Huawei has started selling laptops with a the Deepin Linux OS pre-installed
forbes.com
forbes.com
For a reference point, a vanilla Ubuntu LTS install on random (non-certified) T-series ThinkPads still doesn't always suspend/wake up properly, doesn't hibernate properly, crashes X when used with a docking station, has issues with Bluetooth headsets (no microphone), has issues selecting the output audio device, doesn't support the fingerprint reader (I think), has hiccups with external screens, and altogether less battery life than in Windows. (I'm sure some of these work on other models and others have workarounds, this is just my recent experience with trying to run Linux without spending time on tweaks).
I would seriously consider switching my work machine to any laptop/distro combination that would get closer to the experience one has on MacOS (not perfect, but close enough to be productive), no matter where it was made.
I'm in Japan, so I buy Japanese models. I'm just about to buy a GZ73-JL (PGZ73JL-NNB to be precise). I expect it to work out of the box with Arch Linux. If it doesn't, I'll feel terrible about posting this :-) The PV63PSP-KHA that I've been using for the last 5 years has been practically flawless.
However, there are some caveats wrt the issue mention. Bluetooth is a tyre fire as far as I can tell. Some devices will work fine and some won't. The problem is mainly that most devices don't implement the standard. They only implement enough to work on Windows and/or Mac. On top of that, I'm sad to say that the Linux Bluetooth code is really hard to work with -- I've tried to debug non-working equipment (hey -- I've got source code!) and it's not fun.
I've never tried, but it seems that some fingerprint readers will not work on Linux. That's because they encrypt their output and they don't offer Linux drivers -- so there is no way to support them. I don't know which ones work and which don't.
Battery life is not bad on Linux if you have an Intel box and you use powertop. Powertop is a utility made by Intel for setting the battery settings optimally for your machine. You need to run it as root, go to the adjustment section and set everything to "Good". Normally that will be fine, but because there is a variety of different hardware out there, sometimes you can have some stability issues, so it's a good idea to manually set it when you boot up for the first few times until you can make sure there are no problems. Then you can save the settings and they will be set like that permanently.
Personally, I don't like Ubuntu any more -- I find the extra effort setting up Arch is worth the hassle. It's really only ever done once, especially since it's a rolling distro. I find that Ubuntu makes a lot of assumptions about what you are going to want and usually those assumptions are poor in my case. Many of my colleagues disagree.
Speaking of colleagues, several of them use Dell XPS 13 machines and have similarly little problems, so I can recommend that as well.
https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/models?vendors=Leno...
I currently have an X1 Yoga (3rd), where Lenovo messed up modern standby on both windows and linux. Luckily they have since added standard S3 as an option in the UEFI settings. Everything else works out of the box except the fingerprint reader. Battery life is comparable.
> I would seriously consider switching my work machine to any laptop/distro combination that would get closer to the experience one has on MacOS
In my experience hackintoshes are pretty annoying and quite far from "close enough to be productive" out of the box. Or were you comparing with a laptop where your OS of choice is preinstalled? Then "without spending time on tweaks" is trivially true; someone else did that for you already.
Huawei can address the security concerns by using established open source software (which they seem to have).
Would be great to have an alternative to the windows/mac duopoly.
Linux is not inherently compliant (and Deepin isn't AFAIK), but it is entirely possible to package a distribution which is and submit it for certification.
If you don't trust the entity publishing the binaries, then having it simply publishing sourcecode is not a way for you to gain confidence because there is no practical way to be sure that the binaries they deliver are the published code compiled by a non-modified version of an opensource compiler.
They have to provide a way to do reproducible builds.
https://reproducible-builds.org/
There is also a huge challenge when it comes to enable the customer to audit the hardware.
Apple even tried to trademark the term “app store”. They still listed as one of their registered trademarks even though they could never enforce it and iOS will still try to capitalize the words when you type them in.
It's a weird game, the "as long as functionality is different, it's ok to copy", when that's just a layer of a product. Why not apply that criteria to a form factor?
Isn't this just plain racist? Is there any actual reason to believe that there's any privacy issues with Deepin, other that that it was made by Chinese people? Not to mention that I've never heard this particular FUD before, so I'm doubtful that it "tends to ignite" anything.
