Since NsCDE is basically a collection of configurations, themes and tools around FVWM and not desktop environment in official definition, user must choose some favorite and default applications such as X terminal emulator file manager, and X editor, which will then be provided to him in occations where programs of that type must be called.

Apart from this, since system tray concept has been introduced on X11 and is here to stay, user will need some standalone tray application. For this purpose, a logical and really great stalonetray (Stand Alone Tray) is more than adequate. When NsCDE configuration for stalonetray $FVWM_USERDIR/Stalonetray.conf is used, it will have this defaults: grid 3x3 and it's place will be in the bottom right corner of the screen. Stalonetray is not integrated into Front Panel because it's size cannot be known in all times: is it one button size, two, ten? It is growing and shrinking depending on number of widgets or tray icons, and apart from that, this can significantly alter the precious CDE look of the Front Panel. A window with traditional mwm/dtwm borders and without title in corner of the screen is default in NsCDE. Ideas are welcome.

X Terminal program? Urxvt, xterm, mate-terminal, terminus ... user's choice as always. As a slight recommendation, mate-terminal from MATE DE can be set to look almost as Dtterm, but with richer menu and better UTF-8 handling, the bad thing is that configuration if not done via GUI or configuration file but is stored in binary DCONF registry, and registry editor like dconf-editor or or dconf gsettings must be used for non-interactive or CLI editing. See the example in $NSCDE_ROOT/share/doc/examples/colormgr.local.example on how to integrate mate-terminal with a Color Style Manager. Second (if not first) best choice is Urxvt, but since it does not have a menu nor a real tabs, tmux(1), screen(1) or possibly tabbed(1) can be used for the same functionality. Suggestions for more dtterm-like alternative are welcome.

File manager? Since author does not use them very much, there is no some strong suggestion. Maybe Krusader from KDE is a best choice because it has a lot of features and functions plus two pane mode for work. It looks like a total contrast to GNOME way of doing things, so it must be good, although it is not at all similar to CDE's original dtfile(1), but dtfile(1) is a bad and poor file manager anyway. Another reasonable choice can be pcmanfm or pcmanfm-qt. For something more original, Xplore file manager is written with Motif widget. It looks nice, but it is unfinished (lacks real actions for many things, and instead input dialogs are popped up for copy/paste ...) it is not maintained and developed, and if someone does not brings it up from the past it can serve only for overview of directories, simple actions and nice Motif decoration.

Editor? Gvim, Emacs, Xemacs, Nedit ... user's choice.

Another nice and useful app is Gkrellm for which NsCDE has a ready drop-in theme called (of course) NsCDE in share/doc/examples and it can be put in user's ~/.gkrellm2/themes and integrated with Color Style Manager with the $NSCDE_ROOT/share/doc/examples/colormgr.local.example which can be installed as $FVWM_USERDIR/libexec/colormgr.local.

If standalone freedesktop autostarter dex-autostart (sometimes called "dex") is installed, it will be used by default NsCDE-Init.conf function CommonInitFunction in local mode: it will read and start ".desktop" files in the $HOME/.config/autostart directory.

X Compositor: if user likes visual effects with tinting, transparency, shadows, 3D, smooth changes and so on, compton(1) standalone compositor is an excellent program and tool for such users - who want to combine retro and modern style. Personally, I feel it like some kind of lag, no matter how powerful GPU, CPU and RAM I have. I turn it on occasionally, more as an amusement of xsnow, xsanta or xeyes type, but when I have serious work to do, I simply turn it off in some moment. Maybe it can be better if it is configured more conservative than example. See /opt/NsCDE/share/doc/examples/compton-integration for a starting point.