After Preview, Alpha, and Beta releases, Deepin, a Debian-based Linux distribution developed by the Chinese company Deepin Technology, finally announced the launch of Deepin 25, embracing the ambitious theme “All Advancing, All Renewed.”
The most striking novelty of Deepin 25 is the new Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE) 7.0, redesigned with a focus on elegance and usability. Leveraging QML, the development team has achieved a pleasing, fluid, and visually coherent desktop interface. Key elements, such as skeuomorphic icons and gracefully rounded window corners, offer users a polished and inviting aesthetic.
The Control Center has been radically simplified into a new layered structure that pairs intuitive navigation with quick access to settings. Meanwhile, the enhanced Launcher and upgraded File Manager, featuring instant search and keyword highlighting, improve content navigation and file management tasks.
Laptop users can now personalize multi-touch gestures, allowing tailored shortcuts for common actions like window management and screen splitting, further enriching productivity.
The other release’s highlight relates to immutability. Deepin 25 debuts “Solid,” its new immutable system architecture. By enforcing read-only mounts of essential directories, the distro reduces the risks of accidental system modification and malware intrusion.
Additionally, automatic snapshot creation before system updates ensures effortless recovery during unexpected disruptions, eliminating update-related downtime.
On the AI side, the distro integrates UOS AI, an intelligent voice assistant deeply woven into the system. Users can quickly access AI assistance directly within reading contexts—translating, summarizing, or explaining selected text even when offline. Moreover, the system now supports voice and text commands for various tasks, reducing reliance on menu navigation.
It’s worth noting also that Deepin 25 introduces Linyaps—a containerized, sandboxed (yet another) application format that guarantees compatibility across seven major Linux distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch. With multi-architecture support, the Linyaps ecosystem already boasts over 5,000 packages.
Lastly, users can now directly install popular Linux subsystem images through the App Store, facilitating immediate access to familiar development environments. Plus, there’s a preview release of Treeland, Deepin’s custom window compositor. This compositor offers animation smoothness and gesture integration, promising an even richer desktop experience.
For more information, see the release announcement. If you opt for a fresh install, keep in mind that the installer requires at least 64GB of disk space. Additionally, since the distribution is a bit heavy, ensure that your hardware is fairly recent to take full advantage of its features and aesthetics.
