Earlier today a new member, Fabrizio, made his first post on this forum in the category General Help, which starts out: "I've been using Zorin OS 18, and I'm really satisfied and positively surprised about the environment."
What caught my attention were the words "positively surprised." I thought "That could be part of an excellent tag line for Zorin OS.
"Zorin OS - You'll be positively surprised."
It's short.
The double meaning is obvious.
It counters negative assumptions of many who've tried Linux in the past.
It counters the assumptions of those who think Linux must be unfriendly and non-intuitive.
It speaks of not a mere positive experience, but of a surprisingly positive one, "better than you think and we're not kidding."
It's the kind of thing that converts curiosity into action.
After all the advertising slogans that conveyed how easy it would be to switch from Windows to Zorin, I was rather disillusioned by how difficult it actually is. For me, the advertising promises (2 GiB RAM would be enough for Core) did not come true.
I find that those with old devices >10 years old, especially those that only have a legacy BIOS and an older Nvidia card, often encounter problems and there are no official help pages from Zorin how to do the installation.
Compared to some other Linux distributions, Zorin is simple, but it is still often difficult to get everything working under Linux (Nvidia graphics cards, WLAN, fingerprint, camera, printer, speakers, microphone, Bluetooth devices, etc., suspending function).
I have to agree. Transitioning to Linux (even for tech savvy) has to be considered as a "Project".
The opportunity to dual-boot does allow for a protracted trial period, to iron out issues before committing totally. Even then, some will still have some essential apps that are only supported on Windows, where the likes of Wine etc fail to run them. So dual-boot remains a simple option in that case, for me anyhow.
What I recall over the decades of Windows OS use, was a lot of troubleshooting, a lot of trying to get things to work, digging into the Registry... a lot of friends and family turning to me to help solve computer issues.
I left Windows OS before 10, because... well, no need to explain.
Maybe it has improved in that regard. But my experience has been, and for a long time, not much better.
I am not into marketing and... Ah... I don't suspect the ZorinGroup needs a lot of help in it, certainly not from me.
But as one upbeat thread among many that exist to cover the troubles; maybe let this one be a standing positive note.
@Forpli's point fits the thread and stands on its merit. But I also hope we don't get carried away looking for ways to suggest Zorin OS does not measure up.
For most users - it is a positive experience. For me, when I transitioned over, it was a very frustrating and trying experience mostly due to my expectations and my ignorance of the system causing me to over-complicate solutions.
Like trying to install a tar.gz, instead of realizing I could sudo apt install it.
Since then, despite seeing many user issues on a HelpDesk, my own experience has been primarily smooth, never had printer or sound issues, or Nvidia dire failures...
Just offering a balancing beam for points of view, here.
