Which desktop technology though - at one point (~1990) I had a login menu that prompted me to select Sunview, X or NeWS.

TWM was the first X window manager I used, I remember spending ages getting it just so - just in time for a newer fancier one to come out (probably olwm in OpenWindows) - liked mwm for a few years as well.

Must be something that I grew out of as I don't spend that much time personalizing computing environments these days.

The Sun NewS stuff was some kind of postscript based rendering system that ran in parallel to X with an X server sharing the screen -- kind of like how X works on MacOSX today). I stayed away from it because I used mostly X windows terminals & DECstations. There was very little Sun hardware I could sit in front of in my formative years as an undergrad in the late 80s / early 90s.

I kept the same basic customizations for years, mostly around focus-follows-mouse and what mouse buttons + key combos moved, resize, iconify windows. My problem was that the key things my muscle memory depended on were fairly hard to configure in most things, and by that time, it was too late to change my muscle memory.

Eg, I have this hard-coded in my brain:

Button1=m :w|f : f.function "move-raise"

Button2=m :w|f : f.resize

Button3=m :w|f : f.iconify

(this means alt with mouse button 1 = raise window to front, and move it, alt+mouse2 = resize, alt+mouse3 = iconify)

So changing to anything else that didn't easily allow this customization was painful. I used a Mac for almost a year, and lived in the X environment so much that I went back to a *nix desktop. I kept doing crazy thing when I moved my mouse to another window, and the focus did not follow the mouse. So I'd start typing code in an Xemacs window, and i'd be deleting or forwarding mail. Argh.

Sorry - wasn't meaning to imply that you had those options merely that some of us were daft enough to work with multiple graphical environments at the same time.

NB Subsequently OpenWindows came along and actually (AFAIR) supported client applications from all three platforms at the same time.

> Must be something that I grew out of as I don't spend that much time personalizing computing environments these days.

I've had the same experience. I now find it easier to adapt myself to the defaults than to change the defaults every time I'm somewhere new.

I remember starting TWM when I had to use some Java program that was so bloated that I literally couldn't keep my usual desktop in RAM.

Someone write an ode to CDE!

CDE always felt incredibly organized to me. Fond memories.