yes and the reason for that was the massive security risks to users systems that Deepin refused to resolve. ALSO their community packager utilized workarounds to bypass the RPM packaging mechanisms to install “restricted” assets.
yeah, don’t use this distro AT ALL. I’d trust RedStarOS over this and friggin RedStarOS is proven to modify your files.
that’s what I did when I moved my stuff to codeberg and my private forgejo instance. I knew deleting the repos on github wasn’t going to do anything, they would likely still have them. so I just pushed a bunch of claude code AI slop into all of them. let Microsoft’s AI gorge itself on the waste from Anthropics. Literally just opened up a Claude Code CLI and had it do a bunch of absolutely dumb crap and when it’d get confused and say “this isn’t right” I would correct it and say “no, NO! you’re completely right! keep going!”
It was actually kinda fun. like teaching a kid to ride a bike wrong on purpose.
yeah I don’t get it either. tiling I guess. the problem is, they’ve progressively made it worse.
There’s just something “off” about Cosmic that I can’t but my finger on. In the early alphas it was good, decent for being an alpha. But with every release, to me at least, it just feels like it’s gotten worse. slower, features that haven’t really been expanded on, etc. It just looks/feels like GNOME with the option of tiling. the options for customization, much like GNOME, are limited. no where near what you could potentially do with KDE. the thing is though if you want a DE with basic tiling then it stands out. its good for that. I mean sure you can get tiling with KDE if you use something like Krohnkite but that on it’s own is pretty janky for certain things.
I dont’ know it’s weird. I once went from early alpha using COSMIC as a daily driver to now trying it out again and immediately getting rid of it. maybe I’ll give it another swing today.
in your case I’d say Fedora with a DE you can customize to your liking. Honestly just go for a KDE Fedora then you don’t have to think about it.
I’d also say CachyOS but that might be out of your ballpark. Cachy just works. yes it’s Arch based but it’s by far the best Arch based distro out there. Monthly, on the dot, updates and works with whatever DE/WM you want to throw at it. Hell during the installation it gives you a bunch of DEs/WMs to install with it and all have been customized to work with CachyOS so you don’t even have to think about it.
no prob. I think for certain situations immutable is good. Like in your cause where you use it at work, it makes sense to have a workplace on an immutable distro, just makes things easier. In my case since I’m a developer it also makes sense as the likely hood of me absolutely breaking something is high. plus with nix and the nix flakes and nix shell environments it makes developing a breeze.
For someone at home who is NEW to Linux, yeah it also makes sense. For everyone else? meh I don’t really see a need for it if you know what you’re doing. Don’t get me wrong I love Arch and all its various forks, especially CachyOS, so I mean if it works for you then why go immutable? there’s no right and wrong distro for a user, it’s whatever they prefer. Hell a buddy of mine uses Slackware and will never move from it.
I get it. I recently switched to NixOS from Arch and I absolutely love it. I would routinely go buck wild with Arch and eventually my system would just be populated with garbage or half assed things that I never bothered to fix. With Nix I don’t have that choice. If I fuck around with the config well then it’s not rebuilding and I need to actually fix it. It prevents me from breaking my system. If I do somehow many to break something then I can instantly roll back from the grub OR just retrieve a backup copy of my config which I keep on my server backup and my private git instance. Just have to git clone it.
So I was once one of those anti-immutable people but now I get it and i love it.
the other night a friend of mine wanted to switch to Linux and was dead set on using Pop!_OS after reading about COSMIC and seeing some images of it on unixporn. He even asked an LLM about the best distros for his rig and what he liked to do and the answer was Pop!_OS. So he asked me to help him install it. I suggested other distros but no, dead set on using pop.
Live boot USB and the entire time during the install it’s complaining about not being able to connect to the internet while being connected to the internet. After the install, it locks up immediately on logging into the OS. try again, ok not locking up now. start doing some apt installs/updates - it crashes. Finally get it to a stable state and try installing steam and a game to test out the nvidia stuff that the LLM claimed Pop was fantastic for. Game crashes. system locks up again.
I eventually say “dude, I got cachyos on this usb too…wanna try that instead?” fine, install CachyOS (which gives you the option to install COSMIC during the install) everything just works. no more crashes, everything is smooth, his games work flawlessly. COSMIC crashes. just the DE. switch him to KDE and that was that. no more issues.
I’m honestly a bit worried about System76. They put all their focus on COSMIC and it feels like with each alpha release it progressively gets worse. I mean during the early Alphas I was seriously considering daily driving it but with each alpha release it just “felt off” and a bit slower/worse with more features added (and there aren’t many). the OS has noticeably gotten worse because it hasn’t been worked on. Even the distrowatch reviews for it have gotten worse.
But hey if you want GNOME with a tiling toggle then have at it. It’s just weird that its taken them this long for something that doesn’t have much to it and it’s not very good.