Indigo Magic
More info
- Owner
- Silicon Graphics
- Released
- 1993
- Type
- Desktop environment
Silicon Graphics' desktop for IRIX — Unix that looked as though someone had actually thought about how it should look.
SGI sold expensive workstations to film studios, labs and industrial designers, and in 1993 IRIX 5 got a desktop to match the price tag. Indigo Magic was built on Motif but had its own window manager, 4Dwm, vector-drawn icons that scaled freely, sound effects and the Toolchest menu for launching programs. A file manager with desktop icons and a consistent look across SGI's own tools delivered what the contemporary CDE aimed for and rarely achieved.
Later IRIX releases renamed it the IRIX Interactive Desktop. It disappeared along with SGI's workstations in the 2000s, but its look survives in lovingly recreated themes for people who remember what it felt like to sit at an Indy.