I bought Zorin OS on 28 November 2025 and downloaded both the ISO and the SHA256 checksum. Today, on 2 January 2026, I repeated the process using the same download link.
Result:
Filename is identical
No version suffix like .r2 or similar
But the file size is different
And the SHA256 checksum is different as well
This raises some concerns for me. For a security‑focused system, silently replacing an ISO without changing the filename or version number is not ideal. It makes reproducibility and integrity checks harder and can undermine trust.
My questions to the community:
Is this normal behavior for Zorin OS
Do they silently refresh ISOs from time to time
Is there any official documentation about rebuilds or updated images
How do you evaluate this from a security perspective
I would appreciate any insights or official clarification. Right now, this seems questionable and worth discussing.
What is "Zorin OS 18 Core PA 64-bit" edition?
There is also a checksum for 17 Core PA edition.
Never heard of them before seeing this.
What is difference between "Core" and "Core PA"?
Also can't see a download link for Core PA on ZorinOS website.
As for:
Maybe Pro does have a r2 version, if its SHA256 has changed, just not labelled as such ?
Hi,
I think your question is important, and our experience with Mint may help show why.
Our local association recycles old Windows machines to be give away. Following widespread advice we have been using Mint XFCE. This distro is rightly famous for user-friendlyness and minimal system requirements.
To play safe, I always use a very recent download; but there's no "build" number and as I don't save the checksums I don't notice when they change.
In mid December 2025, the the built-in keyboards of newly-converted portable computers no longer worked correctly. It looked like a hardware fault, except that it was the same on different computers. The bug was noted on the Mint forum (only for Cinnamon at first), but is hard to track because the downloaded iso files have identical names. It only affects non-English keyboards - we're in .fr
"Official" replies were not too helpful and I saw no information on a fix, nor on whether or when we can revert to an earlier build.
Incidently, it's the third fatal bug we encoutered with Mint in 2025. That's why we're reluctantly distro hopping and will try Zorin Core. Our small team will then have to learn it and re-do our 'getting started' arrangements.
In conclusion, mainstream distros destined to replace Windows for home, school and small business users really do need quality assurance to professional standards. I would add to this thread a proposal that each build should be provided with a brief and update summary for non-specialists. My personal opinion is that users of currently-free OS and applications should, as with Zorin, be expected to pay a small amount for the services; unfortunately, we lack cheap and convenient means for legally transferring the money between countries to small providers.
