DEV Community: Priyab Dash

After Uninstalling Docker Desktop

Priyab Dash — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 20:07:08 +0000

Date: 1-Feb-2022

Overview

Like some enterprise companies who did not take the Docker Desktop License grace period seriously, it would have hit with some impact, e.g my team. I had sent a reminder last November but 28th Jan I got a mail to uninstall Docker Desktop, as my company has not bought the enterprise license for the Docker Desktop installed on my Windows 10 office laptop. It hit hard at many levels, first we did not have any alternatives, the mail gave alternatives for mac and left out windows. There were many critical deliverable and despite Docker & Docker Desktop being an essential developer tool our company completely ignored the warning bells. I had to find a solution fast and a solution that would have minimum disruptions to our workflow.

Quick Search

I did a quick search for alternatives. For Windows though there were not that many, I just found the below options:

minikube with docker ce cli
podman with docker compose on wsl
vagrant, virtualbox, minikube or k3s/minikube

While there many be many other options in teh wild I had to try something and test at the earliest, and minikube seemed to be a mature project to try out.
Hence I tried downloading minikube and tried running native on Windows 10.

Failed Attempt

The main reason for selecting minikube was because of its support for virtualbox and Hyper-v VM configuration apart from docker to run a single host Kubernetes cluster. Also it has a docker host process which could act as a container registry. My plan was to use minikube native with docker window cli provided in the below link.
https://github.com/StefanScherer/docker-cli-builder

For installation for minikube on windows I used Windows Package Manager as I had Admin right for my PC, you can choose to download the setup binaries as well.

winget install minikube

More details on minikube installation can be found here

The installation was uneventful, while running I ran it in an elevated powershell and setting up a minikube cluster with minikube start, as the default driver is Hyper-v I expected it to be relatively fast. But to my dismay first needed a Hyper V

C:\WINDOWS\system32>minikube start
* minikube v1.25.1 on Microsoft Windows 10 Home Single Language 10.0.19043 Build 19043
* Using the hyperv driver based on existing profile
* Starting control plane node minikube in cluster minikube
* Creating hyperv VM (CPUs=2, Memory=2200MB, Disk=20000MB) ...
! StartHost failed, but will try again: creating host: create: precreate: Hyper-V PowerShell Module is not available
* Creating hyperv VM (CPUs=2, Memory=2200MB, Disk=20000MB) ...
* Failed to start hyperv VM. Running "minikube delete" may fix it: creating host: create: precreate: Hyper-V PowerShell Module is not available

X Exiting due to PR_HYPERV_MODULE_NOT_INSTALLED: Failed to start host: creating host: create: precreate: Hyper-V PowerShell Module is not available
* Suggestion: Run: 'Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-Tools-All'
* Documentation: https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/install-hyper-v-powershell-module/
* Related issue: https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/issues/9040

After enabling the Hyper-V Module I got the below error

PS C:\windows\system32> minikube start
* minikube v1.25.1 on Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise 10.0.18363 Build 18363
* Unable to pick a default driver. Here is what was considered, in preference order:
  - hyperv: Not healthy: C:\windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -NoProfile -NonInteractive @([Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal][Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()).IsInRole(([System.Security.Principal.SecurityIdentifier]::new("S-1-5-32-578"))) returned "False\r\n"
  - hyperv: Suggestion: Unable to determine current user's Hyper-V administrator privileges. <>
* Alternatively you could install one of these drivers:
  - docker: Not installed: exec: "docker": executable file not found in %PATH%
  - vmware: Not installed: exec: "docker-machine-driver-vmware": executable file not found in %PATH%
  - virtualbox: Not installed: unable to find VBoxManage in $PATH
  - podman: Not installed: exec: "podman": executable file not found in %PATH%

X Exiting due to DRV_NOT_HEALTHY: Found driver(s) but none were healthy. See above for suggestions how to fix installed drivers.

While I could have dug further, with so many failures it seemed a non starter for the quick reliable option that I wanted to give to my team.

Docker in Wsl 2 to the rescue

After some Googling, I found the eureka moment which I was searching for, installing Docker Engine Ce (Community edition) on Wsl.

I already had wsl 2 installed on my Windows 10 and thanks to Docker Desktop supporting running containers in wsl as back-end. More on how to install wsl is out of scope of this blog but you can find the simple installation option on official wsl site.

I was using Ubuntu 18.4 Linux in wsl which is a very popular version for installing Linux. It can we installed from Windows Store, more details can be found here, a bit more details installation guide is given here.

But finally when installed you can verify the setup by running the following command.

C:\Users\dashp>wsl -l
Windows Subsystem for Linux Distributions:
Ubuntu-18.04 (Default)

The next step was to install Docker onto ubuntu which was much like the standard Docker engine installation process as given in this link

While the steps I give here is current, it may change in future as Docker is working on Docker Desktop for Linux which may be closed source.

Set up the package repository

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install \
    ca-certificates \
    curl \
    gnupg \
    lsb-release

I faced some errors but running below command fixed those issues

sudo apt-get update --fix-missing

Adding GPG key & Install

The Docker GPG key was added by the below step for apt to validate the docker repositories.

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg

And used the below command to point to the stable remote repository for docker binaries

echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

Then ran the below command to install Docker

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

Both the above steps ran without any issues, the update ensured the local repositories had the latest list repositories from the docker remote repo for docker binaries & make docker installation a smooth process

Post the installation I tested if docker worked, but I got the below error

(base) priyab@LAPTOP-TSUCQBB3:/mnt/c/Users/dashp$ sudo docker run hello-world
docker: Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?.
See 'docker run --help'.

This was because docker server process had not started and since wsl has no systemd enabled, so docker service had to be manually started.

$ sudo service docker start
 * Starting Docker: docker                    [ OK ]

To check the status of the service we can run the below command.

$ sudo service docker status
 * Docker is running

After that I ran the docker hello world utility to check if docker is running fine.

$ sudo docker run hello-world
Unable to find image 'hello-world:latest' locally
latest: Pulling from library/hello-world
2db29710123e: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:507ecde44b8eb741278274653120c2bf793b174c06ff4eaa672b713b3263477b
Status: Downloaded newer image for hello-world:latest

Hello from Docker!
This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.

To generate this message, Docker took the following steps:
 1. The Docker client contacted the Docker daemon.
 2. The Docker daemon pulled the "hello-world" image from the Docker Hub.
    (amd64)
 3. The Docker daemon created a new container from that image which runs the
    executable that produces the output you are currently reading.
 4. The Docker daemon streamed that output to the Docker client, which sent it
    to your terminal.

