Late but lustrous, a fresh remix of Ubuntu emerges The team behind the unofficial Ubuntu remix with the Deepin desktop has rolled out an updated version based on the current Ubuntu long-term support release. The Reg FOSS desk took a look at UbuntuDDE at the start of the year and came away impressed. The Linux Deepin desktop environment is bright, colorful, and easy to use, but …
Behold the pretty but also impressively functional UIs coming out of the vast, little-known Chinese Linux market, where fringe desktops from distros most people have never even heard of have more polish and more usability than the leading Western desktops after 25+ years of work by billion-dollar corporations.
That's more like how I'd put it, but hey, you do you. ;-)
Well, yes, but sadly, there is an answer here, it's just not a popular one.
It's closely related to:
https://sporks.space/2022/02/27/win32-is-the-stable-linux-userland-abi-and-the-consequences/
"Win32 is the stable Linux userland ABI."
What most people can agree upon is that the Windows desktop is the "standard" "traditional" one now.
Which then proposes a new question: which version? Windows 95 (& NT 4) was the original. That is more or less what Xfce, LXDE and LXQt implement.
GNOME 2 was a sort of half-hearted version, built by people who apparently didn't really understand how the Windows one worked, so it can't do simple things like vertical panels well.
Windows 98 came when MS was under investigation by the US Justice Dept for illegally bundling IE. So, MS built IE into the Windows UI. Good aspect: multithreading; quick launch bar. Bad aspect: pervasive HTML rendering everywhere to legitimise IE being there.
I don't like it myself. Didn't then, don't know.
But that is what KDE copied -- poorly. It has many complex twiddly options instead of direct manipulation, and it's not nearly as flexible as the developers think, because they didn't really know how to customise the original they were copying.
However, since many people only know how to use it poorly, it's good enough for them.
That is where the Linux world gave up. "Just barely good enough" -- ship it.
Actual Windows users would mostly tell you that Windows 7 was the high point, and so that's what UKUI and DDE are trying to copy.
Result, they copy a much more modern Windows UI, with app tiles, no need for a quicklaunch bar, working vertical panels, working search built in, and so on.
So, the question is, who does it best? If you just want a Windows-like desktop, your choices are:
[1] a very basic Win95 type UI
[2] a fancier Win98 type UI -- a copy of something half-done
[3] or a copy of the highpoint of the design of the original.
Version 3 removes a lot of the fiddly twiddly bits some Linux types like. Me, I personally prefer v1, as basic as it needs to be and no more.
But a lot of people like v2, and I am trying to point them at a maybe better alternative that they might like.
I've picked this up a short while ago. It's a quote from the Arch Linux people.
"
as you install APT updates, Snap becomes a requirement for you to continue to
use Chromium and installs itself behind your back. This breaks one of the major
worries many people had when Snap was announced and a promise from its
developers that it would never replace APT.
A self-installing Snap Store which overwrites part of our APT package base is a
complete NO NO. It’s something we have to stop and it could mean the end of
Chromium updates and access to the snap store in Linux Mint.
A year later, in the Ubuntu 20.04 package base, the Chromium package is indeed
empty and acting, without your consent, as a backdoor by connecting your
computer to the Ubuntu Store. Applications in this store cannot be patched, or
pinned. You can’t audit them, hold them, modify them or even point snap to a
different store. You’ve as much empowerment with this as if you were using
proprietary software, i.e. none. This is in effect similar to a commercial
proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it
installs itself without asking you.
"
The Arch people have sensibly blocked default action of any package installing
snap. But if you really *really* want to do that manually you still can...
at your own risk of course.
P.S. I've just been told the same is now happening with Firefox
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