Domistically a very weak argument could be made that the US doesn't violate the rights of their own citizens as bad as China, but between FISA courts, the NSA and programs like PRISM (which is more than a decade old now), this argument barely makes sense.
But in my opinion, it's definitely better than having the same person running things for who-knows how long, regardless of the integrity of that person.
Does the US persecute Black people worse than CCP persecutes anyone, for non-"privacy" reasons? Maybe.
You really don't need to start throwing accusations like 'racism' around, just because you're ignorant of the context involved.
Deepin has indeed been around for a while. It is, as far as I can see, fully open source. Is there any indication that it's doing anything shady? Would a shady distribution last for 15 years in the privacy-conscious, code-scrutinizing Linux world?
Even if there are genuine indications that Deepin is shady, I wish the article had just mentioned those, rather than vaguely gesturing at its Chinese origins as if it's obvious to anyone that anything Chinese is suspicious. That's what I think is racist.
If some software from the US or EU was up to no good, I can use the law to bring them to court. In China, I'd first need to ask myself, if not maybe the lawmakers themselves requested the software to do no good.
EDIT: The same could also be said for US/EU governments, yes, but it is more subtle here (i.e. they label you a criminal/terrorist to legitimate installing e.g. a trojan on your PC, whereas, if I'm not mistaken, in China they could just make it a law to have trojans installed on every PC), so I still feel like the law somewhat protects my rights.
> I can use the law to bring them to court.
I wouldn't be so certain of that. There are two issues with this:
1. The no good would have to be illegal either in the civil sense for you to take them to court, or illegal in the criminal or regulatory sense for government to act. Obviously not all no good is codified in law.
2. Law is necessarily high latency - it requires the no good to have already taken place in order for action to be taken against the doers of no good
> i.e. they label you a criminal/terrorist to legitimate installing e.g. a trojan on your PC
This has its own issues:
1. the terrorist label will be applied unilaterally: no one is going to come and ask you if you're a terrorist before you get closer scrutiny.
2. It would be a mistake to think some form of constitution is going to help, in the long run. Laws can be changed. Even the US Constitution has amendments.
We're all only ever a few unhinged politicians away from no good governance.
a. This quote was taken from @revelation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6033481
Also, consider how much harder it is to change the constitution here compared to China.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that power is more balanced in the Western world compared to China, and I consider that a good thing.
...but it does have its faults too, e.g. I find it appalling how slow politics, the economy and citizens react to the impending climate disaster. And yet, I'd still pick this world in which we'd have to fight each other over water and oxygen to a world run by totalitarian governments. And I hope I am exaggerating...
I'm going to agree with your wider point that power does appear to be more balanced in the West than China, at least until such times as a few more unhinged politicians have their way, but I also want to point out that...
The world over, big companies, powerful individuals, and the media, have much closer ties to government than you and I ever will.
Because if we don’t continually reflect on that balance of power, and the civil society institutions necessary to support it, we will loss it.
That's entirely the case. Just because you keep trying to spin it as racist doesn't make it so.
Settle down there Satan.
My Chinese made coat hangers aren't much of a risk
This has nothing to do with anyone's Han-Chinese-ness, don't be ridiculous.
It's entirely about Chinese-Communist-Party-ness, government influence.
All governments are doing everything they can to spy on each other, that's a known quality. The CCP probably has a greater ability quantitatively due to China being a significant manufacturer of devices that could present risks.
We're right to ask these questions and attempt to examine the chain-of-trust.
There's no need to get hysterical about it.
Nope. When people say "Chinese origins", they mean it is designed in People's Republic of China, which many people distrust for political reasons. If it was designed in Taiwan or Singapore, which are also populated by Chinese, it would be called "Taiwanese" or "Singaporean" origin, and would not make any controversy at all.
Claiming that "it's not against the Chinese but against their government" is also sometimes a convenient and not completely honest way to deflect claims of racism. The same happens with Israel and it can be quite insiduous.
When people have to notice and discuss the Chinese origin of everything, all the time, "but just because of the Chinese government's policies" in my view they complain too much...
And when it's not the government, it's pollution, or IP theft, or because they eat dogs (in some part of the country), or whatnot.
> a convenient but not completely honest way to deflect claims of racism
And sometimes claims of racism can be a convenient but not quite honest way to deflect criticism of policy.