To try something more ambitious, you can run an Ubuntu container with:
 $ docker run -it ubuntu bash

Share images, automate workflows, and more with a free Docker ID:
 https://hub.docker.com/

For more examples and ideas, visit:
 https://docs.docker.com/get-started/

And here most of the blogs I read stopped, I needed to test it with a real world load to make sure if it was the suitable solution.

Check Docker Compose

Since Docker compose was an important component of my workflow, I had to make sure it worked.

$ docker-compose

The command 'docker-compose' could not be found in this WSL 2 distro.
We recommend to activate the WSL integration in Docker Desktop settings.

For details about using Docker Desktop with WSL 2, visit:

https://docs.docker.com/go/wsl2/

Thankfully I had miniconda installed, installing latest version of docker-compose was just a conda call.

conda install -c conda-forge docker-compose

Time for Real Test

Now it was time to test docker-compose integration with the docker installed. I had an earlier project to install Jupyer Data science notebook.
More details here.

$ docker-compose up -d
Creating datascience-notebook-container ... done

And voila it worked. Now it was time to see it was running

docker-compose ps
             Name                           Command              State                    Ports
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
datascience-notebook-container   tini -g -- start-notebook.sh    Up      0.0.0.0:8080->8888/tcp,:::8080->8888/tcp

It was running find and pointing to 8080 port on host machine. Or so I thought

Connection Issue & Solution

Generally when I start a docker-compose service in Docker Desktop it maps the ports to the host machine in my case my Laptop, but since I was running in wls2, unfortunately the way wsl is configured, the post mapping maps to 0.0.0.0:8080 port of wsl machine and which in turn is mapped to localhost or
127.0.0.1:8080 on my laptop. Blame it on how Microsoft has implemented wsl 2 and this issue as a "feature", I had to make do with accessing the url with
http://127.0.0.1:8080 in my web browser.

There is one solution to map the localhost port to 0.0.0.0 using netsh more details here.

We can do something as below:

netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenport=<port-to-listen> listenaddress=0.0.0.0 connectport=<port-to-forward> connectaddress=<forward-to-this-IP-address>

e.g.
netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenport=8080 listenaddress=0.0.0.0 connectport=3000 connectaddress=172.30.16.3

Where 172.30.16.3 probablyis the ip address given by the virtual network bridge assigned to wsl by Hyper-v.

But as my need was to run and test my api development locally using localhost, the given solution was more than fine for me.

Risks & Future

As already mentioned Docker Inc is working on Docker Desktop for Linux, given the way it has chosen to go with Docker Desktop from a free to a licensed solution and killing docker engine on Windows, its anyone's guess. While I am not arguing the merits of what Docker Inc is doing, but I feel my current work around is temporary.

I feel in long term a better solution can be either of two, but either it will need me or someone to build some smooth script or automation to make it work:

podman + docker-compose in wsl
minikube + podman in wsl
minikube + kvm in wsl, though to be honest I am not sure of the performance implication
vagrant/terraform + podman

While the developer container development work flow is disrupted for many, I am sure this is also an opportunity for competitors to come up and offer a good alternative to docker which may be better aligned to kubernetes and oci spec and still beginner and developer friendly.

While my larger adventure to replace docker continues, if you have some suggestions, ping me on twitter at twitmyreview. Or reach out to me on linkedin.

Please do like share and comment.

Setting JupyterLab With Docker & Raspberry Pi 4

Priyab Dash — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 16:59:00 +0000

Originally posted here

Date: 25-Jan-2022

Background

I have been trying to find a suitable Web IDE for my projects which I can use directly from browser. I found some websites and some truly cloud IDEs but nothing that can run out of docker on my PC or on Raspberry pi.

Some examples of popular pure cloud IDEs are:

ShiftEdit
Cloud9
Eclipse Che
replit
Github codespaces

Also I found IceCoder, which is more of a Web editor, but it was not a real IDE. I wanted an IDE which was not only a web editor but also share a terminal and support executing multiple backend. In this only jupyterlab fit the bit. While I have use jupyter notebook and jupyter lab in docker earlier but ws not sure if it will run on my raspberry pi 4. While I expected it to be few hour work, getting the right Dockerfile setup itself took me a whole day and was a frustrating and learning experience. I am writing this blog to capture my experience and also share some of the challenges I faced in setting up the environment.

Envionment Setup

Installing Docker

For this POC I already had installed Docker on my Raspberry Pi 4, you can get the instructions in below link.

https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/debian/

I use docker compose to manage the environment dependencies, I had installed docker-compose directly from pip using the below command https://pypi.org/project/docker-compose/

pip install docker-compose

Note: The New compose is being integrated into the docker command and that may change things in future

The Folder Structure

I used the following folder structure as I felt I may be installing other dependencies my docker-compose file in future. Feel free to change to your needs


- docker-compose.yml
- docker
    - jupyter
        - Dockerfile
        - entrypoint.sh
- notebooks

docker-compose.yml -> the compose file to note the services, volumes and dependencies to setup my docker environment
Dockerfile -> This contains the reference to base image the steps for installing Jupyterlab and running it.
entrypoint.sh -> This is the entry point script that contains the logic to start Jupyterlab process

Dockerfile

The Dockerfile looks as below

FROM balenalib/raspberry-pi-debian-python:3-buster

RUN apt-get update && apt-get -y update
RUN apt-get install -y build-essential python3-dev libffi-dev

RUN pip3 install --no-cache-dir jupyterlab

RUN mkdir /work

COPY ./docker/jupyter/entrypoint.sh /work/entrypoint.sh

RUN mkdir /work/notebook

WORKDIR /work/notebook

EXPOSE 8081
RUN chmod -R 765 /work/*.sh
ENTRYPOINT ["/work/entrypoint.sh"]
CMD ["server"]

The most important part was selecting the base image balenalib/raspberry-pi-debian-python:3-buster I tried multiple base images from Ubuntu, to python3-slim and even the latest Debian version, but there seems to be a continuing problem is Debian Bullseye version which seems to break pip.

The second most important part was to install build-essentials and python3-dev as there are many platform specific components in jupyterlab for which gcc and g++ will be required during the build process.

