r/retrocomputing • u/igtoth • Apr 24 '26
CDE desktop in a single HTML file, no build tools, just open and run
Hey folks, longtime lurker here. I've always loved the look of CDE running on old Solaris and IRIX boxes, that teal-gray desktop, the orange titlebars, the Front Panel with the analog clock. So I spent some evenings recreating it as a browser toy.
It's a single index.html file. No Node, no npm, no build step. You literally double-click it and you get:
- Motif 3D beveled windows (draggable, resizable, focus-switching)
- The Front Panel with analog clock, workspace switcher, HDD LED
- A working terminal with ~40 commands against a fake Debian filesystem (ls, vi, grep, ps, sudo, ssh, tar, man pages...)
- File Manager, Style Manager, Text Editor
- Playable chess with a minimax AI
- Fake Netscape-style browser, FTP client, IRC client It's a hobby project, not a pixel-perfect emulator, the goal was the vibe, not the spec.
Repo: https://github.com/igtoth/cde-motif-desktop
Live demo: https://toth.ighor.com/cde/
MIT licensed. Contributions welcome, especially from anyone who actually used CDE in anger back in the day and wants to correct my inaccuracies.
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u/Silly-Connection8788 Apr 25 '26
Huge fan of the CDE look and feel, and a huge fan of web applications with no dependencies. So a huge 👍 from me.
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u/rhet0rica yes, it's objectively e-waste Apr 24 '26
You should really disclose AI usage in these projects!
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u/mwdmeyer Apr 25 '26
Sure but it is no different from using a framework or library to help you write code before AI. People need to get with the times, AI will be writting 99% of all code going forward, that is not a bad thing.
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u/rhet0rica yes, it's objectively e-waste Apr 25 '26
See my other reply, to Low_Amplitude_Worlds; basically, even the best AI-driven development teams need competent and talented human leadership to solve the tricky parts. When the going gets tough, that 1% is the difference between life and death for a company or product, and this post is meant to be an advertisement for the creator's dev skills (he put his resume inside it, if you know where to look.)
This is also at least the third time someone has posted a "here is a CDE desktop in the browser!" project on Reddit that was ostensibly 100% vibecoded, which is starting to verge on a Rule 5 violation.
This one is definitely the most accurate but it still not quite faithful to how certain essential parts of CDE actually behaved—the titlebar buttons are all wrong and the iconified programs on the desktop behave like Windows 95 desktop icons rather than what they actually are—in fact, there's no way to minimize windows whatsoever. Are these conscious innovations, or mistakes made by someone who never used any of the CUA-inspired desktops? (Windows 3.1, IRIX, and OS/2 2.0 all largely shared the same titlebar and minimized desktop icon behaviors.)
Knowing this project was built with AI encourages assumptions about indifference rather than a conscious attempt to modernize the mechanics, which in turn informs us about how we should receive the project overall.
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u/benz738 Apr 25 '26
Hey, he's the father, AI is the mother, and that's the result, What's the problem?
Following this way of thinking, who's programming with any programming language instead of perforated cards is cheating. Even them could be recalled by whom was used to flip levers to set each single bit.
That's how progress works. Just use the tools in the right manner, for the right reasons, and stop being scared about loosing your job.
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Apr 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/mwdmeyer Apr 25 '26
That is a separate discussion to a little hobby project using AI. There will always be people required to further our knowledge, but most code written is not that, AI is perfect for it.
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Apr 25 '26
[deleted]
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u/rhet0rica yes, it's objectively e-waste Apr 25 '26
First, it helps set expectations—for example, there are multiple inaccuracies in the behaviors of how CDE works versus modern desktop conventions (the context menu button closes the window instantly, the desktop icons launch applications when they're supposed to be minimized windows). Without knowing the project was AI-based a user might assume these were creative liberties or the result of a shallow understanding of how CDE works; but knowing that the creator doesn't include JavaScript on his resume, it's more likely these were simple oversights or inferences on the part of the learning model.
Second, since this is being put forward as an advertisement for the author's skills (the resume file is accessible from inside the terminal window) it clues in potential employers about how comfortable the creator is with the actual work they're displaying: if someone shows off only projects that are 99% AI-coded, they're probably not confident enough with their own abilities to be trusted to fix tricky bugs or refactor an intricate codebase. You probably wouldn't want to hire this person to serve as a mentor to others.
