I have them both 17.3 installed on the same HDD (triple boot ).
Resource consumption:
My laptop: Acer Aspire (2012), 2 cores CPU at 2.13Ghz; 4GB RAM, usable 3.8GB
I started each OS with these 4 apps:
- Brave browser with youtube showing "terminator 2 classic trailer", at 720p
- their default File Manager app
- their default Terminal app
- their default Task Manager App, for measuring
Results:
Zorin Core: RAM ~2.1 GB, Cpu1 ~40-50% , Cpu2 ~40-50%
Zorin Lite : RAM ~1.7 GB, CPU ~35-45%
Note: in Lite, Task Manager showed in Gib so I converted; it only showed a single CPU value, so I assume it's referring to one of the cores.
Starting up:
From login screen: Core: ~15sec, Lite ~10sec
From boot menu: Core: ~1min 40sec, Lite ~1min 15sec
Initial GUI impression
On a first look, Core seems to have a few more GUI settings than Lite:
The looks themselves: for example Settings app, Core, subjectively, looks a bit better; or maybe it's just less loading on the eyes on the first look. However, in Lite, the different colors & bigger size for icons should make them easier to remember and locate later.
To Lite's advantage, I noticed that in Start menu, on right-click of an app you get Edit Application..., or for a pinned app on the task bar - Edit Launcher..., which allows you to do several things, in particular to easily see which executable is responsible and, at a click, where it's located:
A difference in IO function
My laptop's touchpad in Zorin Core is very hard to use. I thought I'd have to search for a different distro, or else use a separate mouse.
The settings you see above for Core, at Mouse & Touchpad, are hardly improving it: at lower speed, you have to swipe a lot across the screen; at higher speed, you can't be precise over small areas.
From a bit of research, it might have to do with proper pointer acceleration settings and/or implementation.
In Lite OS (but also in just Xfce DE within Core OS), the touchpad works perfectly, like in Windows, and also have the respective settings for acceleration:
So, for me: Zorin Lite is the winner, at least so far.
What made you choose one way or the other?