Is Linux Deepin trusted?



There is Ubuntu DDE - https://ubuntudde.com/
although I do not believe it is an official Ubuntu release but a remix
I downloaded and tried the ubuntu dde spin but would not boot on my hardware. So tried the ppa which works. Nice looking desktop but as I said on my hardware it was quite slow and just didn't feel right. ubuntu with gnome works better for me. But then I'm not real fond of Gnome theses days so pretty much stick with XFCE and Cinnamon DEs. with the occasional foray into KDE -plasma.
 
There is Ubuntu DDE - https://ubuntudde.com/
although I do not believe it is an official Ubuntu release but a remix

Just to confirm, it is not an official flavor of Ubuntu. Unlike Ubuntu Cinnamon, I don't recall even hearing any mention of it becoming an official Ubuntu flavor.
 
Lmao it's not even in English.
2022-02-01_13-41.png

I guess this is another reason to stay off from it
 
The best feature of their distro that attracts many people and intrigues others to install is the beautiful interface.
You can try Garuda Linux. Or maybe Zorin os. I remember there's a video about Deepin os.
Here it is.


Also check out this
2022-02-01_13-49.png
 
A gentle reminder:

While difficult for some conversations, politics is a strictly forbidden subject.
 
DistroTube gives some bad advice on his channel, especially for beginner Linux users.
 
Back to experimenting on using the Deepin DE as an alternative on your existing distro -

@kc1di - Dave did you remove Deepin after using it, and if so, by what means, or run a Timeshift restore?

I put the Deepin DE on my Xubuntu 20.04 in the last couple of days, and have some input for The Viewers on what perhaps is the best method to install it, and to remove it.

TIA

Chris
 
Without any intention of fueling any interpretations from Deepin's privacy policy, I just wanted to point out the following:
  • Proprietary software doesn't necessarily spy or gather data on you.
  • Vice versa is also true, free and open source software can gather data on you.
  • Operating systems and underlying processes are not the only ones subject to data gathering.
By that, I mean that the same privacy policy Deepin applies to the core distribution, may very well apply to the DE.

To make sure that no process is establishing unjustified network connections, you need to use network monitoring tools that show the activity per process, like nethogs, so that they show the command line of the program that is making the connection (instead of just, for example, "python3") --nethogds -l for this last bit.

Note also that these tools may have their limitations for network connections that are part of the kernel (it will say "unknown TCP"), so probably an external network sniffer will be a more solid option.

I am pointing this out because it is neither about "who" the software comes from, nor about its license, but about privacy policies and the ability that we have to check that they are fulfilled.
 
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I am pointing this out because it is neither about "who" the software comes from, nor about its license, but about privacy policies and the ability that we have to check that they are fulfilled.

Yup... Outside of a few controlled industries, a privacy policy isn't some legally enforceable document. Without verification, it's just some words smashed across a page.
 
Back to experimenting on using the Deepin DE as an alternative on your existing distro -

@kc1di - Dave did you remove Deepin after using it, and if so, by what means, or run a Timeshift restore?

I put the Deepin DE on my Xubuntu 20.04 in the last couple of days, and have some input for The Viewers on what perhaps is the best method to install it, and to remove it.

TIA

Chris
My own experience:

I keep a few spare OS partitions for experimenting with various distributions. I installed Deepin in its own partition alongside Tumbleweed (OpenSUSE). Deepin installed its own bootloader, but the bootloader was aware of Tumbleweed and correctly setup the boot for that as well. I then used Tumbleweed to reinstall its own bootloader, which also detected Deepin and set that up as well. For me removing Deepin would just involve formatting its partition and rerunning the Tumbleweed bootloader tool to update the boot options.

As ware as bare-metal, I've also installed Deepin in a 4CPU 8GB VirtualBox with a 60GB volume. I found it a big sluggish until I enabled the VM's VirtualBox GPU acceleration, at which point it was quite responsive. I'm using the VM when I'm developing, I can develop in my normal setup on Tumbleweed and then copy the results over to Deepin.

I only understand English. I chose English as the install language. Once installed I changed the default browser's search-engine to google. I'm not that familiar with Debian based systems, but installing stuff was just be a matter of googling how to do such things on Debian.
 
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Yup... Outside of a few controlled industries, a privacy policy isn't some legally enforceable document. Without verification, it's just some words smashed across a page.
Except that some countries, including China, have consumer and privacy laws. In many jurisdictions it is not possible to contract out of these obligations. So for some users, in some countries, some of these agreements may well be legally enforceable.

Verification is a difficult one. Firewalls and network monitoring only get you some of the way there. If software is compiled from verified source, it may be that the compiler has been subverted. If the compiler is self-compiling, or other compilers have not been verified, one might need to hand-assemble a compiler from source.

For any corporates thinking long term, brand reputation may have some role to play in self-enforcement.
 
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