A Youtuber named Foci recently became a Linux user and wanted his girlfriend to try Zorin OS for 7 days!
The video is primarily a review piece on using ZorinOS from the perspective a non-tech person who is used to MacOS
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Very cool and interesting, thanks for sharing @WickedMoose !
It is great to see more non-tech people using Linux, talking about Linux and having ZorinOS to facilitate this is really helping with this, I think.
The problems with the camera & the noise-cancelling not working are definitely not great. Hopefully these can be fixed in future..
The problems with 'muscle memory' (procedural memory) are definitely something that bugged me the first time I used a Linux distro (Ubuntu), coming from Windows. But because Zorin OS is very similar to Windows I'm not really having these problems at all (except for the screenshot, I wish doing 'command + shift+ S would work as in Windows). This is really a plus from the point of view of a Windows user!
So, I wonder if a MacOS user like the person in the video would like ZorinOS more if it was configured like MacOS, for example as shown in this tutorial - has anyone tried it and if so what did you think?
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You can set a custom shortcut to open the screenshot tool. Go to settings >keyboard > shortcuts > screenshots > Take a screenshot interactively
Click on it and then press the keys you want: ctrl+shift+s
Then click on apply.
I also had installed mac themes on Zorin - they work well and Zorin does look like mac a little bit then. But I haven't had a Mac for myself so I can't judge that.
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I enjoyed the video, and it was pretty much what I suspected to see, coming from a non-tech savvy user. I appreciated her perspective, on her experience, with Zorin OS. It is true, that certain things don't work on Linux, which is sometimes kernel dependent. You can't expect non tech savvy users, to figure out kernels.
People need to realize, a tech savvy users experience, is not going to be the same as a non tech savvy experience. We have different skillsets in our tool box. One of us can possibly fix the problem, the other can not. This is the main scope, that should be used, when discussing Linux.
If her boyfriend was not there, she probably would have never have attempted to try Linux in the first place. She spoke of tools on MAC computers, that she has used since she was a teenager, that do not work on Linux, especially the camera, which is another deal breaker.
Having said all that, she did also speak on the positives. The 2 main positives I heard her say are.....
(1) Ethical reasons, Linux is obviously much more ethical OS to use, and safer by extension.
(2) Performance, Linux sped up her old Mac computer. I think while it had been interesting for her to see, the features of the latest MAC OS, she realized it would likely just slow that old Mac computer to a crawl. She liked how Linux sped her computer up.
Most indeed, Linux is finally placing itself at the year of the Linux desktop, especially after Windows10 support dropped. Having said that however, I do believe for non-tech savvy users, they are going to have the most trouble with Linux OS, without a tech savvy person there to help them.
This is also what killed the 2014 Steam Machine. They used a very buggy Linux OS, that was not properly taylored to the machine properly, and all the buggy behavior killed the Steam Machine, before it got to even 1000 users. A person's experience using a computer matters.
As great as Linux is, I got to be perfectly honest, its not really ready for the non-tech savvy user, if it requires a tech savvy user to fix problems. And with all the garbage from Wayland running as default out of the box, that just insures non-tech savvy users experience problems.
For a tech savvy user however, Linux is better for, cause they can solve problems. What I know we can all get behind that is, that Linux most indeed is more ethical and moral, and for that reason alone, is why many of us made the switch.
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