When comparing Deepin OS vs MATE, the Slant community recommends Deepin OS for most people. In the question“What is the best OS for an old Macbook?” Deepin OS is ranked 11th while MATE is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Deepin OS is:
The desktop interface and apps feature an intuitive and elegant design. Moving around, sharing and searching, etc. has become simply a joyful experience.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Enjoy the simplicity of Deepin's desktop
The desktop interface and apps feature an intuitive and elegant design. Moving around, sharing and searching, etc. has become simply a joyful experience.
Pro Excellent apps
Having Deepin installed also means you have thousands of quality apps to choose from. The apps which come with installation will suit your needs to browse the Internet, listen to music, watch videos, talk with friends, editing documents or simply any task you want to do at home or in your office.
Pro Easy to use
It's very easy to use. You can easily uninstall a program by going to the menu then right-clicking on the preferred app and selecting "Uninstall" option.
Pro Blur and transparent design
Deepin has a blur and transparent design throughout the OS, which makes it one of the most beautiful Linux distros.
Pro Easy to install
Installing Deepin OS is very easy. Even easier than installing Ubuntu!
Pro Supports Flatpak
Deepin OS supports Flatpak. It also has some Flatpak programs installed by default.
Pro Great support for graphics cards
Deepin OS includes a program called "Deepin Graphics Driver Manager" which can easily install a good driver for the graphics card.
Pro Very stable
Since it is based on Debian stable, you will hardly ever get a dependency issue.
Pro Based on Debian
It is based on Debian which is the best Linux distribution for desktops.
Pro Can be made to look like Windows easily
By default, Deepin looks kinda like macOS but it can be made to look like Windows by right-clicking on the dock and changing the mode from "Fashion Mode" to "Efficient Mode".
Pro Best for daily use
Pro Rolling release
It is a rolling release Linux distribution which is quite popular these days.
Pro Great design to the app store
The app store is gorgeous.
Pro Has its own toolkit
It has its own toolkit called "Deepin Tool Kit". And the maintainers themselves use it.
Pro VLC media player works without any issue
In some cases, VLC media player has some problems with Ubuntu or Ubuntu-based Linux distros. That isn't the case with Deepin.
Pro Well-designed in every detail, developers have a professional aproach to the system
Deepin has a sane default set of apps including custom apps of their own design that gives the distro a very consistent look and feel. By working with the community on these tools as well as custom translations there is a great sense of polish when using it that is not often seen when using such a new desktop environment.
Pro Launches programs faster
Programs load and launch faster in Deepin than other Linux distributions. It takes only about 3 seconds to launch Chrome.
Pro Company behind it
The Wuhan Deepin Technology is behind this Linux distribution.
Pro PRO Network Managment
Deepin has the facilities to create VLAN and other configuration like Wifi Hostpot on their GUI.
Pro Quite lightweight
Deepin 15.7 is lighter than Windows 10 and Ubuntu.
Pro Includes a lot of packages in the official repository
The official repository of deepin OS includes over 73,000 packages.
Pro Exciting applications
It has some exciting applications, such as Deepin Graphics Driver Manager which can easily change between free and proprietary drivers without any issue.
Pro Automatically cleans package cache
Deepin automatically cleans package cache. Cleaning package cache is a good thing as it will make the OS much faster and lighter.
Pro Includes both Windows and macOS style interface
Pro Gives warning messages when upgrading packages using apt
Deepin uses their own modified version of apt. When there is a distribution upgrade available and if we try to upgrade by running "sudo apt upgrade", then this modified version of apt gives this warning message, "DDE programs will work abnormally if run this command. Run sudo apt dist-upgrade or sudo apt full-upgrade instead."
Pro Not based on Ubuntu
Some people don't like Ubuntu nor its derivatives.
Pro Seemless transition form Windows to Linux
Easy to install, comes with default packages to typical needs e.g. Chrome, WPS office, System Monitor and a bunch of multimedia utilities. Its easy to install and uninstall applications, it has a great app store and is fast. On same laptop run much faster than Windows 10 did.