Could we avoid straw man arguments?
There is an element of racism on issues related to China. There is no point denying it.
There is certainly less of it (or at least it is much less obvious) than during the anti-China campaign in the West/US during the 50s and 60s but it is still there.
As I wrote, some people just complain too much... It's quite obvious in this thread.
We can - but that wasn't a straw-man argument.
> There is an element of racism on issues regarding China.
I agree. There is also an element of "that's racist" being used to deflect criticism.
A comment with similar contents as yours but "pro-China" would immediately be labelled as coming from a 'bot' or someone paid by the Chinese government.
I find this fascinating. The current climate regarding China is fantastic book material for Noam Chomsky.
Edit: I'd like to add. There are so many conflicts and animosities and distrust that have zero to do with racism. Our troubles with Russia are entirely ideological, for example. And especially in geopolitics, the issues that cause conflict usually revolve around pragmatic things like resources, economic/military power, spheres of influence, etc.
Being negative about people simply based on their nationality is racist.
Those attempts at denying that because a country or a people are not "a race" is ludicrous.
If I say that I don't like Mexicans that's racist, for example. If I try to deny it because that's not "a race" I will only ridiculise myself even more.
Or it is not racists when governments do it, but is racists when individuals/companies do it?
It's probably too much to put ordinary people under suspicion right away, but for for legal bodies it's totally reasonable if you ask me. To assume that you can run business in an authoritarian country and be totally independent from the government is plainly naive. Even if you are not formally a member of the ruling party.
Try doing the reverse in China, I'm sure half of HN's userbase would have received an unwelcome visit from the local cops by now...
https://www.deepin.org/en/2018/04/14/linux-deepin-is-not-spy...
Funny enough, I remember reading an article on Hackernews yesterday about how Firefox should not include DoH by default because one of the reasons being privacy concerns about data being sent to cloudflare, in the US.
I don't think this has anything to do with racism and shouldn't be treated as such. Privacy should be a legitimate concern.
This is the 'Fusion power is just around the corner' of the computing world. There's only one way Desktop Linux succeeds, and that's that all the other Desktop OSs are abandoned or drive themselves into the dirt the way Win10 seems intent on doing.
I wouldn't be surprised if in the not too far future also macOS or iOS ship with some version of homebrew or macports included out of the box.
Also your notion of chromebooks is about a decade out of date.
The main devs are Chinese and iirc, ZTE is funding their effort. Based on Debian with a beautiful new DE based on Qt.
I used to work for the guy who pushed the original Qt acquisition at Nokia. He later on, after the Elopcalypse, moved to Huawei to head one of their R&D units.
Wouldn't be at all surprised if he and his teams had his palm prints all over this one. Custom media players certainly play to his history and strengths. (Shot in the dark: I will guess that the media player is built on GStreamer for the codec support and exposed through QtMultimedia elements.)
After giving it some thought, I finally realized why it sounds so scary: Because of it's open-source nature, if there's anything suspicious in "deepin", it's likely to be ...deep in.
The company behind it is named Wuhan Deepin Technology. On the Chinese website it's 武汉深之度科技有限公司.
Which doesn't contain the syllables dee-pin.
However the part that is called Deepin in English is 深之度 which literally translated could mean something like passing deep. So it's probably actually English.
I'd leave this to someone with better Chinese skills though.
I'd suggest Ubuntu, because of it's popularity and non-tech-user-friendliness, then again I'm not sure if they're allowed to do that, since Canonical Ltd. and Trump, thus, depsite open-source, possibly also requires special licenses, IDK (e.g. I once wanted to install OpenSUSE and then there was something in the licensing agreement about EAR directives from the US, so I cancelled that).
I've never heard of Deepin Linux, is it popular in mainland China?
Apart from that, there've always been a steady stream of Laptops available with Linux, it's not a novelty item... many of those that are advertised as "non-OS" often have some form of Linux bundled in, just in case.
That's quite a shot to stardom, and yet, judging from the replies, I don't seem to be the only one who's never heard of it.
Still, I'd be interested to know, how Deepin is doing in China, is it comparable to Ubuntu in the Western world?
> They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more.
The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more.
Agree. It's a trending barometer. Given that Deepin is in the news now because of Huawei, we can expect a few more hits on their distrowatch page.