Fedora: Microsoft is all aboard, but Deepin is dumped

Fedora retired Deepin Desktop Environment packages maintained by the deepinde-sig group after a FESCo decision. The change followed a prior request for a security review of Deepin, after openSUSE removed the desktop following a negative security assessment. SUSE sought feedback from Deepin but did not receive sufficiently strong answers, and Deepin later issued an apology. Deepin remains active outside Fedora, with recent version activity and claims of millions of installs for its paid desktop edition. In parallel, Fedora gained new upstream alignment as Microsoft announced Azure Linux 4 and Azure Container Linux, both Fedora-based, for Azure virtual machines and related container use cases.

"AGREED: Retire all packages maintained by the deepinde-sig group The decision comes one year after the project called for a security review of the Deepin Desktop Environment, after openSUSE dropped the desktop following a negative security assessment. We reported on that decision at the time. SUSE asked Deepin for feedback, but didn't get good enough answers - for which, some months later, the Chinese project issued an apology."

"Seven years after it added the Deepin Desktop Environment in Fedora 30, Tuesday's FESCo meeting decided to drop Deepin from the distro. The minutes say: AGREED: Retire all packages maintained by the deepinde-sig group The decision comes one year after the project called for a security review of the Deepin Desktop Environment, after openSUSE dropped the desktop following a negative security assessment."

"Linux Deepin is very much still around: we most recently looked at version 25 in January, and, back in 2023, the project claimed it had passed three million installs of its paid Tongxin UOS desktop edition. It's a very pretty Windows-like desktop environment, but it never made it to having its own Fedora spin - and it certainly won't now."

"Microsoft has announced a new, Fedora-based Linux distro for Azure VMs, while Fedora has consigned the Deepin desktop to the bin. On Monday, Microsoft announced a new version of its in-house Linux distro, Azure Linux 4, along with a companion distro called Azure Container Linux. There have been products called Azure Linux for quite a while. It's based on the much more minimal CBL-Mariner distro."

Read at theregister