It was time to test TWO birds on Kubuntu 20.04 with one stone: UbuntuDDE (beta).
What prompted this? I saw a review yesterday of UbuntuDDE on YouTube and decided to try it in virt-manager. I downloaded UbuntuDDE from here: https://ubuntudde.com/ and the discussion forum is here.
UbuntuDDE is the Deepin Desktop Environment running on top of Ubuntu 20.04. It was released to Beta on April 10, 2020 and I thought that it would be a good specimen to test Virt-Manager on Kubuntu 20.04. (Deepin is based in Wuhun, China. Yes, that Wuhun. I hope the developers survived the SARS-Cov-2.)
Installing virt-manager resulted in about 25 packages being installed. I also installed aqemu because it claimed that it was a Qt5 front end for QEMU and KVM. It turned out that it took such a poor advantage of the powerful Qt5.x API and was a poor replacement for virt-manager, so I uninstalled it.
Then I created a UbuntuDDE VM and pointed it at the ISO I had downloaded. I ran it in live mode for a while and it was quick and responsive in both the "Fashion" and "Efficient" mode. I hit the install button and gave it 20GB of VD, 2 of my 8 cores, and 4GB of my 16GB of RAM. After it had created /var/lib/libvirt/images, but before it created the qow2 VHD I popped open a Konsole and issued "sudo chattr -C /var/lib/libvirt/images". I used the EXT4 as the filesystem. Virt created vsda and vsda1. Boot was on vsda and the DDE was put on vsda1.
The only problem I had during the install was in trying to remove the ISO from the VirtIO disk. When it got to the point where it said "Remove the ISO and press Enter" there was no way for me to "remove" it. In the end, I hit the power button and rebooted. Then I could enter the virt-manager edit mode for the UbuntuDDE VM and switch the VirtIO to the newly created installation on UbuntuDDE.qcow2.
UDDE is beautifully made. As a beta I encountered only one bug. When I clicked the "Updater" icon I got an error panel. So, I opened a terminal and issued the usual apt commands. 360+ apps and 5 minutes later the update was done. The NAT connection to my host Internet connect is very fast too. I really couldn't see much speed difference between the Fashion and Efficient mode.
From a user's view point, while the design and implementation is beautiful and solid, especially considering it is a 9 day old beta release, the UI is shallow. IOW, there are not many, if any, right mouse context sensitive options. The file manager, where Dolphin shines, is sparse to the point of spartan. Snapd is not installed and its service is disabled, so Chromium is not on the menu. FireFox and Thunderbird mail are your main Internet communication tools. I haven't found a tool like muon yet, so browsing the repository will have to wait. Like the file manager, the terminal amounts to nothing more than a black box on the screen with text inside. There is no beauty in that.
Those developing UbuntuDDE claim that they have removing telemetry, i.e., tracking. In order to "fork" Deepin the developers, IF they want to use the proprietary images, and software Deepin added which is not under the GPL v3, they had to obtain written permission from Deepin. I don't know if they did or not, but we will probably find out since Deepin 20 beta has been out only 9 days.
Licensing
The Deepin software is under a GPL v3 license. However, unlike Ubuntu, Deepin also has a EULA. In it the user has to accept behavior controls restricting what they can do with or use Deepin for, what they can write/post to public forums, or probably any place where they can post a msg. All in the name of Social Order, Credit, Peace and such. Outside of China, especially in the US where the 1st Amendment *should* apply, Deepin can't do much, but Chinese citizens who make the CCP unhappy may find themselves with no home, no Internet, no job, no way to travel and subject to incarceration and possibly being an organ donor. A plan mostly set up by XI Jinping, whom the CCP made the permanent president of China last month by scrapping term limits.
I would copy the EULA here but it cannot be copied and I suspect that the text is an obscure binary file that is decoded on the fly to display the EULA. The restrictions in the EULA remind me of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook's user rules. The end of the matter is that the CCP, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook's rules are so vague that they have the liberty to interpret them any way they want in any situation, regardless of how they previously interpreted them.
UbuntuDDE is the perfect distro for those who put beauty and simplicity over power and functionality. The "Fashion" mode creates a docker bar that replaces the bottom toolbar, but its position can be easily changed in the settings display. Otherwise, the default mode is "Fast", in which the toolbar at the bottom of the screen looks and behaves more conventional.
I've used Kubuntu for the last 11 years and I am not too familiar with the operations of most other distros so my "review" of Deepin is limited. For Joe and Sally Sixpack, who know NOTHING about computers and only want to browse the web, use YT, Twitter, Facebook and such, and do emails, the FireFox & Thunderbird combination is excellent and will work well for them. For Joe and Sally, UbuntuDDE is a good choice, but I'd never recommend that they use Deepin itself. And, the question remains about the legal restraints the EULA places on the user, and how the UbuntuDDE team will enforce them, and how the team got permission to fork Deepin, seeing that most of the critical software is v3 and proprietary to Deepin.
