Are there any other apps you want pre-installed?

I think it would be even better if Zorin OS had some apps pre-installed. If you have any, feel free to comment.

Synaptic

It is a well-known GUI front end for APT. The UI is modest, but it handles package installation and uninstallation reliably.

Font Manager

Font Manager literally gives you the ability to manage your fonts. What I like about it is easy font substitution. For example, Helvetica is substituted for Arimo by default, but you can change it to Inter to improve readability in exchange for compatibility.

Firefox ESR

Without the hassle of frequent upgrades, Firefox ESR is stable.

6 Likes

I definitely think the @staff tag for the ZorinGroup is appropriate for this thread.

This can be a long and very specialized list, depending on members' uses. Like mine...

python 3.9 & 3.10 (additionally)

VS Code and Codium

IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition

node.js

Nemo

Slack & Discord

Evolution

Plasma

java 7 & 11 sdk

I could go on, but I'm not going to list every piece of software I have, not to mention my configuration is really developer based. Not all Zorin users will be developers

Agreed!
My recommendations are :point_down:

  1. Video player celluloid
  2. Image viewer gthumb
  3. Flatseal for Flatpak users (optional)
    4. shell defaults to zsh
2 Likes

None, the less the better. All have preferences and if all should be included it would be a monster of bloat. The Pro version is already big enough in size (5.6 GB as I recall it).

What I would see is that minimal installation is actually minimal. Now if you choose it LibreOffice, Gnome games etc. is still installed.

5 Likes

I carefully listed only 3 apps because I do not want Zorin OS to become bloatware. Your criticism misses the point.

2 Likes

I don't think so, you're been over-sensitive that I came with a counter argument.

1 Like

So what if we replace the old apps with the newer suggested ones
so things will be constant it terms of bloat

1 Like

Note, I didn't say that Zorin OS shouldn't come with pre-installed apps - I just think there's should be a balance between bloat and useful starter apps. Replacing older apps with an alternative seems logical enough.

5 Likes

+1 in favor of @Storm's opinion to include nothing but the bare minimum to have a functioning system that appeals most users, and let them install their system to their needs.

However, I still have a few suggestions:

  • Flatseal, as mentioned above. Since Flatpak is already installed it would be nice to have this as well.

  • Gnome Tweaks. Obviously not for the Lite version, which uses xfce instead, but a lot of commonly asked questions have their solution in this app (thanks again to @Storm for introducing me to it).

4 Likes

+1 for Synaptic. Especially so because for newbies, it's got grouping (under the 'Sections' button) that lets them find apps they want or need based upon what they want to do.

4 Likes

I lean that way too Storm. I'd rather spend time installing what I want, need, as opposed to the opposite. Lately I've been doing the minimal installs, and things seem to run smoother. For Me! And my updates are a lot quicker too with less things to update. I do appreciate having that install option.

1 Like

True Hackgets. You picked 3, and 3 good ones. Now times that by how many others would want their 3. Could end end having a quarter of the software store having to be installed.

1 Like

What is the advantage of using this browser over the normal FireFox ?????? .... :thinking: ..... I'm currently looking for a new one ..... :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like

I never really did like Firefox... back in the day, I had a huge Javascript web page that just reloaded gobs of images on a spammer's web page to increase their hosting costs... it'd continually crash under Firefox because Firefox had a memory leak for the longest time. Another web page constructed a fake (but plausible) persona and ordered from the spammer's web pages with fake credit card numbers which passed the Luhn checksum test, so the spammer couldn't know it was a fake card until they tried to charge it, whereupon their card provider would charge the spammer $2.50... the world's largest spammer, I cost him on the order of $1 million the first month I released that code to the public... even banks were running it, because they were tired of the refinancing spam scams that stole people's credit card info. LOL

That crashed under Firefox repeatedly, too... I spent an inordinate amount of time getting the code working under Firefox.

So when Chrome came out and the code was stable in it, I switched from Internet Exploder to Chrome. Then Google went evil and started monetizing everyone's data by essentially spying on everything they did, so I switched to SRWare Iron (Google Chrome with all the corporate spyware stripped out). I've used it for about 13 years now.

Although today I had to install MS Edge... apparently when you're filling out forms to have a federal background check done for a sensitive job position, the web pages only work on MS Edge. I'm debating whether I should keep it around... I'll likely delete it.

If you are happy with the release channel, there is nothing I can say...

1 Like

The reason I asked is because I was looking to change browsers from Vivaldi to something else ... tried Opera .... Brave .... and just downloaded Firefox but none of them could import ALL my bookmarks .... passwords and info ....

They only each managed to move a handful of the hundreds of like items I have stored on Vivaldi ....

Why change ???? .... because Vivaldi is now taking 35 sec to load again .... after a Zorin update ..... last time it was a minute and a half .... fixed that by removing the checked Hardware Acceleration in Web pages also set History to 1 Day saves .... for a while it opened in 10 sec or less .... now taking much longer ....

Also Vivaldi has incorporated the open PDF files from with in Vivaldi .... which is a pain .... but in all fairness so do most browsers these days ..... I have again removed that feature only to have it reappear every time a PDF file is opened ....

Found out that is because Vivaldi is set in my drop down right click menu to Vivaldi to open PDF Files ..... if I choose Open with other Program my normal app Master PDF Editor 5 can be selected BUT Vivaldi always opens PDF's first if I don't select other ....

No idea how to change that but as I don't open that many PDF's I guess I can just put up with that one .....

After trying these over browsers I decided to just stay with Vivaldi as I love the way it can be customized and I have been using it for years ....

But thanks for your reply .....

.pdf mimetype, remove Vivaldi as an option. Though removing Vivaldi works just as good...

1 Like

With Chrome's increasing dominance, choosing a browser is very difficult. It is easy to fork an open source browser, but it is still difficult to outperform existing browsers. It takes a long time to build trust, and in the meantime, developers may be tempted to sell their work.

3 Likes

I take it that that is in Systems Settings/Preferences/PDF ..... hope so because that is what I did .....

Thanks

Actually, you listed two.
Zorin OS comes with Firefox - you merely suggested a modification to an existing install.

I agree with Synaptic. and both of these touch on:

It is realistic that the user can remove and replace at will. It is notable that "distro as is" influences the users - and that we on the forum can educate, discuss, give opinions or disagree.
@zenzen mentioned Gnome Tweaks. On this forum, we often end up suggesting the install in order to proceed with helping the user.
This one suggestion is worth some scrutiny - since Zorin OS Core does come with Gnome Control Center installed. Does Gnome Tweaks perform something that Control Center does not? Does it perform it better or in a way that is better for the end user?

There are good reasons to keep the Zorin OS .iso file as small as possible.
And the forum also has a thread specific to supplying suggestions to users for what to do after installing such as setting up zsh or alternative software.

Suggestions in this thread can help enhance the initial Zorin OS out of the box experience, not necessarily add to the Zorin OS install.

3 Likes