I had setup the install folder as /work and created a new folder called /work/notebook where all notebooks can be kept and exposed as a volume

entrypoint.sh

The entrypoint.sh looks as below, this is a format I have used from my earlier formats, its simple and works for me

#!/bin/bash
set -e

echo "Container's IP address: `awk 'END{print $1}' /etc/hosts`"

if [ "$1" = 'server' ]; then
   jupyter lab --port=8081 --no-browser --ip=0.0.0.0 --allow-root
else
    exec "$@"
fi

The main part in this script is to point --ip to 0.0.0.0, this is to make sure the Http connections from outside the container can hit the Jupyterlab process. While this may be obvious to other developers, it was a pain to me when it was pointing to localhost by default and connections were not hitting Jupyterlab

docker-compose yml file

The docker-compose.yml is also very simple where only one service jupyterlab is defined.

version: '3'
services:
  jupyterlab:
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: ./docker/jupyter/Dockerfile
    image: "bobquest33/jupyterlab:latest"
    restart: always
    user: root
    volumes:
      - /path/to/jupyterlab/notebooks:/work/notebook
    ports:
      - 8081:8081
    container_name: jupyterlab-container

Under build tag, the context folder path and the dockerfile path are important as they point to the current path from where you will be executing the docker-compose.

The section under volumes is important as there I map my local notebooks folder to the path /work/notebook under the container so that any files or notebooks created or modified under jupyter container are persisted on the host system disk.

Running Jupyterlab

Once we are ready, we can run the Jupyterlab with the below command from the root directory where docker-compose.yml is present

docker-compose up --build -d

The -d option makes the Jupyterlab service run in the background and the --build flag ensures that if any changes are made to the Dockerfile the Jupyterlab container image is built.

As a next step you will have to run docker-compose logs to check the URL for Jupyterlab , it will look as below

 To access the server, open this file in a browser:                                      
     file:///root/.local/share/jupyter/runtime/jpserver-9-open.html                      
 Or copy and paste one of these URLs:                                                    
     http://1a84add9fdd7:8081/lab?token=3078938b3dbe06114e11bfd53b91568bbaaf20cb7bc382cd 
  or http://127.0.0.1:8081/lab?token=3078938b3dbe06114e11bfd53b91568bbaaf20cb7bc382cd

URL format to put in web browser will be http://<raspberry ip address>:8081/lab?token=<url token value>

e.g. http://192.168.11.21:8081/lab?token=3078938b3dbe06114e11bfd53b91568bbaaf20cb7bc382cd

Challenges & Solution

Base Docker Image

When I started this POC, I thought this will be a quick 1 hour thing, but soon it turned to a whole night and day's worth of work. First big challenge was selecting the base image for Jupyterlab, first I tried many base docker images from Belina, but one of the most toughest part was getting any additional library installed, installing wget was getting challenging.

First I tried installing using Jupyterlab using conda, but installing Miniconda, proved challenging on many of the base images. Finally I settled to installing balenalib/raspberry-pi-debian-python base image, but again its latest version which points to Debian "Bullseye" where pip broke with time.time() with error PermissionError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted, detailed description below:

from pip._internal.utils import _log
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pip/_internal/utils/_log.py", line 8, in 
<module>
import logging
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/logging/__init__.py", line 57, in <module>
_startTime = time.time()
PermissionError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted

Installing pip dependencies

The next step that took longest time for me was figuring out what Debian packages to install, earlier I did the mistake upgrading pip in the Dockerfile, this prevented even to install Jupyterlab, then I have to install buildessentials and python3-dev to make sure the native dependencies of the dependent packages of pip gets installed.

Bash script format

Lastly, the container did not start, I finally realised that the entrypoint.sh that I have developed was have CRLF which is DOS format, it should be in Unix format converting the file to Unix using dos2unix helped.

dos2unix entrypoint.sh

Next Steps

Overall this was a great experience, I learnt many things about how package a web product on Raspberry pi and how its not as straight forward as installing on a x86 Windows or even a Mac machine and how I need to spend more time improving my docker expertise.

References

Test Parquet float16 Support in Pandas

Priyab Dash — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 03:30:11 +0000

Background

As I am on leave I was trying to see if I can contribute to some open source projects so while checking out the issue tracker of Pandas, I found this open issue. This issue got me chasing into exploring what may be the root cause of this issue and can this be fixed at some level in Pandas itself. While the fix part is still pending I found the possible cause and a possible work around to the issue.

Overview

In this example I am trying to test the Pandas support for Parquet also test the bug reported in https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/issues/44846

Issue

BUG: Parquet format does not support saving float16 columns

Reproducible Example

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

data = np.arange(2, 10, dtype=np.float16)
df = pd.DataFrame(data=data, columns=['fp16'])
df.to_parquet('./fp16.parquet')

Issue Description

Pandas does not validate presence of float16 columns in DataFrame as parquet format does not support saving float16 values.

Sample exception

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test_parquet_float16.py", line 6, in <module>
    df.to_parquet('./fp16.parquet')
  File "/home/priyab/.conda/envs/airflow/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pandas/util/_decorators.py", line 207, in wrapper
    return func(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/priyab/.conda/envs/airflow/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pandas/core/frame.py", line 2677, in to_parquet
    return to_parquet(
  File "/home/priyab/.conda/envs/airflow/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pandas/io/parquet.py", line 416, in to_parquet
    impl.write(
  File "/home/priyab/.conda/envs/airflow/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pandas/io/parquet.py", line 194, in write
    self.api.parquet.write_table(
  File "/home/priyab/.conda/envs/airflow/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pyarrow/parquet.py", line 1782, in write_table
    with ParquetWriter(
  File "/home/priyab/.conda/envs/airflow/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pyarrow/parquet.py", line 614, in __init__
    self.writer = _parquet.ParquetWriter(
  File "pyarrow/_parquet.pyx", line 1385, in pyarrow._parquet.ParquetWriter.__cinit__
  File "pyarrow/error.pxi", line 105, in pyarrow.lib.check_status
pyarrow.lib.ArrowNotImplementedError: Unhandled type for Arrow to Parquet schema conversion: halffloat

Reason

It seems there is already a ticket open in PyArrow & Parquet project to support halffloat or float16, as shown by the below issues

https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/2691
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ARROW-7242
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PARQUET-1647

But from what I can see is that in the Parquet issue, no response has been taken to address this issue. And in return bubble up to PyArrow & Pandas

Workaround

For now the workaround seems to change the dtype of any float16 data type to float32.

Code Example

float16_cols = list(df.select_dtypes(include=['float16']).columns)
new_type = dict((col,'float') for col in float16_cols)
df = df.astype(new_types)

Motivation

Its more often than not I use pandas to solve a quick Data analysis problem and I know its not perfect but in many cases it
gets the thing done. And this particular issue will also be faced in cases where someone infers the data while reading it and its inferred as float16. The workaround is suitable in only those conditions where you don't need to write float16 to a parquet file.

