OpenWindows
| Company type | Software |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer software |
| Founded | 1989 |
| Founder | Sun Microsystems |
| Defunct | 2002 |
| Fate | Discontinued in favor of Common Desktop Environment (CDE) and GNOME 2.0 |
| Products | Desktop environment software |
| Parent | Sun Microsystems |
OpenWindows was a desktop environment created by Sun Microsystems specifically for their workstation hardware, but it is no longer maintained. This environment integrated a display server compatible with the X Window System protocol, alongside the XView and OLIT graphical toolkits, the OPEN LOOK Window Manager (olwm), and the DeskSet suite of productivity applications. Earlier iterations also supported the NeWS protocol. OpenWindows adhered to the OPEN LOOK graphical user interface standard.
This environment was included with later versions of the SunOS 4 and Solaris platforms until its discontinuation in Solaris 9, when Sun Microsystems shifted focus to the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) and subsequently to GNOME 2.0.
History
The initial release of OpenWindows, version 1.0, debuted in 1989 as an optional add-on for SunOS 4.0, supplanting the older SunView system. Its foundation was the xnews server, a hybrid window server capable of running both X11 and NeWS applications, with partial backward compatibility for SunView programs. From SunOS 4.1.1 onward (1990), OpenWindows 2.0 was integrated directly into the operating system distribution.
OpenWindows 3.0.1 came bundled with Solaris 2.0. By Solaris 2.3 (1993), Sun adopted the standard X11R5 release; OpenWindows 3.3 transitioned from NeWS to Display PostScript support and eliminated SunView compatibility while maintaining the OPEN LOOK interface design. Solaris 7 shipped with OpenWindows version 3.6.1 featuring an X11R6.4 server.
In 1993, Sun Microsystems collaborated with other Unix vendors through the COSE initiative to unify Unix desktop environments, choosing the Motif user interface style as standard. This decision led to the gradual retirement of OpenWindows in favor of the COSE desktop environment, later known as CDE.
The last iteration of OpenWindows, version 3.6.2, was released with Solaris 8. Starting with Solaris 9 (2002), components such as DeskSet utilities, OLIT, XView development tools, and olwm were removed from the distribution. Although Solaris 9 and Solaris 10 still support applications developed using XView or OLIT libraries, these were omitted entirely from Solaris 11 and subsequent versions.
Open source development
The "OWAcomp" (OpenWindows Augmented Compatibility Environment) initiative aims to restore functionality of the OpenWindows Deskset environment on Solaris versions 9 and 10 for both Sparc and x86 architectures, as well as Linux on x86 platforms. Additionally, a SourceForge project named "openlook," inspired by OpenWindows, focuses primarily on Linux as of 2007. Due to some OpenWindows components never being released under open-source licenses by Sun Microsystems, certain parts have been reimplemented while others remain proprietary.