I recently read Reviving the Glory Days: NsCDE Desktop for UNIX Buffs. NsCDE is based on the old FVWM window manager. When I was a lot younger I got a few chances to look at classic Unix workstations and I thought they looked really cool, but I never has a chance to try one. So I decided to indulge my curiosity.

I downloaded it from the supplied link and then tried to install it on Debian 12:

sudo dpkg -i nscde_2.3-3_amd64.deb

This totally failed the first time I tried it. That was because I was using Wayland rather than X11 to support Gnome. A retro product like this really needs X11. So I logged out and logged back on with Gnome using X11. This worked better, though, I had to run

sudo apt --fix-broken install

to fix the installation, as documented.

Then I logged out and logged in again, stopping to choose my desktop before entering my password. NsCDE did not appear as an option, but FVWM did. So I chose it, and got FVWM rather than NsCDE. Not the desired outcome, but something, so I looked at it. I had used FVWM 15+ years ago, so I was a little rusty. It took a while to find the menus for the application software, but they were there so the system was usable. Unlike the modern desktop environments (KDE, Gnome, and Xfce) I have used it did not start pCloud automatically, but I was able to open a terminal window and start it manually. Also, it started the native Debian Firefox ESR, rather than the Flatpak Firefox I had installed. FVWM may not support Flatpak.

I repeated the process on another Debian 12 system, also getting FVWM rather than NsCDE. I tried again on an Ubuntu 22.04 and this time got both FVWM and NsCDE as options. Choosing NsCDE worked and I got that environment, again without starting pCloud. It looked really good, but I actually had more trouble working with it than with FVWM, probably because of a complete lack of experience. I may try it again another time.