using Zorin OS for the first time, any tips/tricks? preferably ones that will not break the Zorin OS Upgrade app... lol!
Thank You
Hi and welcome. As I understand it you have successfully installed Zorin on your iMac. Please take a look at the Unofficial Manual I authored for Zorin 17. There are a few tips on various things in it.
Welcome to the Forum!
When Zorin is already successfully installed, it depends what you want to do with it. I mean playing Games or simply use it for Office, Mail, Internet, Streaming.
A couple of common Things:
- Update the System after Installation
- Turn on Firewall
- Look in the ''Additional Drivers'' Tab in
Software & Updatesif there are Drivers offered - Because You have Core: Install the Extension Manager for managing and installing Gnome Extensions
- Install Gdebi as Tool for installing .deb Files
- Install Codecs
Welcome to Zorin OS 
I thin I would first advice taking things slowly, if this is your first time using any Linux distribution. Keep an open mind, as something will inevitably be different as you're used to doing them in other operating systems.
For some general advice you can checkout this thread. It's a long list, and somethings may be out of date, so don't just go in and start installing things randomly:
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Hello and welcome!
Sadly Apple proprietary hardware might not always work out of the box.
This Website can help you to see if your iMac works out of the box with some Linux distros: Apple iMac16,2 Computers
If something doesn't work it's likely that someone already have a workaround.
I hope this help
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Got one myself -- Picked it off eBay for ~$250!! (had to SSD swap though..)
To enable backlight control - edit grub and add:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_backlight=video"
Sound... haven't gotten the internal speakers to play nice BUT - cheap pair of Walmart speakers work well. And, whatever you do decide on - PulseEffects makes it sound better lol
Would suggest using the 'intel-media-va-driver-non-free' driver for graphics, installing 'zorin-os-restricted-addons' and 'zorin-os-restricted-extras' AND 'intel-opencl-icd', install 'libusb-dev' and purge / remove 'brltty'...
Use X11 for the desktop, Wayland lags..
WiFi didn't need drivers, but might need a different one.. Getting decent speeds, but nowhere near what I get on other distros so I may play with it some..
Would definitely recommend swapping to SSD if you already haven't.
MacOS look / feel is extremely easy - just need icons / cursor themes and the Zorin Dash plus Magic Lamp effect turned on.
I'm still thinking if I had to do anything else to get devices going... cam was okay, no driver needed there either (iSight). OH - the SD card reader doesn't work OOB in pretty much any distro / Linux kernel.. So, that one may need a driver but I never got it working on my side.. I have a USB card reader that works just fine 
Current ZoriMac 17.3 (I always find some witty host name for my machines lol..):
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