In the open-source world, many know Deepin Linux. It is the distribution that dared to build an oasis in the Linux desert—obsessed with aesthetics, seamless user experience, and a unique desktop environment built from the ground up. I am Yong Wang, the co-founder and former CTO of Deepin, and a 20-year Linux veteran. In 2019, I decided to leave the battlefield I spent eight years building and return to being a pure developer. Before I start my next journey, I want to share the "hardcore" story of growing from a single developer to a 1,000-person team—and why, at the peak of it all, I was forced to walk away. 1. 2011: Adrenaline, GTK+, and "Square Wheels"In 2011, Deepin was just a "garage startup." Our office was a tiny 70-square-meter room with second-hand chairs, bright red carpets, and the sounds of developers howling like wolves at 3:00 AM as they cracked a difficult bug. Back then, the Linux desktop felt like a wasteland. The "wheels" were all square: cryptic configurations and monotonous grey native controls. I couldn’t stand seeing users struggle with poorly designed software. We wanted to build wheels that were round and smooth. One crazy memory: In late 2011, just 20 days before the release of version 11.12, our CEO suddenly suggested we ditch Gnome 2 for the brand-new Gnome 3. Any rational team would have said no. But we only had courage. I led the team to crank out 10,000 lines of code in 20 days—an average of 500 LoC per day. When we saw the Deepin logo flash onto the screen for the first time, the sense of achievement was, for us, equivalent to the moon landing. 2. Brothers in the Trenches: Passion Over CodeIn the early days, we had no biological clock. We’d nap with our heads hanging over our chairs and wake up to keep coding. Once, the entire R&D team didn't go home for three weeks straight. I remember a bet I made with "Monkey," the author of Deepin Music. He scoffed and said I couldn't build a complex list control in time. For that, we stayed in the office for over 30 hours. He was chain-smoking, and I was smashing the keyboard. At 6:00 AM the next day, the code merged perfectly. We went to a barbershop with greasy hair just to get a quick wash, then came right back to work. Collaboration in the open-source community is that pure: a shared dream + a reliable team equals more motivation than any corporate system. 3. The Peak: From 100M Funding to Linus Torvalds’ HandsBy 2015, we had secured roughly $12 million in funding. But for the technical team, the real "medal of honor" didn't come from investors—it came from the creator of Linux himself. *The moment Linus Torvalds experienced Linux Deepin * One of our proudest moments was handing a laptop pre-installed with Deepin to Linus Torvalds. Watching the "Godfather of Linux"—who is famously picky about his desktop environments—personally experience and navigate the UI we built from scratch was surreal. At that moment, Deepin wasn't just a local project anymore; it had reached the global stage. But as we moved into a high-end, 2,000-square-meter office and the team swelled toward 1,000 people, the "nursing home" vibe began to set in. I realized that once communication distance increases, a high-performance team can quickly become mediocre. I had to stop my compiler and learn how to manage, but the growing scale began to suffocate the very creativity that brought us to Linus's hands. 4. Why I Left: A Forced FarewellBy 2018, Deepin supported 70 languages with over 50 million downloads worldwide. To the outside world, this was the peak. To me, it was a long, painful "forced downgrade." I discovered that as a company evolves into a massive machine, pure technical ideals are diluted by complex interests, power plays, and bureaucracy. I was no longer the CTO who could hack all night; I had become a business machine, exhausted by endless meetings and carrying the weight of organizational "blame." I thought we would fight together forever, but the influx of capital and the sheer scale turned simple camaraderie into something complicated. The suffocating feeling of "wanting to do the right thing but having no power to steer the ship" eventually forced me to make that painful decision. I left a cause I thought I would fight for my entire life. This departure was partly a proactive choice to preserve my sanity, but mostly a forced exit pushed by reality. I couldn't take Deepin with me, but I took my conscience as a developer. To all the geeks out there:Entrepreneurship is essentially a journey to understand yourself more deeply. While the world is chasing the "next big trend," look down at the code in your hands. If you feel pain on the path to your ideals, remember: that is the sound of the system undergoing a "kernel upgrade" under extreme pressure. About the Author:I am Yong Wang, former CTO of Deepin and a 20-year Linux developer. I am currently starting fresh with my new project (小龙猫), focusing on private-domain AI computing hardware. If you've experienced the collision between ideals and reality, or if you're interested in Linux architecture and AI Agents, let’s connect in the comments! Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. as well , this person and/or