Deepin the Best, Fedora 21 Buried, and RMS
Linuxbsdos.com today wrote that Linux Deepin could be the best distribution of the year. The Ubuntu-based distro features its own in-house desktop that's "a whole lot better" than Cinnamon. To Jack Wallen, Ubuntu GNOME is the "perfect" distribution though. Elsewhere, Fedora 21 reach its end-of-life and Slackware Live hit Beta 2. In software news, KDE user Swapnil Bhartiya said today that GNOME 3.18 is "simple and easy" and GIMP 2.9.2 was released.
deepin, (small "d") is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu that features its own homemade Deepin desktop. Reviews of deepin throughout its life have generally been positive and today Linuxbsdos.com added another. Owner/operator Finid said Deepin Desktop Environment is better than Mint's in-house Cinnamon. Bold statement that, but he backed it up. DDE begins with a choice of two sessions in deepin 15 Alpha 2: default and 2D. From there one can choose Fashion, Efficient, or Classic modes. Finid demonstrates the differences. He also shows the full-screen application launcher and said the virtual desktop switching is "beautifully designed." But he said the greatest asset going for deepin is their configuration Control Center. "It's simply the best. Practically every aspect of the system can be modified from the slide-in Control Center." And this is just a developmental version, Finid said he's looking forward to the final.
Dennis Gilmore posted a reminder today that Fedora 21 is dead to the project, so you better upgrade now or risk security vulnerabilities. Fedora 22 still has about six months before they pull the plug and Fedora 23 another year. The rationale is to allow developers to concentrate on the present and future release, not older ones. On that, Scott Gilbertson today said, "If you want stable, RHEL is there. If you want the latest and greatest, Fedora 23 delivers." While reviewing Fedora 23 Gilbertson found "such a strong release that it highlights what feels like Fedora's Achilles heel—there's no Long Term Support release."
GIMP 2.9.2 was released last Friday featuring GIMP's new image processing engine GEGL. GEGL features have been implemented over the last several years and is now fairly feature-rich. Two new tools were introduced in this developmental release: Unified Transform and Warp Transform. Old reliables such as the Blend tool got some new features and the Color Manager has been replaced. Also new is OpenEXR and metadata support. There are also some new experimental tools and features which can be easily tested by visiting Playground in the GIMP configuration. This release is on the road to GIMP 2.10.
In other news:
* Richard Stallman Is Not The Father Of Open Source
* Ubuntu GNOME 15.10: The perfect Linux desktop distribution