Also appreciate that CDE was designed at a time when a 16-32MB workstation was commonly deployed. The overall footprint of these DEs is quite low, especially co

Also appreciate that CDE was designed at a time when a 16-32MB workstation was commonly deployed. The overall footprint of these DEs is quite low, especially compared to today. "Prettiness", while desirable, is also/can be expensive in terms of everything: CPU, RAM, IO, none of which the machines these were deployed on had in any abundance. It's really hard to appreciate how slow older hardware was. Today, if you wanted a DE on a small machine with 1G of RAM, something like CDE might be a really good fit. Especially if you could get away with something like Lynx for a browser.