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Tamás Barta
Asked: 2013-06-23 03:01:45 +0800 CST

Is the whole desktop of Linux Deepin available to install in Ubuntu?

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Title says all. Is there any repository from which I can simply "sudo apt-get install" the Deepin desktop with all the applications related? I find Unity really usable, but very ugly, and I'm curious to try out the other desktops around. I ran into an article about Deepin and it looks promising. I'm not interested in their Software Centre only!

Is there a way to install it in my current Ubuntu as an alternate desktop?

desktop-environments

3 Answers

  1. This article on Web upd8 says that Deepin is using a patched version of Compiz. So most likely it's not compatible with Unity (which also depends on Compiz).

    You can still make a dual-boot if you like to use both DE's.

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  2. Actually you can add Deepin's repository into your /etc/apt/sources.list file and just change their priority in your /etc/apt/preferences.d directory. Then you can easily install and use Deepin's DE.

    I work for Deepin team as an editor. Deepin DOES have Fcitx work out of the box. And it is NOT the Chinese style to be top-down oriented, as opposed to Christopher Shen Mu Lon answered previously, which is merely out of prejudice. Deepin's distro is also suitable for productive environment and we provide support for this.

    I am just so angry to see that many things Christopher Shen Mu Lon said is not true. I don't know why he said this.

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  3. We have had some test implementations at the office for our chinese users, but weren't too satisfied with Deepin. There were strategic concerns which might affect you as well:

    Deepin mainly aims at Chinese users, but since the government introduced Ubuntu Kylin as their official OS, we addressed this in our implementation risk matrix. You need to understand the Chinese mindset, which strongly differs from a Western one - they're just more top-down oriented, so when the government says "that's the right OS", chances are pretty low that the Deepin community will grow. A smaller userbase directly affects bug fixes and so on. Next to that, Deepin does not provide the user with the Chinese input system fcitx out of the box, while Ubuntu Kylin does, so from our estimation it is very unlikely that a Chinese user would pick some "hobby distribution" which needs configuration over the government provided solution which delivers out of the box.

    The Deepin team maintains many different PPAs. In fact, they maintain a terrible mess with packages here and there, which makes it a no-go for a serious productive environment. If you face some issues, you should know how to read Chinese, since most of the issues are not being discussed in English. You can look here, and I'll post some more mirror server as soon as I am back at the office, where I have stored the URLs. Here is the link of their packages.

    Usage:

    Updates are terribly slow, since the servers are affected by the governemnt's "we want to know everything and control the internet traffic". (I have enough scientific research and evidence backup for this claim.) I am behind a 100MBit line but updates take several minutes to complete. If you just install the desktop environment on a standard Ubuntu 12.04, then many dependencies are not met and you have to fix them manually. The localisation also provides you with funny issues. We did not dare to try to implement the Deepin DE on 12.10 or 13.04.

    If you do not mind about these issues and want to experiment, just go on, it looks lovely indeed. But you need to keep in mind, that getting used to a desktop environment, which might be dropped within the next two years could be cumbersome.

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