Linux Deepin 2013 Review: Refreshing and Elegant but with some minor quirks!

Linux Deepin has always been a special distro to me - an Asian distro with a distinct theme and an elegant attractive interface. This Chinese distro ships with it's own home-grown desktop environment: Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE), based on GNOME 3 along with a host of goodies that makes it very usable for common Linux users. I was very impressed with the previous release 12.12.1 and once the release notes for 2013 final came out, I was more than interested to try out to check if there is any significant improvement in the appearance and/or performance of the distro.

From Linux Deepin 2013 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

I downloaded the 64-bit Linux Deepin 2013 ISO, about 1.3 GB in size for this test and installed on my Asus K55VM laptop with 2.3 GB Core i7 3610QM processor, 8 GB DDR3 RAM and 2 GB NVIDIA GeForce 630M graphics. As mentioned, Linux Deepin 2013 ships with a home-grown DDE desktop, tweaked from GNOME 3 and Linux kernel 3.8.0 and Files 3.8.1 as file manager. This version is based on Ubuntu Raring and supported till January 2014.

From Linux Deepin 2013 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

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Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" Beta 2 Review: With a better looking Unity!

It is April 2013 and we are eagerly awaiting the release of Ubuntu 13.04. Discussions are on whether it will have the usual 18 months of support or a lesser 9 months. Codenamed Raring Ringtail, the OS is at the final stages and in this article, I give you a sneak preview of what is expected. Of course, Ubuntu will add some last minute surprises when the final release comes.

From Ubuntu 13.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

As of now, the ISO is at 835 MB and is perhaps the heaviest ISO I have seen of Ubuntu. I did a live boot followed by installation on my Asus K54C with 2.2 Ghz Core-i3 processor and 2 GB RAM. As of now, it has Unity on Gnome 3.6 desktop and Linux kernel 3.8.0. I guess the final release with come with the latest 3.8.5 kernel. Already I used kernel 3.8.5 on Pear OS 7, this week, after downloading from the Raring repos.

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Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail Daily-build Review: With latest apps and a better looking Unity

• My latest Ubuntu 13.04 Beta 2 review

With every progressing release, Unity desktop is getting significantly better. In Natty and Oneiric, I actually hated Unity for it's inefficiency and decided to stick to Linux Mint and Sabayon for the time being. However, with Ubuntu Precise 2nd update (12.04.2), my opinion on Unity actually changed. Though still not customizable but efficiency has increased, apps stopped crashing in the background, annoying pop-ups are gone and Unity has now become far more responsive than where it was in the beginning. Also, after using Gnome 3 in Fedora and OpenSUSE, I now understand why Ubuntu stayed away from the default Gnome 3 DE and leaned towards Unity. Agree, the strip hogs a bit of space on the left hand side but you can actually make it thinner and hide while using applications.

From Ubuntu 13.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

My sole purpose of downloading the daily build of Ubuntu Raring Ringtail and using it for a week, was to assess what incremental changes to expect in Unity for the April release. I downloaded the 816 MB ISO from here and did an installation on my Asus K54C laptop with 2.2 Ghz Core i3 processor and 2 GB RAM.

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