If they could keep it within 1 year everytime I would say not that big of a deal but by the time they get the 22.04 version out it will be pushing time for 24.04. They are going to be about 1.75 LTS versions behind.
They do have a lot of ambitious projects going right now and hopefully once they get those done they can move to the next LTS faster in the future. Waiting 6 months or so after the LTS is released is probably a good idea it gives Canonical time to find and fix most of the bugs before it ever effects Zorin but 1.5 years is defintely pushing it.
They really do a great job. I wonder why the team has never grown? I would think they could afford to bring on at least one other developer.
As Artix OS states on their slideshow during install is a frame from The Matrix of Morpheus saying "Did you know systemd is an Agent?" The coordinator of my Linux User Group told me that systemd is like giving your computer a bar code that anyone can read. Apart from that it is bloatware. Boot times are so much quicker than with systemd. Pulse Audio is not much better. I am running Antix 2022 with no Pulse packages at all, just ALSA and YouTube videos play perfectly in Firefox.
While all opinions have importance and while I do not fully understand systemd I do recognize that the vast vast majority of distros support it and believe they can not all be wrong.
Canonical/Red Hat etc. especially are not going to use anything that makes their product worse.
Understanding why they have SystemD is important.
In Canonicals case, they followed Debians lead on it. Debian adopted it because one of the lead developers personally knew the developers of SystemD - He later admitted that he never actually tested SystemD, but promoted it heavily to benefit the SystemD developers.
SystemD did, however, bring some things that many people felt were improvements.
It also brought other problems, being so integrated and buggy. And browsing this forum, you can find all the troubles of Pulseaudio... Pulseaudio undeniably makes things worse.
And both written by Lennart Poettinger who is now working for Microsoft. Red Hat employed Poettinger who wrote systemd who in turn foisted it onto other distros. If Red Hat had it's way it would have removed the GNU element /etc which in turn would prevent you from making your sound card from working. So glad to have found a KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) OS! Whilst a lot has been espoused about Pipewire, even that is not needed, just pure ALSA. If Antix can do it, why can't others?
While I can accept it has issues. Canoncal/Red Hat/Mint/Debian/Basically every distro is not going to use something unless it makes their lives easier (which indirectly improves the overall product by giving them more time) or it improves the product.
I for one can say that managing system services is better after systemd than before. But I am not going to pretend to know everything about it.
Because the others feel their product is better off with it than without it. If Systemd was not good for Ubuntu you can bet your bottom dollar it would not be there.
But it is possible to disagree on what "good" means and that is where distros that do not use systemd come in.
My parents in law are still using Zorin 15 (on 18.04 base) and they don't have issues in their simple daily usage. Some native apps were replaced by flatpaks and snaps in the last years, so they are still updated regardless of their original package base. And that's how it should be for "normal" users. Of course if you're a developer you probably need recent libraries and compilers, and if you run your distro on new hardware, a recent kernel would serve you best. But for 95% of Zorin target audience I think using a 20.04 base won't be a problem. In my opinion, in the future Zorin should primarly ship flatpak or snaps apps by default, so that an eventual delay in relases won't break user's daily work.
I donāt really have any issues, as for anything that DOES need a newer version of Ubuntu, I can just create an Ubuntu 22.04 container using Distrobox
I use Zorin as my daily driver now and have accepted its limitations because of things I do like about it. Newer kernel builds have a lot of fixes especially for gaming that are not in older builds. So every gamer on Zorin (not using GameMode) is taking an FPS hit by being on an older kernel. Luckily Zorin does update the kernel past what 20.04 does but it is still behind Ubuntu 22.04
I understand holding it back 6 months or so past the LTS release to allow bugs to be found and fixed. You would think with how far they hold it back that Ubuntu LTS would be a buggy mess but that is far from the truth, so why do they hold it back so much and what benefit does that have for the user?
As far as packages go I think as much as possible should be native Deb files. Snaps and Flatpaks are less space efficient. (Though I use a lot of both on my system)
To be absolutely honest they REALLY REALLY need to deliver something on Zorin 17. It has been a long wait and it needs to do something to show it was worth the long development.
That is a heck of a solution for something that should not be a problem in the first place. While I use VMs you lose a ton of performance and I would definitely not want to rely on one for anything I needed. (Though the use case of what you meant is probably closer to something you only need every once in a while)
But the issue is what advantage is given to the user by being so far behind? Stability would be the obvious one but typically when someone is setting up a server (and they want to use Ubuntu) they are going to use whatever the latest LTS is. So Ubuntu LTS is stable enough to be used for devices that need 99.9% uptime but not home users?
I am not coming after you btw. As I said I have accepted these limitations I just question why they exist in the first place.
Distrobox, unlike a traditional VM, uses Podman or Docker to run a container. This means almost no performance is lost and virtualization doesn't need to be enabled. I've used it on machines with Core 2 Duo CPUs before too.
You know I actually totally misread that. Distrobox is a good solution, Ive used it myself in the past. It can be annoying to configure for some stuff I use but once it is. It is fine.
Something similar is what I expect as well. Staying so far behind probably puts less work on their end. I expect them to use LTS releases. I just ask they do better moving to the current LTS