Conclusion

The only reason I have did not look at fixing the issue in parquet or in pyarrow implementation is the complexity around touching the base implementation that will take to adding support for a new data type. Also as a work around exists I would rather live with it at a api consumption layer for now.

Code Reference

https://github.com/bobquest33/test_pandas_parquet

Video: Trying Ubuntu Web OS with Intel Atom

Priyab Dash — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 17:37:41 +0000

Over the weekend I tried Ubuntu Web OS after I saw Ubuntu Web OS over the last few days over the web especially the Tech Republic article. I had to try it, so here is my quick video trying it out on my 2GB Intel Atom Acer 2in1 Laptop.
Please check the video here

A full blog will follow soon....

Docker & WSL Hogging C Drive

Priyab Dash — Sun, 24 Oct 2021 19:35:28 +0000

Background

My laptop has only 147 GB of space and run Windows 10 as my C Drive. Now any developer who uses many software as part of their development process would agree that this space is grossly inadequate.

I had to uninstall and constantly clean up my drive to have enough usable disk space to do anything. In last month I reached almost few hundred mb of space and filled out my hard drive.

I knew something drastic had to be done till I reformat my c drive. I have to aggressively look for the culprits and find alternatives for them. And that is when I came across TreeSize Free as a solution to scan my drive and list the files and folders that are hogging my space. And the results were phenomenal. I had used such apps in my android phone but have avoided using it on my Windows pc.

The Disk Scan

TreeSize Free is very easy to use since I had no disk space left I downloaded a portable version extracted on one of the other spare drives. And ran the program. The UI is very simple. There is a folder icon Select Directory . There is a drop down under this icon which allows to select the drive and I chose my C drive and started the scan. Then it asks if I would like to scan as Admin which I had to so as to find all the possible files & folders that are hogging my disk space.

Surprisingly the biggest files were 32 & 8 GB all being vhdx images (virtual disk images used by the hyper-v) being used by Docker desktop which had the wsl integration enabled & wsl itself. Now I had to find a solution how can I move these files to some other drives to get some extra space. It was risky as I was not sure of the corruption risks and making wsl and Docker Desktop unusable which I have been using extensively recently.

The Solution

After some research I found the solution which helped me a lot. And again SO came to the rescue, with this link .

Here are the steps:

Stop Docker Desktop
Stop wsl

wsl --shutdown

Export Docker Desktop disk to an external Drive For this I switched to my D drive which has 350 gb of data and ran the following command

wsl --export docker-desktop-data docker-desktop-data.tar

Unregister Docker Desktop from wsl In this step basically I unregisted Docker Desktop as a distribution from wsl which handles the persistence and container management for Docker

wsl --unregister docker-desktop-data

Finally re-created the Docker Desktop with wsl with the import of exported Docker Desktop virtual drive from the new path.

wsl --import docker-desktop-data D:\docker-new-repo\ docker-desktop-data.tar --version 2

D:\docker-new-repo\ this path signifies that now the vhdx file will be extracted to this new path.

To check if the import ran fine you can check running the following command

wsl -l --all --verbose
sample output:
  docker-desktop         Stopped         2
  docker-desktop-data    Stopped         2

Note

As a side note, before I did this I took backup of my required docker images. Also removed all images and containers before proceeding which the export and import of the vhdx

To delete all containers including its volumes use,

docker rm -vf $(docker ps -a -q)

To delete all the images,

docker rmi -f $(docker images -a -q)

Finally

I was able to delete the unused vhdx files from C drive and save significant amount of space. Also when I started my Docker Desktop I did not find any issues. This was a quick hack which helped me I am sure this will help others as well. Am yet to remove my wsl but the process is similar. If you need to try this yourself please check the references. And if you want to discuss further please do comment or send me a mail bobquest33(at)gmail(dot)com.

Reference

Mi Notebook 14 Horizon — Do Not Buy!

Priyab Dash — Sat, 20 Jun 2020 20:18:29 +0000

Mi Notebook 14, Horizon Edition

Introduction

I recently bought a Mi Notebook 14 Horizon Gray i5 , I had put the order on 17-Jun-2020 and it got delivered on 19-Jun-2020. After unboxing the device and setting it up today I am writing my first impressions. And as from the title you can see, its no secret.

Background

I own many Xiaomi devices and after apple I have been a Xiaomi fanboy. Two years back I went to one of their MI Flagship Stores in Bangalore and after seeing the MI 14 Inch Pro Laptop, I have always wanted one such device for me. First I have always liked the value for money and the quality of devices that we get from Xiaomi. And I am a big sucker for Laptops in 14 Inch form factor. I personally own many devices and always stress on the portability of devices. Since 2007–8 when I owned my first laptop which was a 2nd hand Sharp 14 Inch laptop with a Japanese OS, I have always loved the form factor.

I have a huge respect for Japanese Brands and during the last decade there were some really great laptops from Japanese brands in this form factor. Unfortunately in India it was always very difficult to get such devices. While after that I have owned or used Laptop of different sizes, but was never able get a 14 Inch laptop. And that was one of the motivating factor to buy the Mi Notebook 14.

The Purchase

After the buzz of the launch of the MI Laptop and hearing so many good reviews, I was all set to buy one of these devices for myself. My target was the Mi Notebook 14 Horizon edition with Nvidia MX350 Graphics. Personally I am not a lover of flash sale. But over the years have got good deals during Flash sales. While I targeted for the I7 fully loaded version, I finally settled for the I5 Nvidia MX350 Graphics version.

Hell for me any MI Notebook version was fine, and in the constant mealy of devices getting over in seconds and buggy delivery issues, I was thankful even to make a purchase.

The Positives

I put an order on 17th June and got it delivered on 19th June, personally that was fast for many of the online purchases I have done and that too during Covid-19 pandemic.

On getting the device, I was immediately surprised by the lightness of the device. I have handled many Laptops in my live, I never felt anything so light in my life and that to when it was fully boxed. I was even worried if I was cheated and just given an empty box.

After getting the box to home, the first thing I did was to unbox the Laptop. and that was the 2nd positive or shall I say, quirk, unlike my other Laptops which usually come with a white box and usually if delivered are present in a brown box and double wrapping, after opening the brown box, it only had 3–4 items, the charger, the webcam and the laptop in a plastic cover. This is signature Xiaomi, all there device that I have bought come in brown box, have a industrial design to it and no fuss. I think Xiaomi has taken minimalism to a whole new level.

