Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Nuwan Jayawardene

What I found on the other end of Linux Land

Welcome to Linux Land

Once upon a time…

There was a place called Linux Land

Linux Land was strange and beautiful.
It was vast, open and diverse
and best of all, free for everyone!

Free for anyone to come and go as they please.
Free for anyone to settle down and call home.

But why on Earth would anyone visit here?

For no other reason than to coexist among the variety of exotic “distros” in Linux Land.
In Linux Land there was a distro for everyone!

“Distros” are like towns where people have made settlements in. Some are big, some are small. Everybody starts somewhere in one of these distros. Usually people tend to pick the popular ones.

I went with the very common distro called Ubuntu. It has a massive population of developers and a large community backing.

But all is not well in Ubuntu town.
And that’s where our story begins…

The Spectrum

The way I see it, all OSs(and Software in general) can be put onto a spectrum.

Let’s take an example; macOS.

macOS has quite a bit of functionality and is also painstakingly designed. Everyone from newby users who simply check emails to power users who do tons of programming can use it with ease.
It’s a well balanced OS.

Having Apple’s large designing grunt behind it, macOS is a pretty good benchmark for other OSs to follow.

Let’s take another one; Windows.

Windows is further up the Functionality bar simply because you can do a lot more stuff with it.
But at the same time, it’s very poorly designed.
You have Legacy UI such as the Control Panel hailing from the Windows XP era along with Metro UI from Windows 8 to Fluent Design elements from Windows 10.
It’s a mess, and that’s just the UI.

It’s a mess

Windows is also notorious for being a resource hog and super heavy, hence why developers despise it.

So by now you might get the gist of it.
The closer you are to the center, the more balanced and “performant” your system is.

So what does this have to do with Ubuntu?

Well, see for yourself…

Let’s admit it; Ubuntu isn’t a pretty OS.

The colors are very unappealing.
The icons are mediocre.
The app store is very sparse.
And the overall experience doesn’t seem to be well thought out. Although, the Ubuntu font looks pretty slick.

Kind of ugly

It’s actually quite ugly to be honest.
I don’t mean the OS in general but more specifically the shell; Unity.

So the simplest thing to do is move to a different flavor right? Or even better, a different distro with a better shell?

Well sure!

GnomeKDE

Does it look like the problem ends there?

If you think about it, all the other distros more or less fall pretty close to Ubuntu on the scale with maybe slight deviations.
They either compound an already existing problem or just make it a bit more tolerable.

In short, almost all Linux distros are high on functionality, but very poor in the design sense.

That got me thinking…
If this is Linux on one side of the spectrum, could there be a viable alternative on the other side?
Could there at least be a distro which is at least a little bit closer to the center?

At first I came across a blossoming new OS that many have recommended in forums; ElementaryOS.

Kind of pretty

This distro based on Ubuntu seemed pretty nice, at face value.
But it again starts to suffer from quite a bit of Vanilla Ubuntu’s problems.
I.e. — lack of polish in the UI department.

If I had to put ElementaryOS on the spectrum, it would land somewhere closer to the center but still safely within the “Other Distros” zone.

So was this it?
Wasn’t there ANY other distro out there that could present a compelling argument to the case if Linux distros CAN BE DESIGNED WELL??

My travels sent me to all corners of various Linux help forums.
Then one day I came across something amazing…

This is what I found…

DeepinOS awaits…

DeepinOS was unlike any distro I had ever seen before.

It’s utterly gorgeous and puts even Windows to shame.
Made by the Wuhan Deepin Technology Co. Ltd, it’s a Chinese distro that can seriously contend with the big boys.

Simply beautiful!

From Gaussian blurs to beautiful icons, the UI is simply a sight to behold.
It’s pretty clear that the Chinese don’t fray away when ripping of Apple.

But in this case, it kind of works!

Remember that I said macOS is a good benchmark for other OSs to take notes from.
The guys behind Deepin seem to have the same idea.

Guassian blurs galore!

From an amazingly rich app-store to well thought out prepackaged software DeepinOS was the distro of my dreams!
Believe it or not; DeepinOS comes with Chrome pre-installed, not Firefox.

It also has Spotify, Crossover and Steam, installed and ready along with a host of other great apps that simply aren’t even considered by others.
Oh yeah, it even has a screen recorder installed for good measure.

A slick UI

Deepin is based on Debian, a well recognized base fronted by this gorgeous shell of their own called “DDE”; Deepin Desktop Environment.
Because of this all the apt-get functions that are normally used by Ubuntu should work pretty well, or so I thought…

A macOS “inspired” desktop managerTask manager on Dark Theme

All that glitters is not Gold

After thoroughly using Deepin for about a week, I was convinced.
I needed to go back to normal, good old Ubuntu.

Why am I being a hypocrite?

Let me explain;
Let’s bring up that spectrum again and see where DeepinOS falls on it.

See what I’m getting at here?

The people behind Deepin were so preoccupied with making their OS look nice that they completely forgot to see how nice it works.

What do I mean by this?

Updates take ages to install while in Ubuntu even the biggest ones get installed almost instantaneously.
It’s a pain to install even the most trivial pieces of software such as Java. On Ubuntu it’s a relatively simple and straightforward procedure while here it took me 3 restarts and changing several .txt files multiple times.
Certain Software simply refuses to run normally. E.g. — Android Studio requires over 1GB of SDK data to be downloaded and installed before doing anything.
On Deepin, the download and install simply refuses to conclude, either getting stuck in limbo or getting downright cancelled.
It’s heavy as hell, heavier than Windows in certain instances. If I wanted a heavy OS I’d have remained with Windows.
The community is very very small. If you run into an OS specific problem well, good riddance.
You either have to resort to checking out solutions meant for other distros which may or may not work, or else simply deal with it and move on.

The list could be longer but I think you get the point.

Vanilla Ubuntu and all of it’s other flavors perform all of the above without a single flaw.
In my search for a nicer looking distro I lost my way and found one that looks nice but performs terribly.

Does that mean Deepin is a bad OS?
Absolutely not. It didn’t crash once in my whole usage neither slowdown, the installation was the easiest I’ve ever seen and UI itself is a dream to use.
But is it for me or other developers like me?
Fuck NO!

Making my way back

DeepinOS taught me a lot about Linux as well as User Experience itself.

No matter how nice your software is if it can’t match its functionality with its’ looks, it’s no better than the ugly ones.

Linux Land definitely needs more refreshing takes on UI.
I applaud the Deepin team for their amazing visual work. It’s not always that you can get a beautiful piece of software basically for free.

I just wish that others like the people behind Ubuntu; Canonical took their UI work more seriously. Hopefully one day, one Linux distro could exist in a spectrum like this…

All that Glitters in not Gold was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

All that Glitters in not Gold

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