will switch from pages to workspaces and vice versa. In short,
it is enough to call Occupy to select workspace and page in one move.
Window Operations Menu can be now called with Meta+Alt+Space or Meta+Alt+m.
CDE Alt+ArrowUp and Alt+ArrowDown raise/lower overlapping windows support.
Flipping windows on the current workspace/page with Ctrl+Menu and
Ctrl+ISO_Level3_Shift
Icon placement now in pixels matches CDE placement of iconified windows.
Menus are now logical and consolidated. Specially Window Operations Menu.
There are no dead or non-usable options presented. Dynamic menus are used.
This is now tuned also for the Front Panel and Subpanels menus.
It should be possible now to work with keyboard without touching mouse in
the most cases.
New logo based on brutalism achitecture style and patterns, which nicely
fits general CDE and NsCDE experience.
nscde_setup wizard now supports localization.
Select Area screenshot option
Bug fixes
Removed / discontinued
Removed old logo, removed some faulty and wrong backdrops and the rest
consolidated. Removed duplicate and very similar palettes from some old
non-standard CDE palettes collection.
OccupyWorkspace and OccupyPage dialogs are replaced with unified Occupy
dialog.
Misc
Backdrops were consolidated, named logically from their ad hoc choosen
names, palettes were also consolidated with duplicates and almost
duplicates removed.
New TallSkyDark and TallSkyLight backdrops for moden big displays.
Diethering of course remains.
First mouse button click on the root window now gives root menu, not
double click. Double click will give Window Options menu.
I very much love the look of this. Sadly, after 4 days of trying on NetBSD 9.1, my frustration is at an end. I need to get actual work done.
My observations for NetBSD users - PyQx is time consuming, or impossible. Follow the link in the FAQ for installing ksh-20.0.0.0 from source which works and allows the install to commence. The tiny little annoying X utilities have to be compiled from source, which is fine, but some of them must also be downloaded because they are not included in the source package library.
I feel a lot of the problem for NetBSD users is going to be the name convention used, which sometimes doesn’t match, or they simply are not included in the source download tarball.
I would love to work with your overlay, but at this point, I don’t have time. I hope you continue your work!
Hi 0x1b,
Thank you for constructive criticism, but I really don’t understand what exactly is the problem.
I have first installed (modern) NetBSD in virtual machine a week ago. Never saw it before, if we exclude playing with it few days in VAX emulator 15 years ago.
BTW, many portability issues are solved on post 1.0rc28 master tree from github. This parts of the FAQ are written for post 1.0rc28. NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly and OpenIndiana support is fresh thing, two weeks old. Until the middle of this month, when there will be exactly 2 years of NsCDE development, for users of above mentioned systems, git clone of master branch from github is the best option. I have draft points for FAQ which will be enriched this days for portability.
Hi all,
I’m announcing first real release of NsCDE (1.1) after 2 years!
It can be fetched from here:
https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE/releases/download/1.1/NsCDE-1.1.tar.gz
FAQ:
This is the first “real” release, after 2 years of development.
Release focuses on this major points:
Wallpapers can now be centered, tiled or aspect-stretched in the Backdrop
Style Manager
Windows of the current page can be tiled with Meta+Alt+R, and resized in
semi-automatic zoom in and zoom out mode with Meta+F4 and Shift+Meta+F4
NsCDE has been tested, tuned and fixed to run on NetBSD, OpenIndiana,
OpenBSD, and DragonFly BSD. With Linux and FreeBSD support, this covers
pretty much all of active free, open and semi-free UNIX and Linux systems
Key bindings are ordered to use Meta, Alt, Meta+Alt, Menu, Escape and
Tab in conditions where appropriate, hintful and logical. For example,
Menu key based keybindings are for actions about menus. Window movement
iconification, size, closing, repositioning actions are bounded to F
buttons with similar actions on the same F button, but with Alt or Meta
as the modifier
Looking good ! It feels like 1995 again. In my opinion, this should become the default theme…
Hi Jos
Palette “Broica” is default theme in NsCDE as well as on default non-vendor CDE and some vednor provided CDE.
hello!
I meant nscde could be a default for fvwm, or is it already (I mean, when you install fvwm)
Hi,
I don’t think so. FVWM is more like API or framework. There is some default like “demo” when run out of the box, but it is largely meant for users who want to make either:
their own setup which suits their needs and wishes of how things should work and look
for us, who make custom hybrid desktop environments out of it and other standalone open source components, either original, or targeted clone like me
This is why I say FVWM is a model for software freedom. Not just in licence, but in what it provides and how it provides. The spirit is that user has control, not Android app with two radio buttons in settings “dark” and “light”.
Ok hm yes only light and dark option doesnt sound too good. But anyway I will keep it as my default ;)
I tried installing it today (new version) on my manjaro base… the system built without errors, but the desktop crashes. I removed the NsCDE setup. It’s a sad day.
Thank you for detailed description of the problem. On the basis of this report, I can throw chicken bones on the pentagram and then commit this on github.
Sadly when there are no errors beyond a failure to successfully login… chicken bones it is. :sad: FWIW. In order to uplift you with joy, the same software does run on my MXLinux machine. Yay!
Hi,
Failure to successfully login does nothing to do with NsCDE, but with your X display manager, whatever it is: lightdm, sddm, gdm etc … and underlaying PAM modules managing authentification, authorization and session requirements on the system. When this succeds, only then something is executed by the display manager … like window manager.
Presumably the reason is fvwm crashed. For that, you’ll have to see if a corefile has been created on your system. If corefiles are enabled (see: ulimit -c), and you’re using a systemd-based distro, then you can use the coredumpctl command to analyse the corefile. If you’re not using systemd, then you might find a corefile in $HOME or /tmp/.