The Gray color and the look and feel pretty much like a Macbook Pro 13 Inch, made me really like its design. I also liked the fact that there was no visible log on the device top panel making it very plain and yet elegant. While opening it up I liked the keyboard layout and the screen with thin bezel.

The Bad

It all started when I opened it up to do the device setup, at the outset there were somethings which showed that in making this device Xiaomi has cut corners. One is the finish, the thin bezel that I had liked also showed up the rough edges from the top panel, the fit and finish was not good, while buying Laptops even with the cheap one I have come to expect at least a basic build quality.

Acer is one of the most cheapest laptop brands in the market and I can vouch they have never cut corners in their build quality which was so evident in Xiaomi. The light weight can also be attributed to the low quality aluminium and plastic that is being used in the device, at least that is what I got in first impression. When someone is buying a laptop in the 55000 Rs range, in India they at least expect a god build quality and I am afraid to say in this area, MI Notebook 14 was a major disappointment.

Another major issue that I faced with the device was finish of its surface, I have a sweaty palm and I have major issues of staining the Laptops that I use but this device is a stain magnet. I had to sit with a cloth beside me each time I typed anything.

While the setup was uneventful, except the Intel i5, I can not say anywhere if it had a NVIDIA GPU, usually if there is an external GPU, they put a sticker on the laptop, but this Laptop was missing and it took me almost good 10–15 minutes of googling and searching via System settings to confirm if I had Nvidia MX350, GPU.

And to be honest the GPU was the biggest letdown for me. First tried running some user benchmarks, at that time, the benchmark refused to take the Nvidia GPU into consideration, and added to that if you wanted to use it, Nvidia’s custom app for the GPU advised to keep it in automated mode, meaning most of the times the applications end up using the Intel Integrated graphics and only on special occasions the application goes to choose the GPU. For me it was a boatload of dead wight for which I was paying for.

The reason why I would suggest you not to buy this device is because of its fan noise. I all happened when I was doing a GPU bench mark and as the temperature and load started increasing so was the fan noise, at one point it was so loud, I had to literally kill the application and start the application. Hence this is the point where I would like to make about this device which no reviewer will tell you. You do not buy a I5 and a dedicated GPU based device to do light browsing and editing, you buy such a device to what we call a medium load work, like I do, programming, medium video editing or graphics and some light gaming. And with that pronounced fan noise which even during medium load was so pronounced, I would never recommend such a Laptop.

Conclusion

As a programmer and a person who would want a sturdy, portable, durable and value for money device, the latest Xiaomi laptop has none of those features. While its fit and finish doesn't give confidence of its longevity, its GPU performance or the lack of and the horrendous Fan noise are a major no for me. I would rather buy better to buy an Acer, Lenovo or Dell device and if you are shelling 55000 for this device, I would rather advice to buy a used/refurbished or old generation MacBook laptop which will be a far better value for money, that Mi Notebook can ever be.

Originally published here

Quick Review on Sparky Linux

Priyab Dash — Fri, 01 May 2020 18:26:23 +0000

Background

Its been a while since I have done any Linux Distro review, the review of Sparky linux has been long time pending. While this is not the latest version of Sparky linux but given its light weight nature I feel what every I have experienced on Sparky Linux still holds for latest version.

Introduction

In this review I used Sparky 5.10.1 lxqt version which was the first one offering Lxqt since I have used Lubuntu. I tested this distro in Virtualbox with 4gb of RAM and booted it with traditional BIOS config though Sparky also support UEFI natively out of the box. And since it also support 32 bit UEFI boot for a X86_64 architecture I am also planning to test it out on my humble Acer One Laptop.

First Impressions

The boot flash screen was uneventful where I used "Sparky Linux in English" and was greeted with a blue Sparky Linux animated screen which was better that what I expected from the Distro. Though the look and feel was more from Early 2008-10 than anything current.

The same feel also was reflected when I got to the desktop. The desktop resembled me more of Windows 7 than Windows XP and hence while looking dated I felt right at home.

The Desktop is LXQt based which I have been using for last few months, hence I like it and was comfortable using it. While anyone who does Distro hopping or review may like to approach a Linux OS with a open mind but when you find something that you have been using for a while making direct comparisons and trying to find parallels is expected.

As I have been using Lubuntu, it was natural for me to compare the desktop look and feel of Sparky Linux, and I was happy with the Desktop look and feel of Sparky.

Positives

Sparky is loaded with Apps that makes it an ideal Daily driver and a great light weight Linux alternative to something like Windows 10 or Windows 7.

Its fully loaded with LibreOffice Apps which based on my experience works good with most of the document formats. One thing to note though is when I have tried running LibreOffice on my 2gb Acer One, I had mixed experiences, I am not sure if its because of Lubuntu or because of the RAM size which is obviously a limitation.

VLC, Qmmp and LxImage are good for multimedia and graphics applications and worked fine in the limited Virtual server environment.

For me the highlight was its rich set of systems tools for making live CDs, USB formatter, gparted and Timeshift which are really helpful tools for anyone tikerer like me who wants more from a Linux distro and wants to explore more.

As its based on Debian, the rich repo of Debian apps are available via Synaptic package manager and one can also use the apt command line package manager to download from Debian package repository.

Negatives

For me the let down was the lack of robust programming editor and bland Featurepad was not something I would like to use in the long run.

Another let down was the lack of a good terminal app.

The default terminal did the job but this is something I also have complains about in Lubuntu. Another issue which while may not be evident in Virtualbox but while installing Debian distributions on my Acer One has been the lack of drivers for my specific laptop and that is something which I never had with any Ubuntu based OS.

Final Thoughts

Sparky was a very interesting OS and I had lot of hopes using it, this may be one of the few distributions that I can try for my Acer One laptop but its Debian base is something for me to worry about. Overall this is a good OS which can be a light weight replacement for your Windows XP or Windows 7/10 desktop without impacting performance.

Download from: https://sparkylinux.org/

PureOS - Hype and Reality

Priyab Dash — Sun, 01 Mar 2020 19:34:35 +0000

Background

Last month I got a CD containing multiple distros and there I found PureOS. At first the name did not register but when I did some digging, I remembered that PureOS was the Linux OS developed by Purism, the company behind Librem products where its laptop is liked by Edward Snowden. On further reading I read that PureOS will also power the Librem 5 Phones. Which definitely is one of the most hyped Linux distributions out there. Rest of the blog is my quick review of PureOS.

