deepin (; formerly known as Linux Deepin and Hiweed Linux
) is a
Linux distribution
A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...
. It features the
Deepin Desktop Environment
deepin (; formerly known as Linux Deepin and Hiweed Linux) is a Linux distribution. It features the #Deepin Desktop Environment, Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE), built on Qt (software), Qt and available for a variety of distributions. The Deepin ...
(DDE), built on
Qt and available for a variety of distributions. The Deepin userbase is predominantly Chinese, though DDE is in most prominent Linux distributions' repositories as an alternative
desktop environment
In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...
. The company behind the development, Deepin Technology, a wholly owned subsidiary of
UnionTech (), is based in
Wuhan
Wuhan; is the capital of Hubei, China. With a population of over eleven million, it is the most populous city in Hubei and the List of cities in China by population, eighth-most-populous city in China. It is also one of the nine National cent ...
, China.
History
The distribution began in 2004 as Hiweed Linux.
In 2011, the development team behind Deepin established a company named Deepin Technology to support commercial development of the operating system. The company received business investments the same year it was founded.
Deepin Technology joined the
Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit organization established in 2000 to support Linux development and open-source software projects.
Background
The Linux Foundation started as Open Source Development Labs in 2000 to standardize and prom ...
in 2015.
In 2019,
Huawei
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinational corporationtechnology company in Longgang, Shenzhen, Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its main product lines include teleco ...
started to ship Linux laptops pre-installed with Deepin.
The ''
South China Morning Post
The ''South China Morning Post'' (''SCMP''), with its Sunday edition, the ''Sunday Morning Post'', is a Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper owned by Alibaba Group. Founded in 1903 by Tse Tsan-tai and Alfred Cunningham, it has remaine ...
'' reported that Chinese microprocessor company
Loongson
Loongson () is the name of a family of general-purpose, MIPS architecture-compatible, later in-house LoongArch architecture central processing unit, microprocessors, as well as the name of the Chinese Fabless manufacturing, fabless company (Loo ...
created a partnership in 2020 with UnionTech and
Sunway to develop and promote the Deepin operating system in order to reduce Chinese dependency on
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
.
Deepin introduced a new package manager called "linglong" in 2022.
In 2024, Deepin integrated AI into its (new) IDE, photo editing, search (now called "Grand Search"), and two new chatbot assistants: one for general knowledge and one for knowledge on Deepin.
In June 2024, Deepin announced it was joining the "Prosperity 2036" initiative, whose goal was to establish an open-standard system and open-source software stack based on RISC-V, enabling RISC-V hardware and software "to be recognized as a mainstream instruction set architecture" by 2036.
Starting with the release of Version 23 in August 2024, Deepin began to provide improved hardware support for processor architectures other than x86: install media and packages for
ARM64
AArch64, also known as ARM64, is a 64-bit version of the ARM architecture family, a widely used set of computer processor designs. It was introduced in 2011 with the ARMv8 architecture and later became part of the ARMv9 series. AArch64 allows ...
and
RISC-V
RISC-V (pronounced "risk-five") is an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) based on established reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. The project commenced in 2010 at the University of California, Berkeley. It transfer ...
processors were added to the existing support for
x86
x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...
and
LoongArch.
Overview
Deepin includes a mix of
open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
and