Zorin OS 17 has been Officially released:
What's new in Zorin OS 17, the top 17 improvements
- Unified search and other improvements to the Zorin menu: Search for files, calendar appointments, contacts, apps from the Software store, world clocks, and even use the menu search as a calculator. There's also now a new "All Apps" category in the default menu layout, so you can browse through all your apps in an alphabetically sorted list.
- Multitasking redefined: A new and refined design for the overview screen. Workspaces are now arranged horizontally, and you can now open the overview with a 3-finger up/down swipe on your touchpad and switch between them with a 3-finger left/right swipe, as well as the usual Super key shortcut. Double-tapping the Super key now expands the app grid, so you can open a new app by dragging and dropping its icon onto your desired workspace.
- Spatial Desktop: To take multitasking to the next dimension, we're re-introducing the desktop cube, so you can switch between workspaces in 3D. There's also the new Spatial Window Switcher, which replaces Alt+Tab and Super+Tab with a 3D window switcher.
- Refreshed Software store: The Software store sports a new design with a refined home screen and more information-rich app listing pages. Please note that we no longer include Snapcraft as a default app source for performance and user experience reasons, but you'll still be able to access it by installing snapd (
sudo apt install snapd) and downloading the Snap Store app separately (snap install snap-store). - Advanced window tiling: As one of our most requested features, we're introducing an advanced window tiling experience for power users. After enabling it from the Interface section of Zorin Appearance, you'll immediately be able to use quarter screen corner tiling, keyboard shortcuts, and a helpful popup to select the other app you wish to display side-by-side.
- Quick Settings: The panel's system indicator menu has been completely redesigned to give you more options with a more beautiful and well-thought-out interface.
- Power mode: This is a new setting to change the balance between system performance and power efficiency, which is especially helpful for laptop users to extend their battery life on demand.
- Performance improvements throughout the system: Using Zorin OS 17 should feel much snappier and smoother than before thanks to a large amount of tweaks and bug fixes at every level of the system.
- New screenshot & screen recording experience: The screenshot interface is now an overlay on the desktop, which makes it easier to capture a window, a specific portion of the screen, or the entire desktop. You can now also record a video of the screen from here, without using a third-party screen recording app.
- Streamlined pre-installed app selection: Due to popular demand, we've reviewed the app selection to include only the most essential apps in the Core edition of Zorin OS 17. The default games (like Solitaire and Mines) are no longer included to make Zorin OS more suitable for an office environment, and Maps, GIMP (the default Photos app already has basic editing features), and the (now-abandoned) To-Do app are also no longer included.
- Remote desktop with RDP: When you enable Remote Desktop sharing from the Settings > Sharing panel, it now uses the RDP protocol by default. This offers a smoother, more secure, and featureful remote desktop experience.
- Parental controls: After creating a Standard (non-Administrator) user account, you can access new Parental Controls from the Settings > Users panel.
- Better hardware support: Zorin OS 17 comes bundled with updated drivers and the Linux kernel 6.2, which is necessary to support many newer computers and hardware peripherals.
- Updated theme styling: We've refined how the desktop and apps look & feel with an updated theme, which now works with Gtk4 and libadwaita apps. We've also patched the libadwaita toolkit in Zorin OS 17 to add support for custom themes.
- Coming Soon – 2 new layouts in Zorin Appearance: ChromeOS and GNOME 2 (in Zorin OS Pro)
This is only a small selection of the many improvements in Zorin OS 17. We're sure you'll notice even more touches and improvements when using this build.