Guides on Installing Common Desktop Environment on FreeBSD

Common Desktop Environment - one of the oldest desktop environment for UNIX environment since 90's where most of old-school programmers had their good time with this graphical user interface. Today, this desktop environment had been revived so user with modern PCs can try to install this desktop environment and feel the classical throwback in the 90's.

Today, I'm gonna write on how to install and set up the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) and this guide is heavily aimed at FreeBSD users (sorry, Linux users!)

1. Installing CDE interface

First of all, you will need to obtain the latest ports package first which you will need to compile it yourself.

$ portsnap fetch

$ portsnap extract 

Then, go to CDE ports directory via the command below:

$ /usr/ports/x11/cde

Next, launch the command below to begin building process.

$ make install  

NOTE: If you're having an error during compilation process such as ksh93 is not found, you will need to make a new copy of ksh executable as ksh93 via the command below:

$ cp /usr/local/bin/ksh /bin/ksh93 

1. Configuring CDE interface

Add these line below in /etc/rc.local to start CDE on boot:

/usr/local/dt/bin/dtlogin

To set up CDE Calendar, at these line in /etc/inetd.conf below:

dtspc stream tcp4   nowait  root    /usr/local/dt/bin/dtspcd /usr/local/dt/bin/dtspcd
cmsd/2-5    dgram rpc/udp4 wait root /usr/local/dt/bin/rpc.cmsd rpc.cmsd

Then, add these linds in /etc/rc.conf below:

rpcbind_enable="YES"
inetd_enable="YES"

After that, add these line in /etc/hosts below:

127.0.0.1   HOSTNAME