I've been off and on the forum, and loved Zorin, it got me into Linux and how it could be a good OS for me. It also introduced me to the different desktop environments starting on Gnome and tinkering it and then finding XFCE. Everything works well out of the box and I rarely had any bugs. Through all this I found I enjoyed XFCE most of all and had way less headaches with X11 over Wayland. While I still appreciate Zorin and love how it's great for a new user, its loss of support for XFCE for the next version made me look around for other distros that would support it going forward. So, after some research, I am off to Devuan! Thanks for the friendliness in this forum, it made the learning experience that much better , I plan on continuing lurking, so I'll be around!
You could install the xfce Desktop in the Zorin 19 Release out of the Repos, too. What You will not have, ist the whole Zorin Lite Desgin Experience. You would only have the default xfce Desktop.
But when Devuan works for You, that is what matters.
Interestingly, I've found that a few things that I thought were an incompatibility issue in Zorin ended up not being an issue in Devuan. Like, my headphones would randomly go from connecting from high definition to low definition at times in Zorin when connecting via bluetooth, and that has never happened in Devuan (aka something I probably should have troubleshooted in hindsight, but I just powered through it lol). Also, on a personal level, I really don't like most of Gnome-looking programs, so instead of booting up Zorin, installing XFCE and then uninstalling all the programs I don't like, I'd rather boot up a more simple distro based on XFCE and then install the things I want. But originally, your recommendation was what I was going to do, and if for whatever reason if Devuan doesn't work out I still have the Zorin install
> We aim to sunset the Lite edition from Zorin OS 19 onwards, so it would no longer be actively developed as an official edition of Zorin OS. We recommend users to migrate to the standard non-Lite editions of Zorin OS (Core, Pro, or Education) to continue having a fully-supported and curated Zorin OS experience after this point.
*> * > Users who still wish to use XFCE (the desktop environment powering Zorin OS Lite) as their primary desktop environment in Zorin OS 19 and above will be able to do so by installing the stock XFCE desktop packages from the official software repositories. This option will be available to all advanced users indefinitely. However, please note that the XFCE desktop environment will not be augmented with Zorin OS-specific features or optimisations (as currently present in Zorin OS Lite) from this point onward.
Nice! I think I saw that when looking at Devuan, but I tried Plasma once before and it really didn't click. It was probably just me not taking enough time to get used to the DE, but the look and feel of XFCE really has clicked with me (probably helps that I was raised on DOS and Windows 98, so the "old" look is very nostalgic ) and it's nice to have really low system resource usage
I confess: I do not understand this oft made claim of an "old" look on XFCE or on Cinnamon.
If you apply the Zorin Theme (Zenith) to Cinnamon D.E., it looks the same or the Zorin XFCE themes, it looks the same. Where is the "old" part coming into play here?
Is it in having your tools accessible instead of hidden? Is that considered Old and Outdated, now?
I think the claim of an "old" look deals with two things, at least when I am thinking of it right now (and maybe it's more, but I cannot think of it). 1) Rectangles and squares, I think that defined, squared window borders is something that is seen as "old" and doesn't appeal to the "modern" system. I mean look at Zorin 18, that went from squared windows and taskbar to more rounded ones. 2) There's no "pizazz," there are no nice transitions like it fading in and fading out, windows burning up, or behaving like jelly. Instead, if you press a button it pops up and if you close it, it just disappears.
I will admit that probably the Cinnamon D.E. would work pretty well, but I think my choice of XFCE as my D.E. (other than how it looks) comes to 3 things. 1) Zorin Lite got me used to the D.E. so I am comfortable with it. 2) I liked how easy it was to put taskbars and docks everywhere (no, I don't have them everywhere, but having that ability is nice) and 3) I really like low system resource usage
The theme determines round borders. Not the system.
And XFCE, Cinnamon and Plasma all fully support rounded corners - on all four corners - Gnome Does Not.
Gnome only supports top corners being rounded on any notebook stack defined application, but can support all four corners on other apps - it is largely inconsistent.
So if rounded corners are a reason: Gnome is the least modern looking.
Agreed. Using Picom or Compiz, you can add all this to XFCE, but it does not come as default in base XFCE.
Gnome requires extensions. But again, I find this interesting as Jelly Mode is old. It is the old style that has resurged in a revival. In fact, Jelly Mode was previously ridiculed for looking outdated.
I also prefer XFCE to Cinnamon. I like both, but find XFCE's lower resource usage and user friendliness to be strong. Cinnamon does offer more ease of access on many settings - and is a Strong Contender.
Feel free to stick around! Some of us here no longer use Zorin but we still pop in occasionally. I used Mint most of last year and have been on Fedora with KDE most of this year.
, I plan on continuing lurking, so I'll be around!
