Linux Deepin 23: A polished distro from China that Western desktops could learn from

After a couple of years in development, Linux Deepin 23 arrives, with some new shiny that throws shade on the leading Western desktop distros. Deepin 23 was finally released last week, nearly two years since we reported on the preview. Deepin is the free community sibling of Uniontech's UOS distribution, and as of last …

[Khaptain]

Looks good but

"You might not want to run a Chinese OS on your own PC"

Correct , very correct. Unless someone spends a lot of time analysing all the incoming/outgoing traffic.

It would be nice to see a nice European version of the same as it definitely looks very nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Looks good but

I live in the US and I'd rather run an EU Linux desktop distro than any of the data slurping, privacy violating malware OSes from Microsoft, Google, or Apple.

[Uncle Slacky]

Re: Looks good but

I'd certainly be far more concerned about what the NSA and all the other TLAs could do to me or with my data than what the Chinese might do - as long as I never go there there's not a lot they can do to me, the Five Eyes on the other hand...

[Zibob]

Re: Looks good but

"I'd certainly be far more concerned about what the NSA and all the other TLAs *are 100% confirmed to be doing* do to me *AND* with my data"

Fixed that for you.

For all the jumping up and down, stomping around and pearl clutching about what China *could* be doing, the facts are we have hard evidence that the NSA and many other state sanctioned administrations are absolutely doing right now and have been for a VERY long time.

Always makes me laugh. No it does not absolve China completely, but this madness over them and inherent trust of the USA/Europe is just mind boggling.

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: Looks good but

Linux variants, typically, are not "from" a specific country, but are "from" every country where one of its developers lives.

You're potentially getting backdoors from 5Eyes, plus backdoors from China.

I don't presume "foreign" developers have bad intent, but if their loved ones can be gotten to by spy/military agencies, they may reasonably feel they have to go along with those agencies' "suggestions."

[razorfishsl]

Re: Looks good but

Do you know in certain areas, you have to load mandated software onto your business accounts computers for the tax department.

After you log in & provide a usr id via mobile phone , you get an "update"package.

in that package loaded from government servers, is ....

A back door

A network scanning app

A screen cap & keyboard RAT.

I know this becasue of samples I submitted to an AV provider & the fact that the FBI said back in 2020 that his was floating about, its been improved since then.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Looks good but

> Do you know in certain areas,

Which areas of which country, so I can avoid it?

[Liam Proven]

Re: Looks good but

[Author here]

> It would be nice to see a nice European version of the same as it definitely looks very nice.

There is Ubuntu DDE but it's very slow moving and hasn't updated in 18mth or so.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/28/ubuntu_dde_2204/

https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/07/linux_distro_roundup_fall_23/

The desktop environment is available in several other distros, but you must install and configure it yourself. That seriously reduces the end-user-friendly nature of Deepin, though.

[therobyouknow]

Re: Looks good but

"It would be nice to see a nice European version of the same as it definitely looks very nice."

Answer: Zorin OS. Which is not a version of Deepin, but rather its own OS.

"Zorin OS is the alternative to Windows and macOS designed to make your computer faster, more powerful, secure, and privacy-respecting." - https://zorin.com/os/

Zorin OS Pro has additional themes resembling, macOS and Windows.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Looks good but

[Author here]

> Answer: Zorin OS. Which is not a version of Deepin, but rather its own OS.

No it isn't. It's a very elderly version of Ubuntu with a bunch of GNOME extensions pre-loaded, and about 20GB of freeware preloaded as Flatpaks.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/15/zorin_os_17_1/

It's not bad. It's pretty, it works -- arguably better than plain GNOME -- but it's just another Ubuntu remix, but one whose premium edition costs money.

[therobyouknow]

Re: Looks good but

> > Answer: Zorin OS. Which is not a version of Deepin, but rather its own OS.

> No it isn't. It's a very elderly version of Ubuntu with a bunch of GNOME extensions pre-loaded, and about 20GB of freeware preloaded as Flatpaks.

Yes you're right of course. What I meant by "its own OS" was that it wasn't derived from DeepIn nor related to it.

> It's not bad. It's pretty, it works -- arguably better than plain GNOME -- but it's just another Ubuntu remix, but one whose premium edition costs money.

