For those who care more about the desktop appearance, Deepin is one of the best choices for beginners.
Deepin started in 2004 as Hiweed Linux. It’s developed by a company from China. It is a Debian-based Linux system features its own DDE desktop environment. It focuses much of its attention on intuitive design. And it can be the most beautiful Linux Distro in 2021.
As the top picture shows, the desktop has all the core elements with rounded corners. The desktop panel and widgets applied with blur effect. By default, it has a classic Windows style start menu. A double arrow icon though is available to toggle on/off full-screen app launcher.
The ‘Show Desktop‘ and ‘Overview‘ buttons are available right beside the start menu in the left. All the favorite as well as opened apps are located in the center.
By right-clicking on the panel, you can configure the panel layout and position easily via the context menu.
Deepin Linux also features its own applications, including Software Center, Music, Video Player, System Log Viewer, Print Manager. And the control center comes with settings for themes, power, network, mouse & keyboard, and even boot-menu order & background.
Other features include:
- WPS office in main repository though LibreOffice is preinstalled.
- CrossOver, the paid and commercialized version of Wine, is available in main repository for free.
- Dual Kernel 5.10 and 5.11 in Deepin 20.2.
- Good appearance in HiDPI display.
- Fingerprint authentication, light and dark theme support and more.
More Deepin Linux screenshots:
The downsides:
Though Deepin is powered with higher Kernel version compared to Ubuntu and Linux Mint, it still has some compatibility issues in my old laptop.
During installing Deepin, it provides an option to install the proprietary NVIDIA driver. If don’t enable it, system randomly boots into “Driver ‘pcspkr’ is already registered issue” in my case.
As well, there seems no graphical tool to install or upgrade the graphics drivers. You have to search on the web and struggle with Linux commands. That’s not friendly for beginners.
Another issue for me is that, touchpad will not work after waking up from sleep. It’s annoying that I have to reboot every time system goes to suspend. Fortunately, it’s easy to turn off automatic suspend on idle.
The default and popular applications, e.g, the default web browser, mostly target at users from China. You have to install Chromium, Firefox, etc from the App Store and change the default apps.
The last issue is about the package sources. Unlike Ubuntu and Arch Linux based systems, Deepin has neither PPAs or AUR. Besides installing apps from the App Store, or .deb packages from developers, only Flatpak and Snap packages are available to get external apps. What if you don’t like apps run in sandbox?
Summary:
Deepin is the most beautiful Linux Distro so far for desktop PC and laptop. It’s beginner friendly with the built-in utilities. With CrossOver, it makes installing Windows apps super easy. And it looks good out-of-the-box with high DPI displays.
However, it seems no graphics tool to update the latest proprietary drivers. And for those don’t like universal Flatpak and Snap, it has limited package sources for the latest and external apps.