The V20 version of the Linux-based Deepin OS, which is expected to be released this month, will be postponed to March because the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic has affected the development progress, the team said on Wednesday.
The Deepin team has previously said that the Deepin OS will get some feature updates earlier. The Deepin V20 system is expected to be completed by the end of February 2020. The Beta version is expected to be released in March 2020 for public testing.
In today's announcement published in its official community, the team said the V20 version will be postponed to March and the exact launch time is unknown.
The following is an announcement in English from the team:
Dear Deepin Community members,
Hello everyone!
Due to the impact of Wuhan coronavirus, our development process has been affected. Therefore, the V20 version will be postponed to March. The exact launch time is unknown. Thank you for your support.
It's worth noting that the Deepin OS is developed by Wuhan Deepin Technology Co., Ltd with the team based in Wuhan, which is the epicenter of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).
The above English announcement didn't mention how the virus had affected the team's work but the accompanying announcement in Chinese did say that since February 3, Deepin has entered work-from-home mode and no one has been confirmed to be infected.
On December 31, 2019, Deepin Technology announced that it is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Union Tech, the company behind China-made operating system Unity Operating System (UOS).
Deepin OS 15.9 has been updated to 15.11. In 2020, Deepin will also launch the V20 version, which will be equipped with smart assistants and Deepin music applications.