It works very well for my specific real-life scenario: "extend the useful life of a x86 touchscreen tablet PC that doesn't official support Windows 11, with full touchscreen functionality and with the ability to use common apps.". Result: All boxes ticked, superb machine Panasonic FZ-G1 MkIII : like a iPad with built-in ruggedness with much more capability and flexibility. Battery could be better though. On Zorin (Linux) Less than 2GB RAM in use compared to Windows ~3.9Gb out of the machine's 4Gb. Fan runs quieter too.

That to me is how I view any Linux or any software: what can I apply it to, use it for, in terms of a real life useful scenario.

Whether or not it has Gnome, this version or that, Wayland, K this, G that or flatpak, snap etc or whatever under the bonnet is only important to me to focus on getting that real life use case working, not the virtues of these things for their own sake.

[therobyouknow]

Re: Looks good but

> but it's just another Ubuntu remix, but one whose premium edition costs money.

True. I'm happy to reward those who have put in the time to curate a working solution, in my case fully functional touch screen support, good looking, European, Linux with my x86 Tablet PC. I'm all for open source projects and volunteer run projects - I run several myself out of the enjoyment of altrusim,community and intellectual challenge. But I'm also not against someone forming some form of standard, curating it, and marketing it well as is the case of Zorin. Linux needs that. Some Linux fans seem to overate the virtue of people working out their own solutions; not every wants to do that, or invest the time or indeed is technically inclined. Why shouldn't Linux work well for non-technical folk. You want the year that Linux becomes mainstream Desktop?

I've looked at several other distros and quite frankly they are crap for a polished touchscreen x86 full functionality:

- touch screen doesn't work is broken without means in the settings to correct it.

- styling is dated, bad taste

- styling is superficial

- UI oddities like 2 on/off buttons one for standby, looking at you, Mint.

[iooool]

Re: Looks good but

I have only heard of accusation of chinese backdoors but no one has every found one. They have found bad security practices which was also typically found thru life cycles of western software.

[IamAProton]

Re: Looks good but

In the People's Repoblic of China (AKA the communist China) every company is required to 'help' the government (pick your definition of 'help')

There might be no backdoor out of the box, but you might get it with the next update.

With so many distros available, why take the chance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Looks good but

What would you know, Khaptain? You support rioting by racists and fascists

[zimzam]

I wonder how many people are using the DE on a different distro, it is prettier than most default DEs.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Ya know. . .

If I wanted a Macintosh, I'd buy a Macintosh.

I realize I'm a corner (and perhaps mental) case but still. . .

[Liam Proven]

Re: Ya know. . .

[Author here]

> If I wanted a Macintosh, I'd buy a Macintosh.

It's if anything more Windows-like than Mac-like. It just picks up some style influence from the Mac, but then Windows has been doing that for 2 decades now.

1. Vista switched to a composited display with translucency

2. Win7 switched to an icon-based taskbar

3. Win8 removed the translucency and went flat as was trendy then, meaning "like iOS and macOS did."

4. Win10 leaned in to that more but restored a sad crippled echo of the Start menu.

5. Win11 echoes macOS even more with a centred taskbar, even more like the Dock.

[MrRtd]

Despite the highly subjective opinion of the author, I rather like having all the options KDE have built in, and as for looks, I don't want my desktop to look like a Windows or Mac Clone. And another thing, I can't stand the detached floating menu, just as I don't like the detached tabs in Firefox.

[gerryg]

Redux

Each to their own n'all but the author of the article has previous regarding KDE.

KDE seems to have a relatively happy constituency of users and its got a 30 year pedigree. I was a bit cheesed off with KDE 4 but otherwise I remain happy.

I might be happier with another DE but all that paint that needed to be watched drying prevents me bothering to find out, c f., distro hopping. I started with S.u.S.E 6.0 and I'm now on Tumbleweed. I neither know nor care what I'm missing

But if you really care: https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Deepin/Installation

[etoven]

Re: Redux

Also a happy kde user and not looking like that's about to change anytime soon.

[Chasxith]

I couldn't stand the new KDE floating bar when using KDE on my tiny 11" HP Elitebook - felt like it took up too much screen space. (The search continues for a DE that "works right" on that little notebook...)

However on a big 27" monitor and my 14" FHD screened laptop I find KDE just fine and genuinely love the customisation.

