My experience with ZorinOS 18 Core, and its end

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Hi Zorin Team,

I want to use this post to do exactly what this section is all about : sharing my experience. This is not a post looking for someone to assign blame. I just don't really care who would/could/should be responsible for my experience, I speak from my own point of view : the end user of the OS I was handed, that I installed and that I used, squarely in the confine of the intended ways.

In a couple minutes, I will be overwriting my ZorinOS 18 Core installation with another version of Linux, looking for that unicorn version that will just work. ZorinOS did not succeed more than any other versions I installed to date. That's not worse than any of them so nobody should feel overly bad. However, it's the longest and deepest I've been invested in a distro, so it feels especially bad for me.

From an end user perspective trying to move out of Windows, there are a couple things that should never happen.

  • Having to choose my windows compositor at login to avoid Chromium based browsers to completely freeze my whole computer.
  • Constantly getting booted to the login screen in a loop because I woke up my screen from sleep.
  • Constantly needing to reconfigure my taskbar settings because of the previous error.
  • Getting my wifi completely nuked because I used the included tools to change video drivers.

I am obviously a fairly techy person, a patient person, a curious and invested person. I am willing to try Linux, I am fairly successful in setting everything up, I am here sharing feedback and looking for help and I did fix my wifi problem. In fact, booting with the previous version of the kernel fixed this problem, but I cannot get my 3 monitors to be used anymore. I firmly believe I would be capable of fixing this problem too.

The thing that I find unacceptable, as an end user, is things breaking randomly on me even when I used the included wizards, the included software and went out of my way to choose compatible parts. I cannot build any kind of trust toward the OS and I live in constant fear that at any moment, for any reason, things can, and will, break.

Again, this isn’t specific to ZorinOS, it’s endemic to anything Linux based. I don’t know if the Zorin team can do anything to control this experience, shape this experience or limit this experience, but until the completely random breakage of end users computing experiences is controlled, there will be no hope for Linux on the desktop.

It was the best ride I had with a Linux disto to date, I hope you can make something even more special, something revolutionary : Linux that is more stable for an end user than Windows. I will be there to be part of it, I’m ready to be part of it.

For all you forum users, specifically for the selfless people who helped me in the last few days, thank you so much.

See you when the unicorn arrives. :slight_smile:

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I'm curious. What will You try next?

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I installed CachyOS. First time running an Arch based OS that is not immutable. It's a learning curve! :laughing:

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I feel like you might have had a better experience on Zorin 17. I also feel like it's completely unreasonable to suggest a user use a major version that's been replaced unless their hardware is severely outdated. I've stuck with Linux and will continue to, but I agree with every one of your complaints. Some of the failures to "just work" are outside the control of the distribution, but that doesn't make them any more acceptable to someone who just wants their computer to cooperate.

Helping you get Battle.net going was memorable, not just because our conversation got eaten by the forum, but because you were such a patient, easy to instruct and easy to understand user. That you're moving on is this community's loss, I think, and I wish you better luck with another distribution. If you find that unicorn, come let me know--I'm not Zorin's target user (I stay here primarily because of this forum), but no other distro has fit quite right either. I'd love to hear if you find a "forever distro."

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Not using Zorin OS is not grounds for leaving the forum.
Many of us are not using Zorin OS.
GnuLinux is about Freedom.

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Well, fair of course, and I apologize if that came off as unwelcoming.

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I am glad you replied (Though you did not come across as unwelcoming, I was just tacking that on) because that made me aware that my highlight must have bumped and I quoted the wrong part - corrected it now.

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An Arch-based one ... Yes, I can imagine the Learning Curve. I hope it will suit You.

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Zorin is definitely not for everyone, but what I like about Zorin is that it runs completely unobtrusively for me. Just as a system should.
If I ever leave Zorin, I would try BigLinux. But so far, I'm just very happy with Zorin 18.

But BiLinux also looks really interesting and is ranked 18th on Distrowatch.

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Aravisian is correct. I do not use Zorin anymore. I use Debian XFCE. Although I now also use the Debian and XFCE forums, I still come here now and then to see what's going on. This is a good community, at least. And it's a good place to learn from more experienced "hands," as well, as I continue building up my Linux skills.

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I would, too. I distrohopped for a while before settling on Debian XFCE. Always open to hearing about what others' "forever" distributions are. For some, it's Linux Mint. For others, it's whatever, you know? Nice thing about Linux is that you always have options available (unlike Windows or Mac OS).

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In my experience, the issue with Chromium based browsers seems to be related to the "Use graphics acceleration when available option"; disabling it fixes the issue. However with limited or shared system memory video cards, you may still experience issues.

I've experienced this on numerous distros based on Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, etc so it seems to be a Chromium issue not a Zorin issue.

When you are given tools to tweak the system, there are caveats to changing the default settings. Windows and macOS don't allow too much tweaking of drivers under the hood so they prioritize stability for flexibility.

Just my 2 cents worth.

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I stopped looking for a forever distro and started building it.

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After reading the answers here, I don't think I'll be going anywhere. As a matter of fact, I decided against staying with CachyOS to go back to the good ole Ubuntu.

Partly because I'm not in the mood right now to learn another way of dealing with Linux (I wanted to see, I saw, I'm going back to my old habits for now), partly to be able to come back here and look for help around the same base OS. You guys are this awesome.

:slight_smile:

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Well, maybe! As long as my hardware is compatible and I can play Windows games, I'm willing to try. My problem is that my hardware is pretty recent so kernel compatibility is hit or miss it seems, especially on the networking side.

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I know the feeling, though my issue was never networking. When Zorin 17.3 came out, I couldn't install any distribution I tried other than Zorin 17.3. I had a 5090, and no distribution had 570s in their ISO except Zorin. Nobara is generally a much more version forward distribution, but even they didn't have an ISO ready. Even safe mode wouldn't boot anywhere without 570 drivers. >_<

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Did You tried Linux Mint/LMDE?

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I did try Linux Mint. I think I install every iteration of Mint, but it's not memorable for me.

Following my adventure with Zorin, I discovered Gnome Extension and managed to tweak Ubuntu's appearance to my liking (which resemble Zorin quite a lot actually).

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Happy to read that you found a way on Free Software. I'm curious ; if you have time to let us know about what worked better for you in Ubuntu, could you please share feedback here ?
And yes, with extensions you can get any Gnome based distro to looks the way you like. :wink:

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I have tested many different Linux distributions during the over 30 years I have used, unix and Linux. My conclusion is that the various problems of users are often blamed on hardware, different hardware.

For my part, Zorin works useably on my computers, but Mint Cinnamon works best on my stationary computer. On my Dell laptop I am testing the new openSUSE 16, it seems to work fine, but still unsure!

The desktop environment can also create problems that are mistakenly blamed on the developers of the distribution. If you are looking for a nearly flawless experience for a long time, I think XFCE and Cinnamon are a good starting point.

I will not drag this out too much. I think the negative experience a user gets can vary depending on the hardware and desktop environment. I have not had the best stable feeling with, for example, KDE plasma, which is always working under a development environment as I experience it! Zorin OS is a great operating system, and as someone said; it does not suit everyone! The best answer to what works for each individual is the user's own experience. Therefore, there are no simple answers to this question. I have read many comments on many different forums and see that the experience and problems vary greatly from user to user, regardless of distribution.

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