The promises of ZorinOS

Hey there folks, I’ve been a silent observer and “enthusiast” of ZorinOS for the longest time. Now though, I think the silence should be broken by me since my interest about the OS has grown too much. In my freetime I like to research information security related topics and write about them on a blog, even though I’m not a professional.

Something that has always bothered me though, is the documentation of software and operating systems in general. Since I’m also greatly interested in security and I deem ZorinOS as something of great importance, I’ve always wanted to dig deeper into it.

As you can imagine though, digging through an entire OS is quite exhaustive and time consuming. On the frontpage ZorinOS promises great security benefits from the Linux kernel, but I’m unsure of the definition, since Linux (like most other kernels/operating systems thingies (I know a kernel and OS aren’t the same)) has its flaws.

I personally just wish ZorinOS would give a deeper spin to Linux itself, since so many promises on the frontpage are entirely based on Linux and aren’t even explained slightly or in a more deeper manner, to understand them from a logical or technical comprehensible point of view.

I’m aware of the fact, that the OS is more focused on regular people or people that aren’t that tech savvy, but I wish we had a solid foundation or explanation how ZorinOS is different from other operating systems or behaves differently.

Personally I would like to start a discussion, about whether we as a community should start to document ZorinOS, or if it would be done internally. I’m also interested to hear from the dev team, how ZorinOS differentiates in terms of security, reliability etc. from other OS’s.

Thank you very much for your time and sorry if this text sounded aggressive or something at some points

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Zorin OS 15 is based on Ubuntu 18.04, Zorin OS 16 will, I assume, be based on Ubuntu 20.04.

Ubuntu has a page on security here.

I’ll re-read your comments and add my personal comments later.

Thank you very much

@Lucaz,
Some security related items can be found on the Forum here:

Unofficial manual for Zorin 15 here:-

Thank you, but I meant more things like stack-smash protection, ASLR, Kernel randomization, W^X etc.

I’m aware that Linux already implements a bunch of stuff like this, but it’s really just there and existing. I wish more people would be striving for a OpenBSD approach in terms of security on that side and reliability like FreeBSD

For me, it wasn’t so much about configuring a specific service to be secure or something. From my point of view, security out of the box is way more important for the “Linux beginner”, which is kinda ZorinOS’s target.

Which is why I have moved to Devuan 3.0 - chose sysinit over systemd as been advised systemd is like having a barcode that anyone can read. Have managed to install all the ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) packages before removing bloated Pulse Audio - if you try and remove Pulse Audio in Ubuntu it disintegrates the system - I have only recently found out that the problem lies with Gnome as they decided to integrate Pulse Audio into the DE. Sadly you won’t get rid of systemd entirely as some Software installs small amounts of systemd elements to work on OS’s with systemd. Pulse Audio as written by a musician on Devuan forums states that Pulse Audio just adds latency - no real advantage over ALSA which he uses. ALSA is also more suited to older hardware.
I now only run KDE (Plasma) and LXQt with Kwin on Devuan 3.0 - Cinnamon pulls in Pulse Audio package and rtkit - which is part of Pulse Audio - not a rootkit but as someone posted on askubuntu - the fact that it elevates hardware processes in real time could prove to be a security leak vector.

I’m also leaving FerenOS behind - it too is a cross between Linux Mint and Ubuntu - main reason is flatpak - I had to do a Timeshift restore and the amount of flatpak garbage on the system was an eye-opener. I have also learned that there are issues with Virtual Box so I am now a convert to qemu and AQEMU which is the front end. So nice not to have to Rigth Ctrl to enable removing mouse capture - I can glide my mouse from a VB to the Devuan desktop without any issue and resizing of the VM window makes life a lot more tolerable. I’ve also found out why I couldn’t get USB 3.0 to work in VB - it’s broken - USB 2.0 works fine. Thankfully I will be able to migrate my .vhd on Feren OS that is Windows 7 32-bit (only needed as their is a mail collection box that uses Outlook 365 or I wouldn’t bother) using the advice here:

Okay, is there some additional context?