1. Quickly share prototype software
CDE allows you to quickly share prototype software with friends and
colleagues without making them install or configure anything. You don't
need to figure out how to make a robust one-click installer; just run
your program with CDE and send them the resulting package!
The screenshot on the right shows me running a CDE package sent to me
by a Ph.D. student at Rice University working on robot motion planning algorithms
research. When I run the package on my 64-bit Ubuntu 10.10 machine,
it launches a GUI with an OpenGL 3D virtual terrain map. I can tweak
parameters in the GUI to explore the effects of different motion
planners and also load alternate map and robot files.
Without CDE, I would have needed to download, compile, and install half a dozen
dependencies (which each have their own dependencies!) before I
could run this research prototype. I would be much less likely to play
around with it if I had to first go through all that hassle.
Using CDE, you can simply put a self-contained package of your
prototype software on a USB flash drive and demo it on anybody's
Linux machine