I don’t want to add any fuel to the fire. Zorin 16.3 Lite Xfce is still good for 12 months. It is their distribution. They decide how to devote resources to make Zorin how they want it.
It is possible they decided that based on time available and donations received plus other factors we may not be aware of, they can’t support two desktops. This kind of thing is common in the open source world.
Maybe if now all cost and price for everything go up it propably gived a cut cost on maintaining servers, working on two systems where xfce is a small % people.
That could be happens. Now everyone count a penny.
This is something like a the painter and the portrait he painted.
For some it may be a masterpiece and delight, but for others it may not exist.
If they decided that they no longer want to create the Zorin Lite distribution, ok, I will understand it, but without an explanation?
Why did they make this decision?
I mean, reading about the upcoming sunset doesn't mean anything to me. It's like selling someone a fairy tale about paradise.
We don't live in the Middle Ages these days.
A bit better communication?
For a very long time, users have legitimately questioned the ZorinGroups lack of communication
For a very long time, users have legitimately questioned the ZorinGroups exceptional delays.
Zorin Core is worked on and released, then work started on Lite and it is released after, so reducing to just Core does not reduce the development time.
Zorin Grid was proposed four years ago. Two years ago, the ZorinGroup tentatively stated that they hoped to release it in 2022.
The Zorin Direct Upgrade option lagged behind for years. At no point did the ZorinGroup release any Roadmap, nor did the choose to update their User Base until heavily pressured to make a comment.
We have to push and beg and plead for tidbits of information.
These are valid and legitimate concerns for a user base to have and the users showed exceptional forgiveness and patience during years long waits.
This is not an act of cruelty by ungrateful wretches.
Zorin 17 brought a lot of significant changes. It was a lot for the user base to assimilate. Many of these changes were of known contentious issues within the GnuLinux community as a whole. For example, the adoption of Wayland as a default and the promotion and replacement of Flatpak over APT. They are big deals, and after reeling from that, we got hit with, "Oh by the way, in a sideways announcement, we are dropping support for other desktops, too."
This does not mean that the user base should ever be expected to not voice discontent or protest a move made by the developers.
Remember that the developers only and sole reason for developing is to provide for the user base. The user base is not providing for the developers. We do not serve them, they serve us. Without a user base (customers), the developers have nothing.
Not everyone protests the decision. You don't. This does not mean that those that do are somehow wrong because you are not unhappy.
The ZorinGroup introduced the Lite edition in 2009 With Zorin OS 2, fifteen years ago. That is a decade and a half. If Zorin OS Lite was in itself, some kind of financial burden or time constraint, it would have been a problem a long time ago. Not after Zorin OS grew in popularity and revenue.
Importantly, when the ZorinGroup raised the price for Ultimate (later Pro), they doubled the price. They justified this decision based on Pro including Lite Pro.
Will the price of Pro be lowered to account for the lack of Lite Pro?
Zorin OS Lite was changed from LXDE to XFCE. There was no "drama."
Zorin OS Ultimate was changed to Zorin OS Pro. There was no "drama."
Zorin OS Pro stopped providing the Ultimate Games. There was no "drama."
What differentiates uhh... "drama" and reception is how significant a change is and how the users are affected. Are we to shut up and be silent when we are affected by decisions made for us and our behalf? Zorin OS is a project for the Users. They are not doing it for their health.
Why are we here? Shouldn't we all go back to Microsoft Windows, bow our heads and accept our lickings?
Let's just all do away with this GnuLinux foolishness and take our medicine.
I agree that developers can make whatever decision they see fit about their project.
Notwithstanding the above, there is a minimum of respect for the community, which is what gives sustainability to the project.
It is true that there have been distributions whose developers have decided to make changes, however, they have done it in a transparent way, publishing in the main part of their web page the reasons that led them to make this decision. Here everything is different, half hidden; besides the arguments they give are not very convincing, the Gnome desktop is heavy, it does not compare with XFCE which is much lighter.
I have installed Zorin Os Core on an old laptop with limited resources and it barely runs, even though I have disabled all the inherent features, such as multitasking and cube.
I think it's more of a resource problem (you have to consider how long it took them to release the current version).
One of the things I have always criticized the Zorin brothers for is the lack of timely communication to their community. We never know when the new version will be released, what aspects it will include, etc.
Developers technically are able to, just as you are technically able to make any decision in complete disregard of the law.
Realistically, however, decisions are limited to applicability. Developers must be
in touch with their user base with reasonable two way communication and their decisions are limited to ones that have a positive general agreement within the user base.
They cannot decide anything they want. Not if they want to maintain a good relationship with those that provide the means and support, anyway.
@Aravisian Now I know lack of trust among the Zorin brothers.
Do you remember when I asked they leave a project Zorin or selling?
The answear was denied.
How can I believe in something if I'm not sure what might be true?
When words only exist on paper?
What can I expect in the future project ZorinGroup - silence?
Another developers given information on blog or they websides.
Here is waiting only for finished product.
I remember when @Aravisian show me the funcionality xfce4.