Introduction

My first stop for learning about PureOS was its website and its wikipedia page. From the initial reading it seemed to be:

PureOS is a GNU/Linux distribution focusing on privacy and security, using the GNOME desktop environment.
Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution, merging open-source software packages from the Debian “testing” main archive using a rolling release model.
The default web browser in PureOS is called PureBrowser, a variant of Firefox focusing on privacy. The default search engine in PureBrowser is DuckDuckGo.

And while I did not explore more on its privacy aspect. I found all the above information consistent with the OS experience after my review. I used PureOS 9.0 gnome version ISO for the review. You can download the latest copy here.

First Impressions

PureOS had more of the stock Gnome experience and still did not feel slow while using on by 4GB RAM VM and also the desktop look and feel felt minimal and yet modern. By now I have got used to the Activity tab and hence finding apps in gnome was easier now that I had experienced other Gnome based distributions.

The boot process was simple and the flash PureOS logo was cool and felt modern. The initial setup of LiveCD was also easy.

I also tried different types of file types, it supported most of the file formats and came with LibreOffice for excels, presentations and documents which is an important part of anyone's daily use.

Positives

The good part for me using PureOS was it was more familiar to me as a Linux user and using the apt package manager was also good. PureOS may not be for first time linux users but for people who want a pure Gnome experience.

For me it was a mixed bag where it was rough around edges in some areas, some of its apps were very helpful.

As a developer I liked its native support for .py files as I presume it provides Gedit as the stock editor hence making code changes and running a quick program easy. Another stand out feature for me was the terminal.

It provides Tilix as its default terminal and this is the first time I am using the terminal, but it was hands down one of the best Linux terminals I have used so far. The most useful feature form me was the split panes vertically and horizontally feature and its white background which made the whole experience of using the terminal very soothing. And with the split panes I was able to do with Vi and terminal which I would do with a VSCode or another IDE.

Negatives

There were many things about the distro that I can not ignore, the most important of this being PureBrowser, to be honest I don't know what is different about PureBrowser than Firefox, for me it looked more of a rebadge than an original job. And the browser icon used for PureBrowser especially when this is the first thing you see on the PureOS website made me wonder why they did not put more effort. There are many good Linux distros who do a good job at developing their own browsers or even if they use Firefox they at least use good Icons. I know I am very much picky here but apart from security the look and feel of the icons is one area where it can improve.

Another areas I was unimpressed was its multimedia support. The videos were laggy, the app used for images was not crisp and the music experience was just ok. Added to this that there was no direct customized help or welcome screen about PureOS, one wonders how will a new user get around using PureOS.

And given that it was from the testing branch of Debian as a rolling release, one can not expect a stable OS when planning to use it as a daily driver which takes out new Linux users out of the equation.

Final Thoughts

Given that Purism is in the business of building hardware and PureOS is the operating system that powers its devices, I feel it should do more to make the usability and experience of PureOS better. Right now it is no match for Mac, Windows 10 or Chrome OS and even lags behind other Linux distributions like Elementary OS, Deepin and Solus.

Trying Solus Linux on Distrotest.net

Priyab Dash — Sat, 22 Feb 2020 20:32:03 +0000

Background

From 2019 I have been trying to test Solus Linux, but was not sure if it was worth downloading and then testing it on my VM. I have heard positive reviews about its gaming capabilities but I wanted to test Solus as a daily driver without downloading the ISO. This led me to search for options where I can test a Linux distribution online without downloading.

Last year I heard about distrotest.net but I was not sure how good was the site. After finding good reviews about the site I gave it a try and rest of the blog is my experience testing Solus.

Introduction

Distrotest

DistroTest is the first and probably the only online operating system tester you can test a live linux distribution within a browser without either installing the distribution or needing a VM or ISO to test it in a Sandbox.

There a list of linux distributions to choose from, you choose the appropriate version of the distro you want to test and click start. The distro runs in a QEMU-hosted window. Distrotest uses QEMU which is a generic open source machine emulator and virtualizer.

You can connect either via VNC live session in browser or directly connecting via your VNC client software. I used both the VNCViewer in my machine and once the time limit for the session was over, I used the live browser VNC session. I would say the browser version gave best results though overall there was a latency in using VNC on Distrotest which is expected given the bandwidth and system limitation of QEMU.

Perhaps the best benefit from using DistroTest.net is the ability to check out Linux without disturbing a single thing about your current computer configuration. It is not a perfect solution -- but it beats the alternatives.

You can check more about Distrotest in the below links:

Solus Linux

Solus Linux is an independently developed OS which uses Linux OS but does not build upon other popular Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, Archlinux or Fedora. Based on its wikipedia pages

Starting with the Debian branch of Linux it migrated to a unique approach including Pisi and Evolve OS.
It is offered as a curated rolling release model under the slogan "Install Today. Updates Forever". Solus contains a wide variety of desktop environments depending on release chosen, options include Solus own Budgie Desktop, GNOME, MATE and KDE Plasma.

I chose KDE Plasma version for the testing as I just did not want to test Solus but also wanted to check out how KDE Plasma as a desktop environment felt.

First Impressions

Initially I thought to make it a quick review as I did not expect to get much performance from the slow VNC session but as I started exploring various aspects of Solus and KDE Plasma I ended up doing a much more detailed hands on Solus than I earlier intended to do. The QEMU VM did not have an internet connection and since it was a remote VM I did not get a chance to test the multimedia capabilities of Solus extensively.

Solus comes with Firefox as its default browser and LibreOffice its its default office suit and Thuderbird for emails, hence I rather explored the features that differentiates from the other distributions that I have reviewed earlier.

Positives

For me Linux Lite and Deepin have been absolute best when it comes to desktop experience. But KDE Plasma was head to head in many features. The dark theme of Solus was darker than Linux Lite but surprisingly looked refreshing. Some of the key features for me, the desktop layout and the wallpaper used were soothing to the eye and the mouse clicks were snappy despite the slow VM. Though panel layout looked much like Linux Lite but the start menu and the Dolphin file browser was much cleaner to me than Deepin or Linux Lite.

The most impressive thing for me was Kate, the default Advanced text editor that comes with KDE Plasma. And the favorite part for me was its native support for programming languages and doubling as a IDE when I wished to develop a small test program. In the small session I was able to write a small program and test it. This itself speaks volume about Solus as a distribution and Kate as a programming editor. In many ways I like Kate over Geany or Notepad++.

Dolphin File browser which came bundled with this distribution had a dark theme that was more modern than other file browsers that I have seen and the ability to split the file browser into two panes is my favorite feature as it makes the process of copy paste and moving files between two different folders very easy.