Pro Full HiDPI support
All MATE 1.24 components are ported to GTK3 and fully support HiDPI.
Pro Has window borders
Other than GNOME or Xfce, MATE has not introduced OSX-alike Client Side decorations
Pro Many new features
The MATE team added plenty of power user features that were perviously rejected by the GNOME team.
Pro Extremely customizable
MATE is customizable from every aspect. And very much stable compared to another Desktop environment.
Pro Works great on old machines
It uses a traditional Interface and less eye-candy/bling bling than KDE for example which results in very low system requirements.
Pro Very stable
MATE is initally based on the very stable GNOME 2 codebase that was for years the defacto enterprise desktop for every Linux system.
Pro Traditional desktop experience
MATE use a traditional desktop layout with panels that can be extended through plugins. It also disables some GTK3/GNOME3 features like: client side decorations and overlay scrollbars. MATE applications have also not introduced touch based ui elements like: popover menus and switch buttons.
Pro Distraction-free environment
There is no bling bling on this desktop so you can fully concentrate on your work.
Pro Multiple panels work great across multiple displays
This is very simple, but it is something much appreciate: the panel's window list is per display. So if you move a window over your second display, it gets transferred to the window list on the second display's panel. Multiple display support works very intuitively, right out of the box, with minimal tweaking.
Pro Has menu icons
MATE has icons in every popupmenu which makes navigating through them very fast.
Pro Full and fast
Scales better, full compliment themed applets, easily customization. App/Place/Sys menu and other menus, Mint version set at bottom for new Linux users. OPTION for panel background or follows system(with "controls") for theme matching.
Pro Pays its developpers
Thanks to the Patreon page, money is collected to pay for the developers maintaining and adding new features to MATE.
Pro Follows the GNOME2 HIG
Pro MATE is a serviceable choice
MATE is a solid serviceable choice for a DE. It is reliable and easy to customize. However, it lacks the icon placement in multiple monitors found in Cinnamon, KDE, or Windows.
Pro Does not need a composite manager
You can use it without GPU hardware acceleration.
Cons
Con Based in China
Con Customization is a bit hidden
GUI is not straight forward for changing GTK+ or QT themes.
Con Deepin store apps not up to date
Con Cannot customize desktop environment
Because the developers have locked down desktop customization is A HUGE detractor against the idea of setting things up how you want.
Con Team doesn't know what to do
Deepin has changed the base 4 times, and the name 3 times. The Desktop Environment also has been changed 4 times.
Con Slow default repos
Download speed for packages from the default repos, is abnormally slow if you don't choose the correct sever.
Con There are issues restarting (on a PC)
Con Pretty laggy
Con Strange development organization
There aren't any sort of improvements over Deepin v15.1. The only changes are icons - they've become better.
Con Very slow installer
Because the servers are in China.
Con Installer lacks features
Con Some rough edges
Some apps have really rough edges, for example:
- Caja: by open an SVG-file and get a Dialog with 4 Buttons (Run in Terminal, Display, Cancel & Run) at least two of them make no sense. You can also right click on them to choose the application, however your default application for that filetype is not on this list.
- Panel: Empty panel applets are about 1px wide so you really can't resize or move them to organize your panel.
Con Not for touchscreens
Follows the classic desktop formula. It is also not designed for the use with a touchscreen.
Con Requires XML for wallpapers
MATE requires an additional XML file for wallpapes to store metadata like effects (for slideshows), its author, license and translations.
Con Thick window
Con No official forum
Instead of having an official forum, users are redirected to their distributions support forums.
You might get help at distribution specific forums but there is no proper way to communicate with the whole MATE community or its developers.
Con MATE can not save icon positions on desktop
Con It's Gnome 2, which is just a more difficult to use XFCE
Gnome 2 was a more bloated and less useful version of Xfce, and it still is now that it's called MATE. UI feels outdated compared to modern versions of Plasma, Gnome, and even Xfce.