[An_Old_Dog]

Tiny Screens, Netbook Distros

I loved using CrunchBang on netbooks with 9" or 10" screens. CB was fast and the UI worked well on small screens. CB was discontinued, but I'd suggest one of its successors, such as CrunchBang++ (www.crunchbangplusplus.org). Or, you might consider using the "i3" tiling window manager (www.i3wm.org).

That said, i3 might be too minimal for your taste.

If I could only find a new netbook (with 10" screen, user-swappable batteries, and a good keyboard, such as that on the HP1010NR), I would be delighted.

A netbook, with all the keys. Not a Chrome CrapBook.

[Chasxith]

Re: Tiny Screens, Netbook Distros

This one is a 2013 era HP Elitebook 2170p. 16GB of RAM, a 3rd gen i5 and a decent SSD make it plenty quick even with a heavier DE like GNOME. Keyboard is excellent too. Only thing that lets it down is a tired battery which is rather difficult to replace - I've settled for a hefty USB-C powerbank and a Amazon adapter to the barrel jack to give it some range.

Thanks for the pointers towards Crunchbang++ and i3, I'll give them a whirl and see how I get on.

[Fido]

The article states "Although some of the betas offered Wayland as an option, it's gone from the final release, which uses just X.org." If the Deepin desktop is as widely used as suggested, sticking with X11 may say something about direction of the window fracture in Linux.

As a contrast Raspberry Pi OS switched to Wayland by default last year. Though tied to a particular vendor's hardware, in my opinion that OS is also trend setting.

[Liam Proven]

> sticking with X11 may say something about direction of the window fracture in Linux.

"fracture"?

But if you mean what I think, you may be right.

[etoven]

Wayland is a hot broken mess for over 50% of the market that idea if anything has my full support.

[Anonymous Coward]

How Quickly We All Forget....

Quote: "...many users in the West will be too concerned about potential Chinese government spyware..."

.....about the revelations from Edward Snowden.....

[Zibob]

Re: How Quickly We All Forget....

Yup, been having a good chuckle at the people doing a rain dance around the fire and chanting about how bad China could be while ignoring the very real and proven snooping and delving into every corner your your life and data that is happening for sure from the US and less talked about but also happening in Europe, FOR DECADES!

[david 12]

Open Source in China

It's worth keeping in mind that China has no lasting tradition of Copyright or Patents. The Chinese cultural background is free content supported (and directed) by government subsidy. That's also reflected in their (Chinese language) open source electronics industry.

[doublelayer]

Re: Open Source in China

I think you're painting a more open source friendly picture than reality. China may not protect copyright that much, but there's a ton of closed source in China. They probably won't be protected if someone pirates it, but that is a far cry from you having access to see and modify the source, and if you did, you're not guaranteed any protection if they pursue it. Chinese companies are well-known for ignoring the licenses of open source code they use, due to the same limitations in copyright law that you have been praising. Open source isn't just the freedoms, it's also how much source you can actually access. If they never give it out, then lower copyright protections don't do anything for you.

[methuselah]

Chinese distros Really?

Meeh china and background tracking they will throw at you?

[keithpeter]

Rollback

"We're not sure exactly how it's been done, but the distro has some kind of atomic installation facility with rollback."

On a 'normal' file system that sounds interesting. I imagine that if you offer paid support to 3 million users you would need some solid rollback ability for updates &c.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep.. when you have millions of $ of government money

plus enforced user-ship... of course you can do better than basic open source...

[keithpeter]

Then perhaps we need to sponsor a small company to produce something like this? But without any 'enforcement' just competition. Could reduce the waste of perfectly good client PCs in public sector organisations because of a decision by a multinational company based in another country. Might catch on when ordinary people can't use Windows 11 because their laptop is too old?

Posting from a test install of Deepin 23 on an old Thinkpad X220, 8G ram with 60Gb SSD. That is hardware from 2011 remember.

Installer wont auto-install whole disk if less than 64Gb. Mandates 'custom' partition, so I did. Custom partitioner requres /boot/efi but does not change default format from ext4 just gives an error message about 'must be vfat'. You have to change the format of the tiny 300Mb partition yourself. Suggests a swap partition of > 7.8Gb (I'm guessing equal to memory) and won't accept anything less (I'm guessing for hibernate to disk). I just skipped making a swap partition and made one large partition for /. Installation completes. I made a nominal 1G swap file at /swapfile after installed. I'm thinking this all shows concern for supporting the commercial version - ensure disk big enough for snapshots &c.

