New To Zorin?

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I have used Zorin, since it was version 13. I'm not new to it by any means. My use of it has always been inside a virtual machine. It has allowed me to get the feel of not only Zorin, but other distro's as well. Zorin has always made me feel "safer" as it has the Windows feel to it.

Last month my computer crashed and I was faced with a choice. I could reinstall a backup to Windows 11 or I could bite the bullet and install Linux as my OS. It did not take long to render my decision based on how Windows crashes, hangs and is a general headache on other things. I decided to install a better option. And it was nearly free - I paid for the Pro version.

During the installation, I was crying over the loss of my windows software collection. This stuff is not cheap - and the pinch in my wallet made me very unhappy. Wine can only go so far in installing things - it's anything but perfect.

From a business perspective I needed something that was going to allow me to work with documents and PDF files. I needed to be able to create, merge and edit them as I needed. I paid $200 in Windows software for something called Kofax, and it did everything in one application. It was so helpful to what I needed. Now, I had lost it. Shopping for new choices was a like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

I settled on the following programs, which has made my office work highly manageable. I offer this list as a help to anyone who is in the same situation, wondering what to use.

LINUX SOFTWARE:

LibreOffice
VueScan (Paid version) - Worth every penny. It found my printer on my network.
PDF Arranger
indiPDF

Windows Software
(These programs that are Windows based. They are programs that I thought I had lost. They work flawlessly in Zorin. I recommend them.)

DreamCalc -- Company out of business, I have my installation key.
GMX PhotoPainter
SmartPhoto Editor Studio
PortraitPro Studio 23
Color Palette (Coffee Cup Software)
HTML Editor (Coffee Cup Software)
mIRC
Password Agent

The last program here is a godsend. During my years using Windows, I've amassed over 200 passwords with registration codes and websites. That program not only works in Zorin, but the data file can be read on your Android phone. There's an app from the same people who make the program. You can view your data file right on it. My digital life in a password file. I was able to keep it without having to make another database with god knows what.

As for gaming -- everything I have for games was installed using Steam and Lutris. I thought I had lost my gaming collection; and that is not the case. If you have windows games, then you can try and use Lutris to install them. (Not every game I had installed.)

These are my two cents for new users who are coming from Winblows.

I'm here if you have questions about what I use.

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I think you mistyped a version number, there was never a version 13 so you must mean either 12 or 15. :wink:

I cover useful applications in the Unofficial Manuals I have created.

I also purchased VueScan Pro whilst in lockdown. I also purchased pdfStudio Pro by Qoppa, bought out by Apryse and now no longer being supported, wanting me to move to Xodo, and you guessed it, a subscription model!

In respect of pdf applications I recommend you consider these additional applications available to you:

Okular pdf viewer can (could?) also view Presentation files if appropriate backends installed.

L.I.O.S. - Linux Intelligent OCR Solution.
This can extract text from a pdf, but for it to work you also need to install speech-dispatcher either via the terminal or Synaptic Package Manager.

ocrmypdf This is a commandline tool that if you have a pdf that has images of text it can make the pdf readable for text extraction and if the normal command does not work, applying the option of --force will usually get the results you need.

pdftk pdftoolkit. Useful if you have a corrupt pdf. During lockdown working from home until I retired end August 2021, I was experiencing hard drive failure right in the middle of producing a modified AS Physics mock exam paper. The pdf I was modifying became corrupt so when the new hard drive arrived, pdftk restored the essential elements when it came to the text. However I did not want to have to redo all the modified diagrams I had created in Inkscape so what saved me not having to redo the diagrams was LibreOffice Draw (Side note: you can view pdf's in LibreOffice Draw as well as MS Publisher files but you cannot edit them backout to native file formats).

In respect of Office Suites I was so thankful I purchased SoftMaker Office 2018 Professional at the bargain price of just under £25 with a 5 machine licence that could include any mix of Windows, GNU/Linux, or MacOS machines, just months before lockdown. It was the only Office Suite that was fully compatible when submitting modified documents to the workplace, LibreOffice Writer files saved as .docx were not showing correctly on MSOffice 2019/365.

They have just released a 2026 version but it has a major bug, so I got a refund on my upgrade. If you can afford it whilst it is still avallilable, I would go with 2024 Pro. If not you can always give the free version a try:

My workflow was a lot faster using TextMaker over MS Word; you can delete tables completely, not simply cut and left clogging up the clipboard!, copying and pasting tables from Okular would drop the document default font to basic roman - not an issue, just had to highlight all the cells, press Ctrl+ Space and the font in the cells changed to the default set for the document.

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Thank you for this. :slight_smile:

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I would advise you download the Unofficial Manual for Zorin 18 Core Mk.III final for more in-depth detail about the pdf apps.

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Thank you for this.

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