ChinaIT: Deepin Linux

2014, July 22

If you are one of those who are looking for alternatives to MS Windows for personal or professional use, there is one cool Linux distribution that many Linux experts have been talking about recently. It is Chinese Deepin 2014.

Deepin 2014 was issued in July this year, and at the moment, it’s been rated as 13th on the popularity scale among about 300 commercially active distributions worldwide. Chinese company based in Wuhan has done a great job in adapting Ubuntu 14.04 and developing themselves some cool stuff, which makes the whole OS very stable, attractive and easy to use. I have installed it myself and here below is my review.

  1. Installation:
    Several years ago, when I tried Linux, the installation was quite complex. In meanwhile the procedures changed a lot, so with Deepin now you have completely smooth installation. I downloaded 1.6 GB image from one of the mirrors and using unetbootin tool made USB disk Linux bootable. If you would like still to keep your Windows, don’t forget to make full backup of your system and to shrink your primary partition to free some space. New machines with Windows7/8 are based on UEFI firmware, and there you need to turn off the fast Windows startup. For the description of all steps you can check this link. Then, you boot the system from your USB, and beautiful Deepin logo filling up with water will appear on the screen. In about 20 seconds you get the Deepin desktop with an icon where you can launch the installation. Apart from questions on your username, password, and the language, there will be no other questions or interruptions. The system is currently available in 10 languages : English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Czech and Chinese (simplified and traditional). Deepin identifies your computer’s configuration and its components, configures itself, and you need to reboot the computer once again in the end and it’s finished.
  2. General feel:
    The cool staff I like is very elegant and easy to use Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE). It’s been praised as the best desktop environment for Linux currently available. It is developed using HTML5 so you have those nice Windows Aero effects of blending when opening applications. Then Application Launcher which makes it easy to group and find your applications, with search feature – you just type the name and App Launcher will find it for you. Then, Deepin Software Center, which is one of the best graphical package managers available. It is a kind of App Store where you can browse applications, see their reviews and ratings, and launch their download and installation. Next, Control Center, which resembles Windows 8 Charm Bar, but here it actually works and is very functional and simple. Deepin come also with bunch of preinstalled applications ready to use like Libre Office, Google Chrome, Skype, Deepin Music and Deepin Player. Here are some more details and nice images. The system is also fast to boot – on my machine it took about 25 seconds. I noticed however a lack of easy switch between different keyboard layouts, which can be annoying if you use multiple languages. The translation in English could be better. Performance was quite satisfying for simple tasks that I’ve been performing, but I miss some heavy tests to see how it behaves when fully loaded with multiple windows and applications running in parallel.
  3. Support:
    With Deepin 2014, Chinese company Deepin opened the distribution to the world. The company estimates that in fact 60% of all Deepin installations are done outside China, and only 40% actually are Chinese users. There is a part of support forum dedicated for English-speaking users, and the company is currently hiring volunteers to manage user communities in other languages.
  4. For the business customers:
    Deepin management has been responsive and promptly replied to my inquiries on the corporate customers service. They already have some government and commercial customers in China and for them there is fee-based telephone line support available 24 X 7, with optional on-site support. For the international customers, the company currently provides English language e-mail support, but Deepin plans to open full international enterprise support in 2015, through a worldwide network of business partners and agents. The proof that Deepin has international ambitions is the fact that several companies in Canada and Brazil are in the final phase of Deepin evaluation and testing for their end users.

In the end, let me also help you understand the overall Linux market situation in China: Red Flag Linux company, which was preferred supplier of Chinese government institutions closed the doors earlier this year. This fact, together with quality of Deepin Linux and favorable market tendencies to search for viable alternative to Microsoft, makes Deepin company strong pretender for the significant market share in China.

Conclusion

Deepin is a very neat desktop operating system. It is based on a broadly used Ubuntu distribution, so in case of problems, this will help you easily find help in the incident resolution. Deepin also adds some cool features, so I believe it is an interesting alternative to any other desktop O/S. Maybe the best use cases for Deepin are new users to Linux, young users, those who wish to migrate from Windows, and also as a business desktops, especially of those companies considering to operate within China. About Deepin company, my impression is that they have high potential to grow within China and internationally.

Useful links:
http://www.linuxdeepin.com/index.en.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S56nKdY4EpA http://www.linuxdeepin.com/wallcon/#result http://www.techrepublic.com/article/linux-deepin-is-a-fringe-linux-distribution-that-could-steal-your-heart/
http://distrowatch.com/