I thought it might be useful to pass on my impression of Zorin OS Core 17, having briefly given it a spin as a dual-boot with a pre-existing copy of Windows 11. (heavily modified to remove much of M$'s egregious nonsense)
Possibly a little personal background might help with context, I hope the following doesn't start a flame-war.
I've been using and designing all sorts of computers and hardware since the mid 70's. Frankly I've always detested *NIX, with a special dislike reserved for Linux. Unnecessary love for the command-line is another bug-bear of mine - done that for far too long, got too many T-shirts...
...sadly as all my favourite OS's have long-since faded in to obscurity I have come to settle on a love-hate relationship with Windows - On the one had I have no real issue with the base OS, but on the other what M$ does with it makes my skin crawl. M$'s latest shenanigans once more prodding me in to seriously looking for an alternate daily driver OS. Of course these days it would have to be that a flavour of Linux is the only viable alternate, so in spite of my misgivings I thought I'd try a commonly praised desktop distro to see if I could live with a Linux and finally ditch M$ for good.
So... after a bit of investigation I alighted on Zorin for the praise it's received, it being advertised as 'friendly to ex-Windows users', and having WiNE built in - I use a number of Windows apps for which there are no viable Linux alternates.
The installation process was superficially friendly enough, although I can imagine anyone with less computer experience who wanted to try to add Zorin as a dual-boot with a pre-existing Windows install will be very nervous, and possibly quite lost - yes all the options are there, but as is my experience with all Linux setups for something like 20+ years there is next-to-no handholding to reassure the user they are a) doing the right thing and b) not about to destroy their current OS install. It wouldn't hurt for the installer to explain itself better, describe consequences of actions, and assure the user all is going to plan - hey, maybe a wizard that asks what the user intends and presents options might be nice?
Anyway I do (more-or-less) know what I'm doing and so does the installer so I ended up with a functioning install of Zorin and a Windows 11 that still worked. Better than I've often managed in the past with supposedly 'friendly' Linux distros.
Of course there was a somewhat frustrating learning curve to overcome as I set up the UI to my liking - pleasant and reasonably well thought out though it is, I wouldn't describe Zorin OS as something Windows users would feel right at home using. Fine, I expected as much and feared far worse.
Ok, let's try to install Thorium - my current favourite web-browser, and as expected not included within the standard package manager. Installation was far less hassle than expected for having to do it myself - download the .deb file, run it, and job done! Amazing! Well, a little faffing while I figured out how to change the default browser and change the 'shortcut' on the 'startbar'. Again, to be expected with an unfamiliar IU and only very superficially home-like to any Windows user...
...Running said browser resulted in very, very, annoyingly having to type in my password to use it after each boot-up of the OS (yes, auto-login of course). This nettled me for it being an unnecessary annoyance that smells strongly of on of the many things I detest about Linux - passwords everywhere, even where it's obvious security is not compromised, and an addiction to the command line and 'sudo' that would make most crack-addicts blush with shame.
Bah! I'll get back to fixing this later...
Nice to see media just pop-up when plugged in - far from a given in my experience. Good to see I can have my 'Home' directory on the 'desktop', and I can drill down in to the filesystem without any Linux-ish screwing about - well done indeed! Oh, and it's nice to see my Windows partitions are automatically available - again far from a given in my experience of Linux distros, even though Linux has been able to read just about any FS since the year dot...
...then with a knot in my stomach I noted "Where are my network shares? Please don't tell me after all these years Linux still hasn't fixed this most basic of usability issues!" Yep! Another of my major bug-bears - I know Linux can find network shares of all kinds, often more reliably than windows. So why doesn't it just go find and present them to me as part of the GUI like any sensible OS should!?! This kind of very Linux-ish behaviour really, really, ticks me off. Especially as it's so unnecessary.
So with little hope in my heart I proceeded to attempt to beat the OS in to doing what it should handle gracefully without issue - Present me with all the shares it can find, and allow me access to them without drama - either because said shares are public and need NO interaction to use, or have security that should be manageable with a simple pop-up dialogue... Nooo.
After some attempts to enable something like the above functionality via the UI it became plain to me that such basic functionality is still not baked in to every Linux distro and I would have to get my hands dirty faffing about 'googling' for advice, apps to install, and command-line options to key-in. This is absolutely unacceptable for a daily-driver OS, and completely beyond anyone who's experience of an OS goes no further than "I just want my computer to do this simple task." Oh, and typical of all Linux documentation I have come across for decades straightforward instructions are very hard to find, and what there is often misses out crucial steps while often being relevant to a version of the OS you are not running! At least the rude RTFM brigade are far, far, less apparent than they once were - very well done for that.
Sorry, this is intended to be useful (if admittedly mostly negative) feedback rather than a rant - If as seems likely anyone with sense is going to have to abandon Windows as soon as possible, it would be nice if the only viable alternate OS was fit for daily-driver use. (How I wish Haiku had just a little more support)
Back to it...
Thoroughly frustrated, if not surprised, by this experience I thought I'd return to fixing the annoyance of being asked to type in my password every time I fired-up Thorium after a reboot - I'm aware this is a consequence of the idiotic way Linux handles security combined with my wanting the OS to auto-login. Never mind, that's Linux for you, but how to get it to behave..?
More 'googling' and reading, and there are answers to be found. Again, answers that are not as strait-forward as the writers seem to think, or even remotely user-friendly for someone who just wants to get on with what they are doing without having the OS get in the way at every turn... and very often answers that are not directly relevant to the specific versions of specific packages one might be running.
I have to admit at this point I decided Linux is still not ready to perform the duties of a daily-driver desktop OS, especially if a version touted as 'most friendly' and 'easiest for ex-Windows users to get along with' is anything but.
So time to uninstall, and sadly keeping using Windows (in highly modified form) until the next evil perpetrated by M$ induces me to have my next go - even if more by necessity than desire I still haven't given up on Linux after all these years.
Right, how to uninstall Zorin OS from the dual-boot system it set up for me...
You're kidding!
No friendly "Uninstall dialogue" to help me though, reassure me that all won't be borked by my possibly hamfisted fiddling, with a friendly wish for my swift return to all things Zorin in the near future?
No, I've got to wrench this whole thing out myself by hand. THEN repair the Windows MBR the grub bootloader has left in such a mess as to leave Windows unbootable if you really, really don't know what you are doing - this is utterly unacceptable!
I can do this, and did with a deal of angry muttering. But for the average user who 'Just wanted to give Zorin a go' this will possibly be the first but certainly the very last time they with give Linux a try - "This POS OS ******g borked my computer, taking all my precious files with it" will be a hue and cry all too often shouted to the heavens, I am certain.
No, "You should have backups" and "You should know what you are doing" are never reasonable replies to someone who as just lost everything, and very poor excuses that one hears from people who are trying to deflect blame rather than help.
Again, I'm sorry if what is genuinely meant as useful (if highly negative) feedback looks increasingly like a rant - I really do want to see such issues get better, but how can they if the hard-working Devs in the Linux community don't appreciate how their work is seen by the people I presume they hope to attract?
Consider;
-If I didn't care would I put so much time in to this post?
-I would like to be able to come back to Zorin some day.
-Given my long experience with computers and OS's of all sorts my frustration is trivial when compared to someone who knows only just enough to download a Linux distro and install it on their computer, wholly unaware of the disaster awaiting them.
Sorry. Best of luck with future developments.