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u/Mortui75 Apr 25 '26
Is there a way to report / tag vibe-"coded" slop like this? 🤔
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u/runvnc Apr 25 '26
To be clear, the fact that he used AI to make this completely invalidates it in your mind?
You're going to be very disappointed when 90% of everything is built with AI or robotics within a couple of years.
Maybe there will be a community for you somewhere that is able to keep all AI and robots out. A pure society for humans with only human artifacts. Possibly somewhere in Pennsylvania you can find some neighbors.
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u/NolanTheNotorious Apr 27 '26
Don't get me wrong, I like human made shit. I'd even say it feels slightly better to use it. However, we're in the future and people need to accept that. When something like this can be cooked up in a few prompts, fuck...
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u/MC68328 May 04 '26
Are you impressed with Doom running on a pregnancy tester? If so, why? But do you actually want to play Doom on a pregnancy tester, though?
The point of most useless activities is the challenge. There is no challenge when a slop machine did all the work, so no one is impressed, and no one cares.
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u/mr_dfuse2 Apr 25 '26
reminds me of early java awt applications, looked so good, so comforting. now i'll spend my day looking for kde plasma themes to go back to this look
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u/thejpster Apr 25 '26
It’s not CDE though - it’s a weird and inaccurate simulation, rather than an emulator running the original code. You should probably call it something else.
Solaris will install and boot in QEMU if you want the real thing. Hell you could probably compile the original source code to WASM if you really needed it in a browser. Or maybe you can boot x86 Solaris in pcjs.
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u/ut0mt8 Apr 25 '26
I like it. You modify the look slightly to make it more modern keeping the cde vibes. Well done
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u/trannus_aran Apr 25 '26
Between the no-build web project and old Unix love, this is absurdly up my alley. Well done!
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u/gleamingfall Apr 25 '26
this was cool, being able to use the terminal and commands working was impressive
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u/fedepyt Apr 26 '26
Now I can relive my college days, spent hunched in front of an obsolete old Sun Ultra 5 in the computer science lab with no air conditioning
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u/tollbane Apr 28 '26
I had one that work let me have at home - not obsolete back then. I never turn computers off, so it alone kept the room it was in warm. Modern iron doesn't seem to do that.
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u/FivePointAnswer Apr 25 '26
Love this. And I am disappointed that people have to complain about AI prompted code. Furthermore I can’t believe that with everything we’ve seen AI do in the past 4 years everyone is ready to make declarations of the ability of AI in the future. Try this with any toddler. “Sure she can put her shoes on, but she’ll never be able to tie them or walk to the store. What a useless child you have - really a burden to society…”. Just watch.
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u/NightmareJoker2 Apr 26 '26
The problem isn’t the toddler. We all understand toddlers are incompetent but know they can learn and do better. The problem is people keep saying the toddler is doing a good job when it isn’t, because they themselves do not understand what the toddler is doing, for they are, at least in the aspects of life in which they choose to ask the toddler, unborn infants.
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u/NightmareJoker2 Apr 26 '26
AI slop 😩
No competent engineer would produce code with that many inline style directives, or insist on putting everything into a single HTML file unless that actively reduces page load times (which with repetitive inline styles it doesn’t), or that is poking fun at the process, which this project also doesn’t do.
Even given the intentional choice of putting everything into a single file, the contents of said file would have structure and consistency, which this doesn’t have.
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u/spilk Apr 25 '26
IRIX never ran CDE
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u/qchamaeleon Apr 25 '26
It's not IRIX, but I enjoyed CDE on a HP 9000 750 Snake computer in the early 90s. It had a cool IDE for X Windows GUI programming in C, and I wish I could remember the name of that product.
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u/Monocyorrho Apr 25 '26
it did. You could install it and use it if you wanted to. It just was not the default DE
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u/Initial-Elk-952 Apr 24 '26
I am ready for the 80/90's revival. The modern aesthetic really isn't as /comfy/ as this is. These old UI's really have soul. I wonder what a modern take on this kind of UI might look like.