Customisation
What if you decide you want to make some changes?
We opted for the KDE edition of Manjaro to ensure that we showcase five different desktop environments. The upside to this is each distro has a distinct look and feel. Unlike most distros, where the central settings manager is a distinct application, the settings manager on Deepin is presented as a sidebar that can be accessed by clicking the gears on the panel at the bottom. You can access the configurable elements, such as Cloud Sync, Display, Personalisation, Power Management, Mouse & Touchpad, etc. using the buttons on the left pane.
All the configurable elements on Elementary OS can be accessed from the System Settings tool, which lists them under different headings such as Personal, Hardware, Network & Wireless and Administration. To change the wallpaper, or otherwise tweak the appearance of the desktop, select Desktop from under the Personal heading. You can also change the default apps and even define apps you wish to automatically launch upon startup. If you want to configure parental control, click the appropriately named button under Administration.
Manjaro provides a central settings manager and more De-relevant managers, depending on your chosen desktop environment. The settings manager can also be used to install Linux kernel, change default applications and file associations.
Apart from Budgie Settings, which cover all aspects of the desktop environment, Solus also features a settings manager, but we couldn’t get it to launch on our test machines.
Zorin OS features a custom app to change the appearance of the desktop, but all other configurable parameters can only be accessed from the central settings manager.