Thinking how many things on this forum will be not usable in the future about DE xfce.
I am wondering if another distributions still will support desktop XFCE then Zorin distribution - Will he fall off his bike?
Well what they decided then it happens.
We have a choice we are freedom.
Trust has always been a gift. It is something that we choose to give to others.
You can never truly know what goes on inside of the skull of another person. There is what you would like to believe about them.
Trust is one of the greater gifts that we can ever give. It is fragile, easily broken. It elicits a variety of emotions; of bonding or of fear.
This is why we can not ever ask or expect others to freely give trust. We make efforts to earn it. And everyone, no matter how close, everyone needs a little reassurance sometimes. We cannot shift the burden of blame onto others for failing to trust us. If a spouse must leave on a business trip and during this time away, the other spouse expresses insecurities, do not accuse them of lacking security - because it is normal and natural to have them. No one can ever say with conviction "you are supposed to trust me." Provide the reassurances needed to build security.
That is effective communication.
I do not believe that in any way, the ZorinGroup had or have any malicious intentions. Breaking trust is not necessarily done with intent. It can be caused by a misunderstanding or being out of touch or from a lack of consideration or a moment of being self-absorbed.
This is true for us all, in all of our relationships.
How you can trust the ZorinGroup is based on how they provide feedback to you and the user base with open and direct communication. Given what they say and how they say it, you can then make a choice about how much you are willing to give.
It is hard to trust a Mystery. Or a silent developer. In choosing silence (either as a directed choice or from being in the habit of staying out of touch and not paying attention), the consequences become a self inflicted wound.
Hello:
I downloaded Zorin Os 17 Lite and tested it on a computer, without installing it.
When I saw the memory consumption: surprise! it consumed 2 Gb of memory, more than Zorin Core that consumes 1,9 Gb.
Is this a distribution optimized for older computers?
What are your system specs? Desktop environments will consume more memory if it's available, within a threshold. If you have a lot of memory available, it would explain why its' trying to use more.
I just upgraded to on a virtual machine with 4GB and it's using ~500MB at idle. For comparison, Core uses ~945MB. I took this screenshot right after a restart for good measure, but from here the real consumption would probably spike as more and more tasks use the memory (which is a good thing, otherwise it's unused memory).
I am not sure what happened with all the fuss pertaining to Xfce Lite.
It was expected and then suddenly people started to comment and infer that Lite was not more. I was surprised to say the least. I don't know where people came to that conclusion.
I like Zorin's Xfce Lite - it's the only Xfce I installed and used for a while. I am not an Xfce fan nor a GNOME aficionado. But I do like what Zorin did with GNOME and Xfce to make is very user friendly and fast at the same time.
Anyway, I am glad Xfce is still a thing for Zorin for at least a few more years.
The inference came from the Zorin OS Lite download link being removed from the Download page. So not entirely an unreasonable guess.
However, we could see the Lite development packages being inserted into the Zorin OS repository, along with the Upgrader Tool for it... So commented that it clearly was not discontinued.
Yet, apparently.
The developers make it clear that, as of version 19, Zorin Os Lite will no longer be available.
Have any of the moderators been able to contact the developers, to get a more detailed explanation as to why they have decided to discontinue the Lite version?
I first came to know about Zorin a year ago, when I installed Zorin 16 lite on my sister-in-law's very old laptop (i3, second gen). I was amazed at how well it ran and how good it looked. Today I upgraded that laptop to 17 lite, and I'm still amazed.
My own (much newer) laptop runs the full Zorin 17 pro version and it's superb. But I have to say that the XFCE lite version is incredible; so light on resources and almost no compromises. I love it.
I do understand the developers' position that they want to focus on one version of Zorin. I'm also pleased that they've committed to supporting the lite version for 5 years. People comparing them to Microsoft really need to give their head a wobble.
But... for me, the XFCE version is unique and amazing. There is nothing else that delivers such a modern looking OS for very old computers. So I really hope they change their minds.
Whatever they decide, Zorin remains my favourite Linux distro (with all due respect to Linux Mint and all the other great distros out there).
If it does sunset though, which I hope it's never, then it could still be revived by a community.
Maybe they could implement a paid version, exclusively for Zorin Os Lite, so they could have more resources to implement it.
Anyway, it cannot be denied that time is inexorably advancing and the incorporation of new technologies necessarily implies the use of more resources by the computer hardware.
If I manage to get PCLinuxOS KDE 24.04 as a working install I will report back in respect of my good lady's machine. I built it in 2006, an MSI motherboard with single core Athlon 64, 2 Gb RAM (maxed out), EVGA silent cooled 256 Mb AGP 8x. I could not get MX-Linux KDE to even run in live mode. Perhaps it's because PCLinuxOS does not have any element of systemd or any remnants of it like elogind!
Well, sad to report, PCLinuxOS KDE kept freezing and I got my graphics card memory size wrong, it is 512 Mb not 256 Mb. The other issue was with Thunderbird failing to like the imported profile, just would not run.
What about Void? It is better from devuan or pclos?