While I saw some new multimedia applications like SMPlayer and mpv. Elisa was the music app that touched my heart. After Rhythmbox , Elisa with its modern look and music centric UI has been the best looking music player that I have seen so far. I am surely going to try the music player soon. In the current time where we tend to use streaming services and phones to consume music, still apps like Elisa have a niche when we want to use our PCs for multimedia.

I also liked its Image Viewer which reinforces my view about KDE is that this UI is not just for a new user but rather has so much to offer to pro users, e.g. the metadata tab that comes with Gwenview comes with the default UI which is very much helpful when you open an image. You are not just looking at an image but getting information like Resolution, tagging and the filename.

Negatives

I should not say these as the negatives but personally I felt as quirks which would be difficult for linux users who are used to Distro hopping.
My biggest struggle was to find the softwares that I would use as a regular Linux user to download directly using either yum, pacman or apt. Since this is a distribution built upon Pisi linux, it uses its package manager eopkg. Which to me is one another package manager to learn though a feature rich and complete package manager for Solus, though the Software Center provided on Solus was a better experience.

I hope this is where things like flatpack and snap package formats will help in standardization of package distribution technologies across various linux distributions.

KDE Plasma & Solus is a very feature rich Desktop environment and that is its bane as well as most of its features are hidden from plain sight. I wish there was a quick and easy help option like Mageia or Linux Lite, this is something that Solus and its community can improve. Protip anything you want to find in KDE Plasma, go to its start menu and type it in the search. Many a times what you are searching you will find there.

While its not a let down, but from the KConsole terminal I expected more having used to seeing so many pro features with other softwares in the KDE ecosystem provide. After using the terminal of Linux Lite I am now used to comparing those terminals with it. It may be so that I need to spend more time with KConsole.

Final Thoughts

While many users expected me to review Solus with its original GNOME version and may be disappointed with my review of KDE Plasma version. But being a user of light weight Linux distros I feel Solus 4.1 KDE Plasma version that I tested can also be a good light weight option for your machine as a daily driver provided you get used to its quirky package manager and wish some pro features that KDE Plasma provides. For me Solus
KDE Plasma version is on the shortlist when ever I plan move from Lubuntu which I am currently using.

Linux Lite - Best Alternative to Windows 7 for Old PC

Priyab Dash — Sun, 16 Feb 2020 12:58:34 +0000

Background

I have tried Linux Lite earlier but never did an in-depth review of this Distro till now. Since I have posted on other Linux Distros I had always wanted to write about Linux Lite. I tried the LinuxLite 4.6 64bit for this demo.

Introduction

Linux Lite is a Linux distribution, based on Debian and Ubuntu and created by a team led by Jerry Bezencon. The distribution offers a lightweight desktop experience with a customized Xfce desktop environment. It includes a set of Lite application to make the life easier for a novice Linux user.

It has a very active community and after Zorin OS I find Linux Lite as the best light weight OS for your old PC. It is one of the few distributions that comes in 32 bit and 64 bit versions which makes sure that even your ancient PC is supported by Linux Lite.

First Impressions

I had tried Linux lite on my old PC earlier, while I like it then but went with Zorin OS for its more modern and more simple looking UI but recently after using Lubuntu, I have come to appreciate the crisp and Windows friendly UI of Linux Lite.

Linux Lite is the closest UI that I have got to Windows 7 and also the most easiest to getting used to after coming from a Windows OS. Its UI is familiar, despite having a dark theme, its icon layout and start menu are the closest to Windows and the packaged apps like VLC Player, Libre Office, Gimp and Shotwell makes replaces the default Windows 7 App very well.

The Good

For me the Desktop, the file manager and the Terminal are the highlight of LinuxLite. I have used many file managers and all try to emulate Windows File Browser to the best of their capability but the Linux Lite file browser has absolutely nailed it.

As we spend most of the time on a Desktop on the UI, the simple, familiar layout and the Windows like Icons makes a Linux newbie easily at home.

The other aspect which I liked in the VM was its out of box multimedia support and beautiful picture and audio quality which makes it a good alternatives for anyone looking to use Linux for personal use.

I also liked that for installing new packages they have Synaptic Package manager which makes the process of finding and installing new softwares and packages a breeze.

It also has one of the best looking Terminals where I spend most of my time.

Shortcomings

For me the Bad is lack of support for UEFI, this is one OS that I want to use on my low powered Laptop but because my laptop supports UEFI and for Linux Lite the UEFI is more of a hack and lack of ready ISOs makes it a very difficult choice to use out of a VM. As more and more UEFI supported devices become old, the demand for out of box for UEFI compatible Linux Distros will increase and its here that Zorin OS or Lubuntu outpace Linux Lite.

Another area which I feel Linux Lite can improve is my supporting a developer friendly Text editor. While I can download Geany, Gvim, Gedit or VSCode, for a developer like me who uses out of box Linux distro for light development and compatible developed friendly text editor is a great help specifically for even a new Linux user. As a significant number of first time Linux users are developers.

Final Thoughts

Finally I would say for me this is a distribution which I want to use as a daily driver simply because of the lovely dark theme and the simplicity of the Software and familiar interface it provides. Only if the process of enabling UEFI is simpler on LinuxLite , this will become my most recommended Linux distribution.

Explore Linux Lite here

Quick Review of Mageia Linux

Priyab Dash — Sun, 16 Feb 2020 02:50:56 +0000

Introduction

I had always wanted to try “Mandriva Linux distribution” but never got the chance to try the original distribution hence when I got an old DVD of Mageia Linux, I wanted to try it out, it was a 6.1 GNOME version ISO. Later I also tried 7.1 Xfce ISO which I thought would look a more newer, light weight UI version.

First Impressions & Issues

Again as I just wanted to try it out before deciding if I wanted to dig further. My first impression of both impression was that the UI was very dated or should I say very stock. There is nothing wrong having a stock UI but both 6.1 GNOME and the 7.1 Xfce version in an effort to make a consistent UI ended up making a bit old.

After getting used to the stock UI the next then was checking out the list of softwares. One thing that I like in other Linux distributions and don’t like Mageia Linux GNOME 6.1 Version is instead of a Start Button it has something called “Activity” and that opens a search bar with set of standard softwares. And Icon based categorisation of software is was not very intuitive for me. But in Xfce 7.1 version this issue was resolved.