Reboot and create user. Connects to wifi fine. Updates OK. Chromium is as OA points out old version so had to install Ublock Origin manually from Ublock github. Had to puggle about in Control Center to set language, keyboard, timezone for UK. The Control Centre is easy to navigate and has a search function but you need the exact name. 'Localisation' does not return matches but 'language' does &c.

Seems very nice and shiny, runs fine, all graphical settings and no cli needed especially, top showing just under 2G ram in use, load averages around 0.2 with Chromium and UI running with terminal. I'll work out what servers it talks to &c in a bit.

[keithpeter]

Replying to my own post from Deepin: there is Chromium build 122.0.6261.94 in the repositories which I installed along with the Deepin branded old Chrome version that has been renamed and comes with the installation. I was able to set Chromium as default Web browser and everything. The mail client is reasonably nice. I like the setup - just put server details in one simple form. It defaults to imap TLS and expects smtp authentication. The only thing I don't like is that you can't not have the message preview - there is no option not to have the preview.

The deepin repository isn't quite the same as Debian main: no octave or maxima/wxMaxima as a somewhat specialised example. So it isn't a wholesale import.

As regards the UI. The only thing that is niggling me at present is the very slight shadow gradient that extends inwards from the dock when you have the dock vertical. I find a variation in gradient extending about 50 pix or so on the left hand side of a maximised window annoyingly noticeable so I have the dock on the right hand side.

[cosmodrome]

Millions of gouvernment money and an enforced usership? That's about what Microsoft gets in almost every country. Doesn't seem to help much if MS has to bother their users with advertising nevertheless.

[Noodle]

Microsoft doesn't *have* to bother it's users with advertising, it just does it because it can, because money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be interested to know how it copes without an Internet connection? How big is the ISO?

[keithpeter]

ISO came in at 5Gb. I ran a live session and tried a few things out before connecting to wifi - seemed to cope, no nags about not being connected. You get LibreOffice, a pdf viewer, graphical text editor, image viewer, scanner (simple scan I think), cheese like webcam and stuff as well as Chromium and a mail application. There is quite a nice little drawing program that they seem to have provided themselves called Draw. The image viewer has an 'extract text' function (which could be 'interesting' if it includes any kind of remote processing).

[ComicalEngineer]

Who wants a Linux front end that looks like Win 11?

Never mind one written by the Chinese.

I'll fetch the 11 foot bargepole, the one that I keep for the things I wouldn't touch with a 10' bargepole.

[lotus123]

>"Who wants a Linux front end that looks like Win 11?"

People who like Linux but find Win UI more usable.

>"Never mind one written by the Chinese."

This attitude will surely get you far in life. Sounds like a racist slob.

>"I'll fetch the 11 foot bargepole, the one that I keep for the things I wouldn't touch with a 10' bargepole."

We live in a "free" world. Nobody forces you to touch anything.

[Liam Proven]

[Author here]

> Who wants a Linux front end that looks like Win 11?

Anyone using Cinnamon, for a start. Most Mint users, and those porting Cinnamon to other distros, because it's in Fedora, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Debian, Arch, etc. etc.

Much the same goes for KDE 6. Icon-based floating taskbar by default, ribbons and hamburger menus everywhere, etc.

So, yeah, you seem not to have noticed that the answer is "most non-techie Linux users".

[gratou]

Not really. Cinnamon & co are the sensible interfaces. Windows keeps adding shit and moving things around.

Cinnamon (and Mate and xfce...) are anything but Windows: They work and they don't spend their time infuriating their users.

[therobyouknow]

Wrong: "A polished distro from China that Western desktops could learn from" - why? Zorin OS Pro

Deepin? Not all "Western desktops" need to learn from it.

See: Zorin OS Pro. "Western Desktop" - from Ireland. Very polished. Works beautifully on tablet PCs too.

No affiliation, incentive or referal benefit to me. A happy (one-off) paid user of Zorin OS.

