Hello everyone, I hope you are all having a stellar day on Zorin OS 16 woohoo! 
Without further or do, lets show that ABOUT!
Begin the merchandising production, we got work to do my little minions. Ahhh dang it, Fred burned himself with the flame thrower again, you just can't get good help these days.
RAM 7.5GB out of 8GB, darn you mysterious system reserve!
I tell you what, I've never heard of a Pentium R P6200 CPU before, its one of those super value nobody gives a crud about ones. Ironlake, any relation to Iron man? Did he make this CPU? 
ZORIN OS BABY YEAH!
Believe it or not guys, performance on this machine has not been terrible, provided you have an SSD. If you still got a 5400 RPM mechanical drive, performance will suffer greatly. But the mechanical HD was failing in this computer long ago, so it had to well, go. And so it did, with Samsung at the rescue, dont' worry poor computer, SSD will save you.
I have been further setting this computer up, and installing apps. I gotta tell ya, typing on this notebook computer is no picnic, you got to press these keys down hard and true, or they refuse to register. I'd take my MSI Steel Series mechanical keyboard in my notebook over this anyday! But this project is about testing, and so test we shall!
Lets see what we are dealing with and get some CPU info from CPU-X.
OK, so this CPU was made on the 32NM process, a real farcry from 14NM process that 10th gen CPU's are built on. 2.1GZ is not a bad operating frequency for a dual core though. Only 2-threads ha, explains a lot too. So now you know what were dealing with here, which can help explain any speed issues that I run into while using this computer.
All these screenshots are taken at this notebooks itty bitty screen resolution, which was common for notebooks of this ara. Manufacturers back in those days, were not interested in providing 1080P displays in value machines, and 4K was way far off! Lets now have a look at resource use with Firefox open.
As you can see, beings this is an older computer, more CPU is being used while sitting at idle, with Firefox open. 4% CPU usage, which I admit isn't a ton, but is going to add a bit to the overall heat index generated. Zorin OS 16 PRO with Gome, is using 2.9GB of RAM out of my 8GB. With a few extra apps installed since OS installation, I am just about at 20GB of usage on my 512GB SSD drive.
Zorin OS 16 PRO is using the 5.11 kernel I see, which is good, a good modern kernal will be able to help you interface with more modern hardware. Its most certainly not needed for this old machine, but is required for new computers these days, so thats a major plus in my book!
While I was searching through the OS, I did discover that Zorin no longer packages a ton of games with the OS as they used to in previous OS versions. I knew about this before hand however, because I frequent the forum. Zorin did provide a few simple games that you would also find on Windows however, games like Solitaire, and Minds,
We gamers get most of our games from Steam anyways, so it really doesn't matter. And if we want any games provided by the community, like Super Tux Kart, we can get that from the REPO so no big deal. Lets have a look at thermals!
Oh my, look how short that list is, only 2-cores! And no discreet GPU! The computer is idling at the time this screenshot was taken, were running 45C on both cores on Zorin OS 16 PRO. The Samsung SSD drive is remaining extremely cool at 27C. This is impressive to me!
The reason I say that, is the Western Digital M.2 NVME 1TB SSD drive that is in my MSI computer idles at 40C, and can easily thermal up to 60C when under heavy loads, like gaming for example. You know the general rule when it comes to electronics folks, the lower the temperature, the longer it lasts.
In testing this computer with this OS, I needed to load up GIMP to see how this machine handled photo editing, well, in this case screenshots. I used GIMP to crop the screenshots, do a little sharpening up and all that. I was surprised how well GIMP was running on this OS with only 2-cores 2-threads, and integrated Intel GPU.
So my view is, if all your going to be doing is light photo editing, Zorin OS 16 has got you covered with old machines like this. Kdenlive is pretty much going to push this computer to the limit. With only 2-CPU cores, 2-threads, and integrated GPU, you'll be lucky to move 1080P footage through the timeline, and the rendering time would be atrociously bad!
