New to Zorin OS and not impressed

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21

Regarding the answers which telling to change the HDD to SSD, my experiences are, by using a Samsung SSD 750 EVO, it is still not much faster than the used WD 500GB 7200rpm HDD!
And I also have to think, that most of my customers will not have the budget to change any of their existing hardware, which includes the Storage Devices.
One other fact which comes into action is, the SATA system used in that old Netbook, is SATA 300, not SATA 600! so, the speed of the SSD will dramatically decrease! That applies to both: SSD and HDD!

Most of the systems of my customers are at least 8 years old and older, which applies to 90% of them! And if I like to keep my customers happy, means not increase the amount of budget needed for renewing hardware, and keep them as my customers as well!

Not so easy life!

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22

Hey hey hey.

I totally get where you are coming from, trust me I do. Believe it or not, I actually come from a poor family. But I was in a situation where I was always clothed, fed, and provided for, even with toys! Yeah, I knew collage wasn't an option for me, obviously lol.

But I graduated HS with a diploma, boy was mom proud, especially since she knew that my dad flunked out of school after the 6th grade lol! Anyways, growing up, we didn't have money for computers!

My first computer was a 386, in a 486 era, my mom got it on the super cheap for only 20 bucks. Computer was so antiquated it couldn't play any real games. But she got it to help with my schooling, and it was hooked up to a DOT Matrix Printer.

And that was pretty much all that was good for, other then the fact I was learning Windows 3.1 on it lol. I then eventually built my first 486, out of donated parts from my school. They were going to send them all out to recycling, so they let me have some parts to build with.

I can't tell you how lucky I was to secure a DX4-100MHZ CPU and 32MB of RAM. IF you know anything about the 486 era, getting those kind of SPECS, thats top tier right there lol. So I continued with hand me downs until I could afford to build another machine.

My last desktop build was a single core 64-bit machine machine, all built with used parts. I later upgraded the video card when I could. So you see, I understand what you are saying, I do. When your not made of money, and you also only have certain tech options available, you get what you can, and you don't complain.

Cause having a computer, is better then not having anything at all. My last computers have been notebooks. Two big reasons for that, its kind of a pain to build desktop computer's, its a lot of work, and a lot of time consuming hours to select the parts you need that will play nice together.

Also, parts prices have been steadly rising on parts like CPU's, GPU's and RAM. Eventually, they priced themselves out of unobtainable for me, as I have no interest in spending 5,000 dollar to build a top notch gaming desktop machine.

Notebooks are great, cause you can get a whole lot of performance in a small package, and for a reasonable cost too. For the first time in my entire life, I was finally able to buy a high end gaming notebook.

So for me, thats like a milestone. I know this was a long post. I wanna thank you for your time in reading it. Just know that I think you are pretty stellar, especially if you care. And that, earns you a star. :star2:

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23

@StarTreker: Thanks a lot for your post and answer!

Computers are my life! It's as simple as that!
Started with an 8088 and 8086 +8087! The good old NEC's!
Later on from 1968, after my military service is done, I started to study Computer Science at Zurich in Switzerland. Graduated and got specialized in Cobol Programming! Got my first Job in Hongkong in 1977, moved around in Asia for my Company, and be since 1989 permanent Resident of Thailand, where I started my own company.

Today I'm 74years old and still working! For some years I also doing some work for some Orphanages in Thailand, nearly free of charge! I just like that work and helping those who didn't have a future on their own. That's it! And that it's exactly why I'm using those old systems!

For myself, I'm just an imperfect human and like to be just that! Sure today it's not so easy to be up to date with the latest technology and my own buddy is quite tired already! Everything is going a bit more slowly than it was years before! Just, that's the real-life, so have to live with it!

OK, let's things going on! Who knows how long it will be?

Thanks again for your very informative post.

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24

Nah. That's nothing. :slight_smile:

I was so poor I couldn't afford a mouse with a working left button for my 386. As a result, I got used to using the right mouse button as primary.

This is a practice I still maintain to this day, but mainly to annoy the hell out of anyone who tries to come near my puter.

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25

Your name is Marlin, it should be obvious to you by now, put a dead Marlin fish next to your computer, nobody will want to go near it. HAHA

Something smells fishy about all this. Looks at keyboard, sheeeeet, your right! :tropical_fish:

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26

I find this hilarious. Are people so impatient that 2 minutes is an eternity. If you want faster you should go beyond upgrades and get a machine with at least 4-6 core processor, 12+ gb ram and nvme storage. Complaining about and attempting to improve an old computer's boot time, which is limited by the hardware not the os, is counterproductive. I remember waiting 3 to 5 minutes for windows to boot (95c and 98). 2000 and xp improved upon that somewhat, but boot times have come a long way.

