piRIX is an emulation of SGI's IRIX Interactive Desktop on Raspberry Pi 3/4 (and some other platforms).

Besides being nostalgic, this desktop environment is fast and easy on Pi resources.

On Debian distributions, you'll need a few packages first. Run

sudo make install-debian-prerequisites

Look at Makefile for specifics on what OS packages are being installed.

As usual, Fedora distributions will use different names for these packages.

Then install:

make install

Put this in your $HOME/.xinitrc or $HOME/.xsession file:

. $HOME/.config/pirix/pirixrc
pirix

If you're booting directly to PIXEL Desktop, change your boot setting with raspi-config to drop into a shell. Then run

startx

We mentioned .xsession because some remote desktop mechanisms and display managers like xrdp will use that file instead. Salient if you, say, want piRIX to be available from your login screen.

Files will be installed to

$HOME/.config/pirix

NOTE! Any changes you may have made to files already here will be overwritten!

rm -r $HOME/.config/pirix

and undo anything you did to $HOME/.xinitrc.

There ain't none. Find a compromise by pressing your left mouse button over the desktop root window.

If you want the atlantis demo,

cd src/demo/atlantis
make install

The executable will in be that directory. Follow the same pattern for any of the other demos. The Toolchest (well, the thing that must serve for it) has menu items to launch them, provided you put the executable in your search path.

Actually it ought to work in many other Linux contexts, like clan Debian or clan Fedora. There have been minor problems with OpenBSD but we hear it still works. @rhaleblian even got it working in WSL2 and X410.

This hackamadoodle really just sets resources for mwm so that you get that particular CDE-like feeling. So if your whatever-NIX has mwm you're mostly there.

If you get it working in macOS, post about that.

SGI's Indigo Magic Desktop and Interactive Desktop seem to bear similaries to CDE and Motif, being a derivation; accordingly, this tweak bases itself on mwm at el.

A lot of things aren't here, including

• styling modifications to Motif (those rounded windows and scrollbars)
• the toolchest (i think you could write an Xm app of buttons with menus and no frame)
• the file manager (remember that they drew scalable vector icons)
• a contemporary web browser (Netscape Navigator or NCSA Mosaic)

Firefox is the defined browser, in the spirit of being a successor to Navigator.

• somebody write a toolchest replacement
• there's a starting point for a file manager at src/pirix/filemanager
• add icon images for more applications
• other omissions mentioned in the notes you may have just read

• IRIX - Silicon Graphics Computer Systems
• Motif - The Open Group
• GL Demos - opengl.org