A distribution its community has kept for over a decade

deepin is a desktop Linux distribution maintained by its own community, which was founded in 2008. Early versions took another distribution as their upstream, moved to Debian in 2015, and in 2022 the project announced it would build its own root community and develop base technology itself, starting with the package format and the way versions are defined. UnionTech, founded in 2019, supports the community, and its commercial edition is deployed in finance, energy and education.

That history explains the shape of the thing. A distribution that has spent years downstream of someone else eventually wants to own the layer where its identity lives, and deepin has been doing that in public for several cycles now.

The desktop gets rebuilt

DDE is the most visible part of the project, and in deepin 25 it was reworked rather than merely repainted. The control centre and the notification centre are rewritten in QML, and the visual and interaction rules were adjusted at the same time, so widget styles across the desktop drift towards one language instead of several. On the feature side the release adds graded window effects, taskbar locking, a translucency toggle while a window is being moved, custom three-finger and four-finger gestures, channel merging for audio, solid-colour wallpapers, and a changelog that can be read and exported.

Smaller things carry the same intent. The launcher sorts by the first letter of an application's name, and the file manager searches as you type and highlights the matched keywords. Neither is novel in isolation; both are the kind of detail that decides whether a desktop feels finished.

An immutable system and its own package format

For stability, version 25 introduces an immutable design called Solid. Core directories are mounted read-only, which keeps an accidental command or a malicious program from rewriting system files. Updates are incremental and generate snapshots automatically, and if an update fails or the machine will not boot, it rolls back to the last usable state without the user having to find a rescue disk.

For compatibility, the community built its own package format with other distributions in mind. It covers AMD64, ARM64 and LoongArch, runs across several mainstream distributions, and the project says thousands of packages are already published in it. The app store goes a step further and can install another distribution's subsystem environment in one action, which is the pragmatic answer to the software that a young ecosystem does not have yet.

AI across the system, and the release rhythm

AI is not a separate window here. Selecting text anywhere summons an icon that translates, summarises or explains it; an AI dock on the taskbar accepts files dragged onto it; an agent store exists for extending the capability. The project says several mainstream large models, domestic and foreign, are connected, and that local models can be used for natural-language search. A self-developed window compositor handles window management and animation, and the project reports a noticeable improvement in how quickly the interface responds and how smooth the motion is.

The rhythm has been steady: deepin 25 arrived in June 2025, 25.1 and 25.2 followed in April and July 2026, and 25.3 is already planned. A cadence like that matters more than any single feature, because a distribution is judged by whether the last two releases were worth installing.

Anyone curious about a desktop Linux with a high proportion of its own work in it will end up looking at deepin: the rollback that the immutable design makes possible, a package format that crosses distributions, and AI woven through the interface are what separate it from an ordinary remix. On older hardware, check graphics and peripheral compatibility before committing.