Back in June, Huawei postponed the launch of a new laptop. This is likely due to the US sanctions affecting the company’s access to Intel chips and Microsoft Windows. Interestingly, the company has a few laptops on its Vmall e-commerce site running Linux and still equipped with Intel processors.
Specifically, these laptops are the Huawei MateBook X Pro, MateBook 13 and MateBook 14. They run Deepin Linux, which some would argue as the better looking versions of the operating system. This particular distribution of Linux also recently added a cloud sync feature. This lets you save various system settings to the cloud, which can be useful if you foresee reinstalling your OS often.
On the flip side, the fact that it’s developed by a Chinese company may be a cause for concern for some. This is especially on the privacy front, and even more so with the settings you sync to the cloud. For what it’s worth, its distribution is open source, and the code is available on GitHub.
It’s interesting to see that Huawei is using Linux instead of its own HarmonyOS. The company said that it will not use it on phones unless it has no other choice, and maybe this applies to laptops as well. The exception to the rule so far appears to the its sister company HONOR’s Vision smart TV. As for the laptops themselves, the Deepin Linux versions appear to be exclusive to the Chinese market for now.
(Source: Huawei [1], [2], [3] via Forbes)
