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The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) was a joint project boy several corporations (HP, IBM, Novell, Sun). Below is a screenshot of Sun's Solaris version of the Common Desktop Environment is the default desktop environment for a Solaris 2.x installation. It is a graphical user interface that is a descendant of HP-UX's Visual User Environment. CDE utilizes the X-Motif toolkit and consequently has a somewhat klunky feel.

The CDE has a toolbar used to place icons that will launch various applications.

Accessing a terminal window (command line) is done by clicking the right mouse button (unless you've flipped the mouse for lefty operation); selecting the context menu that opens, selecting Tools and Terminal. Because it is a graphical user environment, you can open multiple terminal windows and see them all at once and easilly transfer data between them with a simple highlight and paste. This is the big advatage of a GUI interface in Unix.

Observe the following components in the screenshot to the right.

1. Toolbar Panel (bottom of the window)
   1. Clock/Netscape Navigator
   2. Calendar
   3. File Manager
   4. Note Editor
   5. CDE mail client
   6. Virtual Desktop Selector Buttons
   7. Lock and Exit buttons
   8. Printer Control
   9. Preferences Control
   10. CPU/Disk utilization indicator
   11. CDE Helpdesk (Help on the CDE and Solaris)
   12. Trash Bin
2. File Manager Window
3. Applications Window
4. Terminal window (csh) listing of the Solaris Desktop packages installed. (pkginfo)