Adding Zorin XFCE to Ultimate

I just installed Zorin OS 15 Ultimate, and I was wondering if we could get the Zorin skinned XFCE that comes in the lite version? Is there a way to add it to my current install?

Hi @2disbetter!

Your purchase of Zorin OS 15 Ultimate should also allow you to download the Ultimate Lite edition, which uses the XFCE desktop environment from the Lite edition while also including the additional apps and games from the full Ultimate edition.

For system stability purposes, it’s recommended to install the Ultimate Lite edition instead of installing XFCE on top of the regular Ultimate edition. As well, this will give you the additional Ultimate desktop layouts in Zorin Appearance specifically made for XFCE.

Should I do that, would I loose the ability to switch between the skinned Gnome themes as well?

I understand the rationale and reason behind this, just want to make sure.

I am only considering it because I’m now noticing some lag in the VM, where as standard Ubuntu using dash to panel is much snappier. I prefer the aesthetics in Zorin, and so I was looking at that. I expect XFCE will give me a big performance boost through the VM? Would you agree with this logic?

The Ultimate Lite edition only comes with XFCE, so the Gnome desktop environment isn’t included in this edition and doesn’t come with the Gnome versions of the desktop layouts in Zorin Appearance.

However, if you’re asking about the application themes (i.e. Gtk+ themes), XFCE should work with them as it uses Gtk+ as the graphical toolkit, just like Gnome does.

Personally, I use Zorin OS Lite in VMs as it’s more lightweight and should work faster in this environment than the full Gnome-based editions.

1 Like

I tried it out, and it is indeed much faster on less resources. I did however try again with Ultimate using the GNOME based DEs, and I found that I just hadn’t allocated the number of cores and threads in a way that maximized throughput. I’ve done that now, and the VM is running buttery smooth. :+1:

2 Likes