OpenWindows

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

OpenWindows on Solaris showing default deskset tools.

OpenWindows was a graphical user interface environment for Sun Microsystems workstations which handled SunView, NeWS, and X Window System protocols. OpenWindows was included in later releases of the SunOS 4 operating system and the Solaris operating system until its removal in Solaris 9 in favor of CDE and GNOME 2.0.

1 Description
2 History
3 See also
4 References

[edit] Description

OpenWindows was actually an umbrella term used by Sun to describe several components: the underlying X11/NeWS window server, the OPEN LOOK Window Manager (olwm), the DeskSet productivity tools, and the XView and OLIT widget toolkits.

[edit] History

OpenWindows started its life in 1989 as a separately-licensed addition to SunOS 4.0^[1], replacing the older SunView (originally "SunTools") windowing system, featuring what was known as the "xnews server", a hybrid version of the X11 server that as its name implies could also support NeWS-based applications. The server could also display legacy SunView applications, although this functionality was not well-supported. A standalone NeWS windowing system was also available for a time, but was never the primary SunOS windowing environment. From the SunOS 4.1.1 release onwards, OpenWindows (now in version 2.0) was bundled with the operating system.

Solaris 2.0, the first release of the successor to SunOS 4, included OpenWindows 3.0.1. Starting with Solaris 2.3, Sun switched to a standard X11R5 release of X11. It was still called OpenWindows (now version 3.3), but the NeWS protocol was replaced by support for Adobe DPS. Support for SunView applications was removed. The graphical look and feel of the window manager and tools was still based on OPEN LOOK. Solaris 7 featured OpenWindows 3.6.1 with X11R6.4 server. ^[2]

In 1993, Sun announced it was joining the COSE alliance, meaning among other things that it would phase out OpenWindows in favor of a Motif-based desktop environment which came to be known as CDE. The last release of OpenWindows was version 3.6.2, included in Solaris 8. With the release of Solaris 9 in 2002, the removal of OpenWindows support from Solaris finally began, as the OPEN LOOK DeskSet tools, OLIT and XView development tools, and olwm were removed. Support for running and displaying applications built with XView or OLIT remains in both Solaris 9 and Solaris 10.