This computer came out pretty much when we were still a bit in the 720P ara, so I recommend if you do anything video editing with this machine on Zorin OS, you should stick to 720P. And if it were not already obvious by viewing the system specs, no, your not gaming with old Intel HD graphics!
Because this is for science, were going to push it anyways. Testing Youtube video streaming, in 1080P, over WIFI N connection! Well, I gotta say I am impressed. It did take several seconds longer to load into the Youtube home page, and it takes a few seconds longer to load Youtube video's.
But IMO, Zorin OS 16 performance is nothing short of stellar on such an old machine, that it actually allows me to stream that footage without stutters, lags, or buffers. It just works. General internet surfing you can expect the same performance. So if you have a machine with at least these SPECS, your machine should be able to handle it.
I've had a couple of strange issues that I don't remember having on POP OS though. Zorin OS 16 uses Gnome shell 3.38, which is the same version that POP OS 21.04 uses. However, I tried to install several Gnome extensions through the browser integration, and I was getting errors, the extensions were not able to run after installation. I never had this issue on POP OS, so not sure what is going on there.
The reason I was trying to install extensions, is because I wasn't able to adjust my screen brightness, either by the notebooks function control on the hardware level, or Zorin OS on the software level. The screen is just too bright at full brightness, so I went searching on Zorin OS, found the post from Kedric, and found Aravisians solution.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:apandada1/brightness-controller
sudo apt update && sudo apt install brightness-controller
This works perfectly! I wanted to make sure that Aravisian got my appreciation in this, cause if it were not for his post, I don't know if I would have found a working solution otherwise. Got the brightness turned down to 3/4, which was all that I needed to make the screen viewable and not overbearing on the eyes.
The screen is not super sharp clear cause its older tech, but its fairly sharp for what it is. What really hurts the screen, is it suffers from major viewing angle. If you've ever used old TFT panels from back in the day, you will know what I am talking about. Gotta have that screen positioned at the perfect angle, otherwise, we fade into grayscale, noooooooooo!
Alright, lets have a look at our CPU BLOWFISH score, and I will provide my final words.
Oh boy, were so low on the list its laughable! But we beat out a Phenom quad core, if that means anything. I don't think Phenom quad cores were any good, so thats not really saying a lot, that a dual core is beating it lol. So what is my final verdict?
I've been telling people that they can't really run Zorin OS on a dual core machine, since reports came in, that other's were having issues. I am happy to admit that I was wrong, but there is a caviet to that. What I have proven today, is if all your doing is website surfing, light video streaming, light photo editing, super light video editing, dual cores like this can handle it.
However, its important to mention, if your one of those folks trying to get Zorin OS to run on only 1GB to 2GB of RAM, that is just not going to happen. Your going to want to have at least 4GB of RAM installed, and preferably 8GB of RAM if you can manage it. If your computer gets a CPU BLOWFISH score in HARD INFO like mine above, Zorin OS 16 is a go!
I got to admit, this was a really fun experience. I am happy to report that I have been able to run Zorin OS 16 PRO on this old machine. I have not had a single crash yet, and the only weird thing I encountered was the inability to adjust brightness via OS controls or notebook controls, nor able to install and run those extensions. But Aravisians solution worked for me.
I got to do some science in testing this OS on a old machine, plus, Zorin OS brought life back into this machine. Zorin saved this machine from going to E-waste. As most certainly nobody would be willing to buy this computer for no more then 30-bucks, so wouldn't have been worth it to try and sell anyways. The cost to ship the notebook would be at least 50-bucks alone!
Also, as I continue to mess around with Zorin OS, enjoy all the pretty graphics, the delicious Jelly Mode, I am thinking now that this computer has been saved, I think I will make this be my new workshop computer. Its such an old machine, what do I care if I get oil on it and dirt? lol
I hope this has been an entertaining adventure for you guys checking out this post, as it was for me to writing it. I'd like to thank you all for your time, I think you are all positively stellar! And lastly, the question you all want to know, as a POP OS 21.04 user, do I like Zorin OS 16 PRO? The answer is most positively YES. 