What prompted this? I saw a review yesterday of UbuntuDDE on YouTube and decided to try it in virt-manager. I downloaded UbuntuDDE from here: https://ubuntudde.com/ and the discussion forum is here.
UbuntuDDE is the Deepin Desktop Environment running on top of Ubuntu 20.04. It was released to Beta on April 10, 2020 and I thought that it would be a good specimen to test Virt-Manager on Kubuntu 20.04. (Deepin is based in Wuhun, China. Yes, that Wuhun. I hope the developers survived the SARS-Cov-2.)
Installing virt-manager resulted in about 25 packages being installed. I also installed aqemu because it claimed that it was a Qt5 front end for QEMU and KVM. It turned out that it took such a poor advantage of the powerful Qt5.x API and was a poor replacement for virt-manager, so I uninstalled it.
Then I created a UbuntuDDE VM and pointed it at the ISO I had downloaded. I ran it in live mode for a while and it was quick and responsive in both the "Fashion" and "Efficient" mode. I hit the install button and gave it 20GB of VD, 2 of my 8 cores, and 4GB of my 16GB of RAM. After it had created /var/lib/libvirt/images, but before it created the qow2 VHD I popped open a Konsole and issued "sudo chattr -C /var/lib/libvirt/images". I used the EXT4 as the filesystem. Virt created vsda and vsda1. Boot was on vsda and the DDE was put on vsda1.
The only problem I had during the install was in trying to remove the ISO from the VirtIO disk. When it got to the point where it said "Remove the ISO and press Enter" there was no way for me to "remove" it. In the end, I hit the power button and rebooted. Then I could enter the virt-manager edit mode for the UbuntuDDE VM and switch the VirtIO to the newly created installation on UbuntuDDE.qcow2.
UDDE is beautifully made. As a beta I encountered only one bug. When I clicked the "Updater" icon I got an error panel. So, I opened a terminal and issued the usual apt commands. 360+ apps and 5 minutes later the update was done. The NAT connection to my host Internet connect is very fast too. I really couldn't see much speed difference between the Fashion and Efficient mode.
From a user's view point, while the design and implementation is beautiful and solid, especially considering it is a 9 day old beta release, the UI is shallow. IOW, there are not many, if any, right mouse context sensitive options. The file manager, where Dolphin shines, is sparse to the point of spartan. Snapd is not installed and its service is disabled, so Chromium is not on the menu. FireFox and Thunderbird mail are your main Internet communication tools. I haven't found a tool like muon yet, so browsing the repository will have to wait. Like the file manager, the terminal amounts to nothing more than a black box on the screen with text inside. There is no beauty in that.
Those developing UbuntuDDE claim that they have removing telemetry, i.e., tracking. In order to "fork" Deepin the developers, IF they want to use the proprietary images, and software Deepin added which is not under the GPL v3, they had to obtain written permission from Deepin. I don't know if they did or not, but we will probably find out since Deepin 20 beta has been out only 9 days.
Licensing
The Deepin software is under a GPL v3 license. However, unlike Ubuntu, Deepin also has a EULA. In it the user has to accept behavior controls restricting what they can do with or use Deepin for, what they can write/post to public forums, or probably any place where they can post a msg. All in the name of Social Order, Credit, Peace and such. Outside of China, especially in the US where the 1st Amendment *should* apply, Deepin can't do much, but Chinese citizens who make the CCP unhappy may find themselves with no home, no Internet, no job, no way to travel and subject to incarceration and possibly being an organ donor. A plan mostly set up by XI Jinping, whom the CCP made the permanent president of China last month by scrapping term limits.
I would copy the EULA here but it cannot be copied and I suspect that the text is an obscure binary file that is decoded on the fly to display the EULA. The restrictions in the EULA remind me of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook's user rules. The end of the matter is that the CCP, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook's rules are so vague that they have the liberty to interpret them any way they want in any situation, regardless of how they previously interpreted them.
UbuntuDDE is the perfect distro for those who put beauty and simplicity over power and functionality. The "Fashion" mode creates a docker bar that replaces the bottom toolbar, but its position can be easily changed in the settings display. Otherwise, the default mode is "Fast", in which the toolbar at the bottom of the screen looks and behaves more conventional.
I've used Kubuntu for the last 11 years and I am not too familiar with the operations of most other distros so my "review" of Deepin is limited. For Joe and Sally Sixpack, who know NOTHING about computers and only want to browse the web, use YT, Twitter, Facebook and such, and do emails, the FireFox & Thunderbird combination is excellent and will work well for them. For Joe and Sally, UbuntuDDE is a good choice, but I'd never recommend that they use Deepin itself. And, the question remains about the legal restraints the EULA places on the user, and how the UbuntuDDE team will enforce them, and how the team got permission to fork Deepin, seeing that most of the critical software is v3 and proprietary to Deepin.
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