Both deepin 15.6 and 15.7 were released at June and August 2018. Here's a short summary of them showing the new features and improvements. You will find new Welcome Intro, new Dark Theme, new Power Saving Mode, reduced RAM usage and smaller ISO size, improvements in System Settings, and new ability of File Manager (renaming partition by right-click, for example). You will see them in this article with GIF animations and screenshots. This article also shows in brief why 15.7 is far better than 15.6 so you can choose it to start deepin for your first time. Enjoy!
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Memory Usage
Just like its official announcement said, 15.7 got reduced in RAM usage compared to 15.6. deepin 15.7 uses 800MB of RAM compared to the 15.6 which uses 1GB of RAM. The difference is 200MB, a huge reduction.
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| Memory usage comparison |
15.6
- New Welcome Program
Starting at version 15.6, deepin introduces new welcome program. It's similar to what we see at Ubuntu MATE and Linux Mint, a dialog running at startup introducing this OS we are using. deepin Welcome features a video, a brief intro to how to use deepin itself, and of course how can we --the users-- help deepin development. It also includes Twitter and Facebook links of deepin official.
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| New Deepin Welcome |
- More User-Friendly Deepin Manual
I must admit that Deepin Manual is very gorgeous. It's iconic, and rich of screenshots. Now, on 15.6, it becomes more pretty with new look and nice search function. You can now search for any keyword for any of Deepin Applications. GIF animation below showing to search "record" and to find how to record desktop screen in deepin. The manual is now organized tidily in groups similar to what we find at normal System Settings (on KDE, Unity, and XFCE).
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| New Deepin Manual |
- New Settings Vertical Icons
The 15.6 introduces vertical icons panel (navigation bar) now so you can quickly go to any menu.
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| Vertical icons bar |
- Dark Theme
Deepin Apps now have Dark Theme option available under its "hamburger" button. It can be enabled per window, for example, you only want dark theme for File Manager and left light theme for the rest.
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| Dark theme demo |
- Scroll Speed Setting
Settings panel gets new features. One among them is Scroll Speed setting with the scale from 1 to 10. Just push your cursor to bottom-right screen > System Settings panel appears > go to Mouse and Touchpad section > and simply slide the slider to adjust scroll speed.
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| Scroll Speed |
15.7
- Reduced RAM Usage
Thanks to deepin GNU/Linux developers and contributors, version 15.7 got reduced in memory use down to +/-800MB. This kind of reduction is a rare thing I can find on desktop OSes and I appreciate this very much!
- Much More Smaller ISO
The 15.6 image is 3.1GB while the 15.7 image file is only 2.3GB. Both reductions, the memory and the ISO size, mean 15.7 is far better version than 15.6 for you want to start using deepin.
- Better Power Management
Now on deepin 15.7 we have Power Saving Mode on the System Settings under the Power section. deepin OS will automatically detect if your laptop runs on battery and immediately switch to Power Saving (reduces your brightness, decrease delay of dim screen, etc.). You can switch it off anytime you wish as well.
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| Power Saving Mode |
- File Manager v1.8
Latest file manager brings new features like Permission Management (right-click any file > Properties > Permission Management) and Hide System Folder (go to Settings > give check to it) and Pause While Copying. What's greater in my opinion is the new ability to change disk name by right-click on it while unmounted (of course it will ask for your administrator password). Now, switching between both Icons and List views can be done by pressing Ctrl+1 and Ctrl+2 respectively.
GIF animations below shows the Permission Management and changing disk name sections.
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| New permission management |
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| Easy to change name of a partition or disk |
Summary
- It's better to start with 15.7 by downloading the ISO image and installing it anew.
- 15.7 proves enhancements can be done in newer version of OS by reducing ISO size and RAM usage
- We can hope the next release, the 15.8, can be smaller and more efficient than 15.7
Waiting For 15.8
The next version, 15.8, planned to be released at November 2018. The development page says that it will bring many improvements such as full migration to Flatpak from traditional Debian DEB format, full disk encryption, etc. I'm excited to see this new one next time!
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| www.deepin.org/en/developer-community/planning |
References
- https://www.deepin.org/en/2018/08/20/deepin-15-7-enjoy-the-better-performance
- https://www.deepin.org/en/2018/06/15/deepin-15-6-great-improvements-in-the-details
- https://www.deepin.org/en/2018/08/14/deepin-file-manager-v1-8-is-released
- https://www.deepin.org/en/developer-community/planning
This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.