Assalamu Alaikum, hi! It's been a long time for me posting here, so here I go, sharing my thoughts on Zorin OS.
Although I couldn't unfortunately use Zorin OS for long, I have to say, this has been the best Linux distro for me. Since childhood, I have been a mainly Windows user, and I could actually live without Windows, thanks to Zorin OS. Zorin OS made my transition into the Linux world so easy. See the UI, and you'll immediately feel familiar, whether you're from Windows or macOS. The performance is as wonderful as the UI, Zorin OS ran faster than Windows 7 in fact for me (an OS from 2009 vs a modern OS)! The software store was also awesome, had a lot of apps.
We can't avoid the requirements though, the smooth performance and UI all comes for just 1.5GB RAM, even 1GB RAM with Lite! When the laptop became so slow with Windows 7, 10 and 11, Zorin OS was a saviour for it.
If I had a chance again, I'd download it once again, no cap. GG, Zorin OS!
What are your thoughts on Zorin OS? We'd be interested to hear from y'all as well!
I really do hope that some of those users who won't be able to get Windows 11 will try Zorin OS, it will be a lifesaver for those PCs! Nobody would like about hundreds of millions of perfect PCs going to waste, right?
There are other distributions offering xfce, some without the burdensome systemd, such as PCLinuxOS Debian releases (which also have Plasma, Budgie, MATE, and Cinnamon DE's). MX-Linux does a nice xfce.
Then something totally different, Q4OS TDE, even 32-bit available. I am just correcting a big error on my last Vimeo video. Will post back once I have corrected, and, added more to it.
I agree here, I used both Windows and macOS and Zorin was like a nice combination of the two. In fact to begin using the desktop I just randomly starting using keybinds I knew from either Windows or macOS and the results were surprisingly similar.
For me Zorin has been very stable and reliable and a pleasant system to use, and it looks good. I am on the Core desktop and everything is pretty much set up out of the box, as far as I can jump in and use my keyboard to do about everything without having to fiddle around creating and memorizing new keybinds or go agonizingly poking around with the mouse.
Yes, what you're saying is correct, in general, Linux distros (including Zorin OS) does support:
Installing a new desktop environment: I did try KDE Plasma on Zorin OS VM. Not only that, you may not like certain distro but their UI is wonderful, fret not, you have a way of bringing that to a distro of your choice.
Like @swarfendor437 said, there are a lot of distros with different desktop environments, some having variations of the same distro (e.g., Zorin OS Core and Pro uses GNOME, whereas Lite uses XFCE).
True enough. Asus once made a mistake with providing the world with budget laptops with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of disk, all soldered to the board, no extensions possible, just because of the constraints of a cheap W10 license installed on it. After the first Windows Update the thing was rendered useless because W10 did not have enough space on the disk anymore to perform further updates. That thing has been laying on the shelf here for a couple of years until it was happily brought back to full and happy service via an install of Zorin17-Light on it.
I can beat that! eeePC netbooks with Windows XP home and FAT32 on an SSD with two fixed partitions, 4 Gb for the OS, 6 Gb for the data. I have told this tale before. The unit in question had been used as a screen display for a Humanware Braillenote which became obsolete once they could connect to a small monitor. My supervisor wanted it for work. After an XP update that failed (again no space), I searched to see if the OS could be put on the 6 Gb partition - no, the eeePC would not allow it. Zorin OS 6 to the rescue! I created a /boot partition on the 6 Gb partition, installed / to the 6 Gb partition and made the 4 Gb partition /home. I even managed to get a standalone Office 2010 installed using Wine and added Win 2.7-7 package that gave the Windows 7 bootloader image and all of the MS Office icons were correctly placed in the Menu. ... and she never touched it! Aaaaarrrrggghhhhh!
After all that work, thats how she treated it, by never using it? See, stuff like that, is why I don't do computer repair as a side hustle anymore. Its far to much stress, all to do it for free, and not have the work appreciated.
Now days, I am very selective on that sort of stuff. From now on, you should charge the normal rate for doing computer work for others, 100 dollars per hour. If they don't want to pay that, then they can buy a new computer. No more free rides!
I'm a brand new Zorin 17 core user and I'm gladly surprised . I had used Mint in the past (also used Elementary and Ubuntu), then moved to Windows for a little of gaming and a few days ago I decided to move back to Linux. I performed a research from scratch to decide which distro to use and chose Zorin.
Love the speed and apps. And the desktop too. In the end that is what a OS is about for the plebs: you want to enjoy using your system. The only thing that caught my attention was the absence of an option to customize the lid close behaviour lol. That was weeeird. Hope somebody take note.
As an Addition to @StarTreker's Comment: The Picture shows Gnome Tweaks. You can install it in the Terminal with the Command sudo apt install gnome-tweaks
My thoughts on Zorin - it's the best distro that I've found and I now have it running on two laptops.
That said, I continue to be annoyed by the incessant desire by the OS to update and require a reboot. I don't mind updates but every 3 days is too much. I can't seem to get this under control. There's an option to delay updates (up to 2 weeks I think) but that doesn't seem to work.
One of my laptops I use for development and to host a MariaDB database. It's something that should not go down unless it's planned. Since I have other things to do, I can't plan reboots every week.
I love the Zorin UI but I may go looking for a server distro for the DB machine.
These Reboot's depending strongly what Packages will be updated. When it happens several Times, it is simply a bad Timing of the Updates. In common Reboot's in my Experience are more an Exception. One Update, where You can always expect a Reboot is when the Kernel gets updated.
. I had used Mint in the past (also used Elementary and Ubuntu), then moved to Windows for a little of gaming and a few days ago I decided to move back to Linux. I performed a research from scratch to decide which distro to use and chose Zorin.