[keithpeter]

Re: Wrong: "A polished distro from China that Western desktops could learn from" - why? Zorin OS Pro

Excellent - one question: how does it fare with snap application upgrades? I notice that flatpack and snap are both enabled as is appimage and wine for windows apps. Quite a zoo of things to manage during upgrades.

[therobyouknow]

Re: Wrong: "A polished distro from China that Western desktops could learn from" - why? Zorin OS Pro

"Excellent - one question: how does it fare with snap application upgrades? I notice that flatpack and snap are both enabled as is appimage and wine for windows apps. Quite a zoo of things to manage during upgrades."

One for the https://forum.zorin.com/

Friendly forum, including to newcomers. Their collective knowledge would be among the best places to ask your question. And when I come across your observations, I'll certainly join in on finding out about solutions.

I'm looking into upgrading from Zorin OS Pro 16 to 17 and ensuring my device works the same. Some initial self-inflicted glitches that I'm ironing out and I'll post my experiences on that forum.

[etoven]

Re: Wrong: "A polished distro from China that Western desktops could learn from" - why? Zorin OS Pro

I tried zorn honestly I take exception with it mostly because they charge and what is get is mostly free stuff and a experience that could be better on a free distro.

[therobyouknow]

Re: Wrong: "A polished distro from China that Western desktops could learn from" - why? Zorin OS Pro

"I tried zorn honestly I take exception with it mostly because they charge and what is get is mostly free stuff and a experience that could be better on a free distro."

I get that, because they charge, which some aren't going to like ideologically. But I also feel they should be rewarded for their work developing and curating a polished-but-still-highly-functional operating system, because maintaining a distribution or any open source project requires time and effort.. One which works very well for touchscreen x86 tablet PCs, like my Panasonic FZ-G1 MkIII.

Zorin offer a free version as well. I'm not 100% sure, but believe Zorin OS Pro can be user-built for free.

Moreover paying is going to happen somewhere along the line: for the hardware itself and in several cases - the software - the OS - Zorin OS Pro, or Windows license and some apps. Some are not willing to pay for an OS, so why are they willing to pay for the hardware?

The difference to me is the business practice and ethics around that payment. With Microsoft there are privacy and security concerns, as well hardware support. Not so it would appear with Zorin - and it's still Linux underneath.

I think Linux on the desktop needs some kind of commercial input, through Zorin and Ubuntu, which incentivise polished-but-function systems. Why do we have to excuse ourselves for half-baked rough round the edges experiences, just because it's Linux? Many of the other Linux distros are, frankly, poor in UI. In those UI is just superficial variation, people in gaming chairs getting excited about a style of window manager to my mind. What's with the funny extra sideways on/off button on Mint? Most of them I've tried and they are woefully poor with touchscreens, unlike Zorin which works very well on touchscreen (with a few one-off tweaks).

But I get the concern about paying. Some so-called open source projects, they are really vauxpen open source. I would side with those wary of payment when it comes to things that call themselves open source DevOps, frameworks, libraries but aren't. If I look at those kind of projects and it's supported by one vendor and their website page has "Pricing", then I'm hesitant.

But for an OS, no, I'm less hardline when it comes to paying. I paid for the hardware and I see the OS as part of that so I'm more open to paying for someone who has done a good job there. But at the same time I'm a big believer in open source projects supported by diverse foundations, like Linux, Apache, js.org etc.

[misterinformed]

Grammar pedantry

> There are multiple color palettes, wallpapers, and the taskbar can be centered ...

Does anyone else hate it when a sentence has one list nested inside another, but only contains one "and"?

I'll get my hat, coat and leave.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Grammar pedantry

I checked. That's my bad.

Originally I listed all the icon themes, then I removed it and didn't reword the sentence appropriately.

[etoven]

Warnt people calling this the official os of the Communist party? Aka the Chinese spyware os. What ever lessons im supposed to learn as someone from the west. Hard pass.

[Liam Proven]

> Warnt people calling this the official os of the Communist party?

Do you mean "weren't"?

It is not. It's not official, and there isn't an official one any more.

There used to be one: Kylin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylin_(operating_system)

It's discontinued now. The nearest thing to a replacement is KylinOS and openKylin, which I looked at in depth:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/30/kylin_the_multiple_semiofficial_chinese/

This is the semi-commercial _rival_ to the official OS.