Hi everyone, I'm new to linux and love it alot, but my machine doesn't seem to agree. I have been on journey of different distro's and Zorin's os is great. My issues are the machine slows down after a few day, and reinstalling doesnt improve, I have reflashed the bios, and suspect there is conflict somewhere but tbh I'm no whizz, need some trouble shooting guidance thanks, Dell Ispiron 5940
How much RAM does your machine have?
Is it dedicated graphics only, or do you also have AMD or Nvidia?
How often do you reboot?
Thanks for the reply I have 12gb ram, reboot a few times a day, Intel graphic I think?
Can you please install gnome-tweaks, if you haven't already:
sudo apt install gnome-tweaks
Launch Tweaks and turn off Animations (First Option) under General.
ok done,
I can only suggest testing for now.
Given your RAM, graphics and specs... You shouldn't be seeing slowness. But you are. So figuring out the exact cause... May be tricky.
Another option may be to replace the kernel.
The likeliest culprit will lie in the Gnome-Shell.
So if push comes to shove, Zorin OS Lite (XFCE) will probably completely solve the issue. But let's test other things, first... Unless you are eager to just use XFCE.
I'll reboot and see if it improves, but i'm down a rabbit hole now so lets see if we can find the treasure thanks for time so far
I was wondering about the amount of RAM you have too until I read that you have 12GB of it, and that is more then enough RAM to run any Linux distro no matter how heavy it is. I got OS16 running on a old dual core with only 8GB of RAM, and its happy as a clam. (Although I don't know what a happy clam feels like)
However, I am a bit concerned that we may still have a memory related issue going on. Have you run MEMTEST86? I highly suggest you run that to test the RAM to make sure its good.
Having said that however, I do agree with Aravisian that Gnome shell is known to be a hog on memory, generally it uses about 2.9GB on my workstation machine under Zorin OS 16 PRO. And gnome is currently using 4.5GB of RAM on my POP OS 21.04 machine. (Which is a bit higher then normal, usually around 3.5GB)
You are also describing a possible memory leak situation as well, as I had dealt with that with Feren OS and Makulu Lindoze. I am hoping that we can help you get this figured out, and get your machine back on track soon.
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Thanks everyone for your replies, and yes I am still having issues,
I have also installed Zorin 16 on a tiny Lenovo laptop with a third of the specs of this machine, and it performs twice as fast without the issues
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-au/product-support/product/inspiron-24-5490-aio/drivers, this the actual machine but was refurbished, and hardrive added I think!
My disks are a bowl of spaghetti and hopefully that is the issues and can be untangled
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Have you recently updated the OS? I want to see what kernel your Zorin installation is running currently. In terminal......
uname -a
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Linux bobby-bobby 5.11.0-36-generic #40~20.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Sat Sep 18 02:14:19 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
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Well the good news is at least, your using the latest stable kernel on Zorin OS, that actually fixed many issues that were going on with the 5.11.34 kernel!
Do you connect to the internet via ethernet/wired connection? Or are you connecting to the net via WIFI? If the answer is WIFI, do you have any ethernet ports on that computer, and a ethernet cable you could plug directly into your router or modem?
At this point I am so at a loss as to what the issue is, as we have not found it this whole time, that I am now wondering if you have a faulty WIFI adapter. If you are able to connect to the internet via a cable, then I will have you disable the WIFI adapter and see how your computer operates then.
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Ok thanks guy's, I'm running the diagnostics tool, doing full scan 3 hours 20 min 
, and yes the computer is on Ethernet connection.
the short scan showed no issues, Thanks for your patience I'll try to be more articulate and provide information that helps you help me lol
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All tests passed on long scan, 
, When I installed the default it used the 256gb drive, and the 1tb drive was left unmounted, I'm guessing some of the partions left on the drive are from previous installs and protected file from bios and windows defaults????, I will add some screenshots, hope it helps
There are far too many partitions on the 1TB drive, and I also notice a lot of strange formats too. It looks like the partitions are having a party on your drive, come in, everybody is welcome, bring your own megabytes, and pickup a chair, there is plenty free space, like over 900GB of it.
OK, if you want to install on the 1TB drive, first thing you will need to do is delete all the partitions and format and create a single EXT4 partition. Then boot the computer up using your USB stick.
Then when you run the Zorin installer, tell it which drive you want to install Zorin OS too, tell it the 1TB drive.
I have deleted most of the partions on 1tb drive, I dont understand what the block drives are or how they got there?
The 65gb does't want join the other large free space partion
otherwise the machine still is slow, I might try and video the start up process and thrill you all with the snail pace , it's watching paint dry
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I will probably just try another fresh install, but will wait to se if any other suggestions, thanks again
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Agreed. Those can be deleted in the partition manager, then that free space reclaimed by moving the largest partition into that free space. Perform this on each one.
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