WHO WE ARE

This issue we asked our experts: What’s your favourite desktop and do you have a tweak everyone should know about?

Jonni Bidwell

I’ve revived my netbook with Arch 32 and the Wayland-powered Sway desktop. It only has a 2GB SSD so I only use terminal applications: Midnight Commander for file management, ncmpcpp to control my Pi jukebox, and the awesome coinget utility to lament my declining crypto worth.

Shashank Sharma

I’m running a customised Budgie with a disappearing panel at the bottom. My longterm love however is Gnome, but I dislike the Activities overview. Instead, my Gnome desktop features several Shell Extensions, including a categorised menu, to make it beautiful and efficient.

Bobby Moss

I’m a fan of MATE because it’s responsive and easy to use. I particularly like MATE’s appearance and layout in Trisquel and Mint, but you can customise these by rightclicking panels and editing their properties. Custom shortcuts are created with the Add to Panel option.

Les Pounder

I love Openbox. It’s not a bright and flashy desktop, but it runs on anything and breathes new life into older machines. I used to use it with the original Asus EEE PC, and Mrs P still uses it on her 10-year-old Dell laptop.

Mayank Sharma

Not really a tweak, rather a tip – spend some time learning the keyboard shortcuts for your desktop. This will help you quickly access functions without navigating the ins and outs of its Settings panel. Some desktops will also enable you to define custom keyboard shortcuts, which ensures consistency across desktops.