This is not a problem specific to “Mageia Linux” its something common to few other Linux distributions who choose this UI design (e.g. Ubuntu). But the biggest problem I had with both the GNOME and Xfce version of Mageia was that while running it on my 4GB VM all UI interactions were very slow and either I had to click multiple times at an Icon or it took some time to start a program. As a first impression it did not come across as a light weight OS and rightly they did not advertise it as one.

The Good Parts

After the first impressions I wanted to explore its software catalog and also wanted to explore some of its stand out features. For me the best part of Mageia Linux was its extensive software Library for all your needs and its extensive documentation.

Be it from once you boot it for the first time or searching for its online documentation for which you will get a handy link. For each of its features the documentation was extensive.

Another feature that I liked about Mageia Linux was its “Magia Control Center” which was in addition to the Settings menu it has. The Control Center makes some of the setups e.g. for Hardware / Software /Network / Disk & Security setup easier which would make the maintenance of your system easier.

The most important feature for me was the support of yum package manager from command line. Personally I like command line to install packages and softwares and to have the familiar yum package manager from RedHat, Fedora and CentOS in Magia made me feel at home.

Final Thoughts

For me the deal maker was the blue colour theme and the familiar stock Linux UI from many years back but the slow performance of the UI interactions and sometimes confusing UI navigation was the deal breaker. But if I have to choose a yum based Linux distribution which is not Fedora, Redhat or Cent OS, I may choose Mageia. Finally my high respect for the community behind Mageia for continuing the legacy of Mandriva Linux.

Explore Mageia here

Distro Review - Deepin Linux 15.9

Priyab Dash — Sun, 09 Feb 2020 03:33:54 +0000

Background

I buy few magazines in India like "Opensource ForU" and "Digit". Over last few months I have accumulated a fair number of distro DVDs that come with these magazines. While going through some of these distros I came across Deepin OS. While I have read mixed reactions of this OS I personally never had tried it. Many said it as a Mac OS clone and a Chinese take on Linux OS. But it was always on my future review list. And when I got my hand on a Deepin OS 15.9 ISO I did this thorough review.

Overview

As given in the Wikipedia page Deepin Linux is developed by "China-based Wuhan Deepin Technology Co., Ltd" and also its desktop environment DDE, the Deepin Desktop Environment, built on Qt. This is visible in its crisp boot flash and the overall experience of the Desktop. Deepin is unlike any other Linux desktop that I have used till now in that its UI is very crisp and can be easily compared with Mac or Windows 10. It is very much comparable with Elementary OS and in some features better.

Boot & Install Experience

Initially the boot experience was a bit confusing given that there were 3 options in live CD first one being Install Deepin and another being Deepin failsafe. Since I did not do my online check on how to use Deepin, I just installed on my VirtualBox VM with 50 GB virtual disk and 4 GB RAM. And it took around 15–20 minutes to install the OS.

The installation UI look and feel past the flash screen was inspired by Mac look and feel but I felt at home given my experience with Xiomi and other Chinese Mobile phones.

I would say in some ways its installation process was similar to a first time Android Phone installation rather than a Linux installation. Which in some way will make many new users at home. I feel this OS will make many IPhone or Android or Chinese phone users easy to transition to a Laptop OS more than for some one transitioning from another Linux, Windows or Mac and this is a big plus while using Deepin.

Desktop Experience

Once you are done with installation and into the first time setup the thing I like about Deepin was its theme and Desktop customisation. Out of box setup options are Windows style start menu or Mac style dock setup (default). I also liked the fact that it was able to identify that I am running Deepin in a VM and messaged me to install it on a real machine to get full benefits of its features.

It has icon themes and also support for Window effects which made Deepin as one of the best modern desktop experiences so far. Though not dark and not as silver as a Mac the desktop experience and look and feel was right in the middle. The best thing about the desktop were the momentary sound responses as Desktop became visible and the short sound notifications. This is something I have got used to in Mac and hate in Windows but was soothing in Deepin.

Bundled Apps

Deepin is loaded with many apps that makes it one of the best Linux Desktops available. It comes with WPS office suits which is much better than LibreOffice and at par if not better with MS Office suit. I spent considerable time using the Writer, Presentation and Spreadsheet apps and having used WPS office in Android earlier I was very impressed with the features it provided and compatibility with different Document formats that MS Office supports.

This suit alone can make Deepin as a preferable alternative to many small businesses looking to migrate from Mac or Windows.

In recent times one of the major let downs for me has been lack of support for good multimedia apps as it used to be in earlier versions of Linux. And here I would say I had the best multimedia experience in Deepin than any other Linux distribution.

The out of the box Movie, Screen Records, Screen Grabber and Music apps are one of the best in Linux Distributions that I have tried so far. Even in the basic graphics capabilities of a Virtual Machine the response and quality of Audio and Video was very good.

Browsing & Customisability

It comes with a Chrome browser and with a App store boasting a wide verity of free and paid apps Deepin can give a run for money and in some ways is better than Chrome OS. Also I liked its file browser which looked modern and has support for most of the file types that I tested on Deepin.

The experience of the Deepin window manager was a cross between Mac and windows where the window manager was trying to mimic Mac the file browser was trying to mimic Windows file browser. In the end it felt more like my Android tablet experience than anything I have seen on a Desktop.

One of the major draws for me using a Linux rather than a Mac or a Windows is the robust package manager that you get with a Linux distribution which makes the effort of installation of the many utilities a breeze.

Unlike Apple or Windows store which have sparse or paid packages for your daily needs Linux distributions is packed to brim with command-line and free apps for almost every app or requirement you have. Deepin apart from its App store is built on top of Debian and hence support most of the packages supported with the Debian apt package system.

As a developer we always strive for customisability and here also with support for 3rd party drivers, a side docking settings menu and a very intuitive settings menu the experience was very modern and has made me seriously think to switch to this distro.

Also the fact that it is highly customisable with many themes available in its App store will surely users who want a better control over their user experience unlike Windows 10 or Mac users.

Final Thought

For me Deepin was a direct competitor to Android Tablet and ahead of other Linux distros in terms of user experience. The most stand out feature for me was the crisp UI, multimedia experience and the WPS Office which made this distro not only a replacement for Windows 7 but rather a replacement for Mac or Windows 10 as well. Again I have not used this OS on a real hardware and am sure there would be some surprises in store. Also one point of concern for me was the copyright notice and a host of preparatory apps that may not be liked by Open Source purists and may be for uses who just want a cheaper or free alternative to their Windows or Mac. For me though this OS is a more good alternative to people who want to transition to Laptop from Android phones or tablets as the look and feel of this OS is more akin to a customised Android ROM.

Download Deepin