Once upon a time, Deep in Linux is considered to be the most beautiful Linux distribution on the market. And it was. The user interface has a certain appreciation that others cannot match. The funny thing about competition is that it creates innovation.
Second letter other Linux distributions Knowing how much Deepin had dominated the market, they decided it was time to get serious about competing with the new kid on the block.
Now, when I install Deepin Linux, I no longer feel like I first experienced.
What Deepin Desktop has to offer is now more popular than it used to be. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not a highly polished desktop operating system. It is and it certainly looks partial.
The Deepin desktop is its own thing, but you can easily see hints of both KDE Plasma and Gnome, so it’s clear that the designers and developers took cues from two of the the best open source desktop on the market and make something special.
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With the click of a button, for example, you can switch between the very Gnome-like Applications overview and the KDE Plasma desktop menu. In fact, it’s a pretty clear sign that Deepin is purely user-oriented. And the latest preview release of the desktop distro has a long way to go to continue to achieve that goal.
The story of two on-screen menus seen through Deepin’s eyes. Image: Jack Wallen
Recently, the developers made the preview release of Deepin 23 available and there are a lot of interesting additions to the distribution. Let’s see what these new features and improvements are all about.
What is Deepin?
You may have never heard of Deepin. If so, I’ll give you a brief answer to the question. Deepin is a desktop operating system that aims to provide a beautiful, user-friendly, secure and reliable operating system for everyone. Developed in China, Deepin has been through a period where much of the Linux community is concerned that the operating system is tracking information through the Deepin app store.
Adding to that concern (whether intentionally or not), Deepin was acquired entirely by Wuhan Deepin Technology, a state-owned corporation. That means the Chinese government has even more control over Deepin OS. However, that doesn’t mean there should be any concern. Deepin is open source, so anyone can inspect the code hosted on GitHub.
With all that said, Deepin is a nice, user-friendly distro, and version 23 looks to add a significant amount of polish to something that’s already pretty shiny.
Let’s see what’s coming with this distro.
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Linglong
Linh Long is a new package format developed by Deepin that hopes to solve some of the compatibility issues of traditional package managers, as well as mitigate security issues. To accomplish this, Linglong centralizes control.
Linglong is also available for any Linux distribution and also Linglong Online Store with a few apps to install. However, keep in mind that this is still in the early stages of development.
atomic update
This feature should make it easy for anyone to understand how easily an update can go sideways. Essentially, an atomic update is an update that protects the system from update issues.
Atomic updates will install updates but if something goes wrong during the update process, the system can easily be reverted with no changes made. This means that you will avoid any problems that often occur with updates.
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Other New Features
These two features alone are game-changing enough and big enough to mention on their own. There are a few other changes that make up the list, including:
- new wallpaper
- new archive
- HWE 5.18 nuclear
- A new indie development stream has been added
You may not find major changes to the user interface in this release. But remember, this is a preview, so anything can happen between now and the final release. If you choose to test Deepin 23, be sure not to install it on a production machine, as this release can be a bit unstable. If you want to preview, download the ISO from Deepin CD Image website and have at it.