Zorin 16, after boot, is still the fastest Ubuntu based distro available today. If you want to speed it up further, drop gnome and move to Cinnamon DE or better yet for your hardware, install XFCE and enjoy lite before it's released... only thing missing is the Zorin official layouts. You can get either here on the forum from the Tutorials & Guides category:

https://forum.zorin.com/t/top-x-1-things-to-do-after-installing-zorin-os-16/5938/24

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27

It maybe over simplistic, but boot time is the first impression that many have of an OS. Perhaps that's why MS have worked to improve the boot time of Win 11.

I obviously care about it because I watched the two boot videos above with anticipation. In my book, 2 minutes is way too long anyway but would agree a few seconds difference in a comparison in neither here nor there.

What is good about Linux are the updates and that is more important. For one thing, they are under my control. But for another, the waiting around while Windows reboots and updates again is a killer.

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I literally watched a LIVE video from LTT, where Anthony was trying to benchmark a computer, when Windows 10 suddenly decided to start downloading updates. You see, Windows don't respect you or anything you do, it does what it wants you to do.

And if you try and force auto updates to disable, well that timeframe only lasts a maximum of a week. So that means, a week later, that system is going to update, and wipe out any settings changes you did, including, turning off the telemetry.

Windows11 is going to be far worse for those who get it this month. I'll pray for them, but I think Windows is gonna put them over the edge.

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29

To add, my father bought himself a laptop because he said he wanted to do email. He wasn't computer literate.

Whenever he turned it on, which was about once a week or month, it would go into a 20 minute update and reboot cycle. That is all he ever saw of Windows and gave it up. I don't blame him.

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30

OK, I'm back on the AO722.
I installed Chrome in the meantime. too. It's working, just a bit slow, anyway better than Firefox, and I got all my bookmarks, etc. back working too! That helps quite a bit.

Regarding the CPU-Power adjustment, I'll need a bit of time with that and even learn the How-Too! It looks quite complicated because I really never used Github! I installed an app called CPUPower-Gui but is locked to max 1GHz only, as the BIOS of the AO722 predicts. Even the BIOS of this Netbook is unlocked, the CPU is locked to 1GHz! In windows, if the power is set to High Perfornance, the CPU is working up tp 1.333.5MHz!

31

Keep in mind guys, if you are using Zorin OS Core, that means Gnome desktop. And you don't have to download and install this software from Github. Many of these cool tools can be had from Gnome extensions. Far easier to install!

All you have to do is going to the Gnome extensions website, enable the Gnome extensions browser integration. Then search for the extension you want, and click the toggle to enable. This is why I am always linking to them, cause they are the easiest.

Github is a very confusing site, and even though I have been on it multiple times now, I still think its confusing. I honestly believe that Github wants their site to be confusing, because it is terribly laid out, and have been for a very long time.

If they actually cared, they would hire real website designers to produce a site that is worth a darn, but they don't want to spend the money so, what we get is a site, that looks like it was made by a child genius, who thinks everybody else are geniuses like them.

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32

Ok, I installed the Gnome Integration Extension already in Chrome. How do I now get those CPU-Power-Manager?

Thanks a lot for an short explanation.

33

OK, got it to work/installed! But that CPU Power Manager will not work on an AMD, only with Intel CPU!

Any idea how I could get the Turbo Boost on AMD CPU to run?

Thanks for any info.

34

Play both videos at the same time on the forum and let me know if zorin boots fastests

35

After boot...And it isn't slow to boot on my machine. I am running a Ryzen 7 w/ 32 GB DDR4 and samsung 970 NVMe drives though....like I said...that's the limitation of that hardware...not the os. Barely 30secs for me. Get new or upgrade....not much else you can do.

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36

After boot zorin is not slow no, but during boot it is at least for me. I have a i7-7700hq and 32gb of ram. So no i dont think its the hardware. Pop os is ubuntu based and boots much faster here.

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Forgive me...got you and your hardware mixed up with quaxth...my mistake. On his hardware he shouldn't be expecting our boot times.

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38

It is both.

Hardware will be a huge determining factor in boot time. But yes, different O.S.'s do try to optimize boot time. In Zorin OS you can optimize by disabling the unnecessary network wait service

sudo systemctl disable NetworkManager-wait-online.service

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39

Is it really unnecessary? I thought that ran until your hardware drivers were loaded so that it didn't produce an error. I didn't look it up, so am going on logic, not what it actually is programmed for.

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No, it is strictly used only by Ubuntu Server, therefor is enabled by default even in Ubuntu Desktop.