I wanted to report some annoying bugs that I found.
System info:
Hardware model: Hewlett-Packard HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF
Memory: 8,0 GiB
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4570 CPU @ 3.20GHz × 4
Graphics: Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4600 (HSW GT2)
Disk Capacity: 506,1 GB
OS Name: Zorin OS 17.3 Core
OS Type: 64-bit
Windowing system: X11
For a while I have been using Wayland on this system because of a visual glitch that happens when animations are enabled in Zorin Appearance. I cannot get a screenshot of it, but basically the windows act erratic when minimizing and then clicking on them again to appear on screen. They dance around to fall into place on the screen, and in the top left corner of them I can even see a mini version of them appearing and flickering, it's very odd. This behavior stops when Enable Animations is off in Zorin Appearance, and it even stops if both Enable Animations and Jelly Mode are on. In that case I get a nice working Jelly Mode as it was intended.
Second issue relates to third-party screenshot tools. I installed Flameshot and set its shortcut to PrtSc key, but no matter how I opened it, a screenshot was taken by some Gnome's built-in tool, and then it asked me whether I wanted to share that screenshot with Flameshot. It's some kind of portal issue, read here:
According to this forum post, the issue was fixed long ago, but still presents a problem in Zorin. I already have the latest version of the highlighted package:
For now I have switched to X11, enabled both animations and jelly mode to get rid of the visual glitch, AND to get rid of the screenshot portal issue that does not persist when using X11. Now when I click PrtSc I immediately get Flameshot working instead of having to 'share' screenshots to it.
I pointed out to Team Zorin that when Zorin 17 was released how poor the screenshot item is. But this is not down to Team Zorin, this is an element that was developed by Gnome. The other element could well be down to the shell version being used by Zorin (43) when there are newer shells out there. Having said that I am no longer a fan of Gnome, and much prefer KDE Plasma, more specifically, Q4OS and PCLOS Debian. i only run Zorin Core to assist on the forum. It is not my daily go to, but has been of late! LOL!
So you can see that Gnome devs are increasingly becoming more like Redmond devs - "You do it our way, and we'll make sure you have to do it our way!"
To your last point - maybe so, but they did still implement a fix eventually. I do wish they were more open to theming, extensions, etc. I prefer it to KDE, and really don't want them to ruin the DE to the point where I would want to switch to another.
Well that is down to Team Gnome, not Team Zorin, and to some extent, I suspect Canonical. Having worked for many years in a field assisting users with vision impairment (Blindness and low-vision), I became more accepting of Gnome, but as the years have progressed, accessibility packages are no longer reliant on the platform they were built on and for as KDE (Plasma) can include and run packages such as Orca Screen Reader. But the best OS for accessibility in my book is still Devuan as a Blind User is able to install it with a Brailliant Device without the need of a sighted peer. Plasma is still more Windows like I would argue than anything that Gnome can offer, especially things like Clipboard tools that come as default, and not by way of extensions.
Yes I understand this is up to gnome, but I thought that maybe since the issue has already been fixed (years ago it seems) that Zorin is lagging a bit behind and missing that fix. I have no idea if that's the case, which is why I voiced this issue.
As for the second problem, that should be a Zorin thing, and it's good to let devs know these extensions are sometimes having unexpected behaviors. This goes together with the bug of windows minimizing to the top left corner instead of their space on taskbar, but I think I already posted about this bug before...
Very interesting. I have the opposite problem in X11 mode.
Not Wayland (except for a few apps). Huh. Again, interesting.
Now you've got me thinking. Very interesting ... maybe I should reinstall Zorin and do an experiment with Jelly Mode (in both X11 and Wayland). Wouldn't be a big deal for me to reinstall Zorin, since I can always re-image my hard drive with my clone of Linux Mint if things don't go right. I'll try this later. Thanks.
P.S.: @AZorin - really wish we didn't have problems like this. Really hope Zorin 18 gets rid of them. I'm in your corner, and am hopeful Zorin 18 will offer a cleaner out-of-the-box experience than Zorin 17 did (for me and others, at least). (Thanks.)
Update: Am back on Zorin 17.3 Pro. This time, I enabled "Jelly Mode." It brought me back to the old days when I played around with Compiz on Linux and the "wobbly" windows feature. I also discovered that the magic genie animation for minimizing/raising windows was enabled as part of "Jelly Mode." In the end, I decided for myself that having a system-level (as in OS-level), selectable option that could act as a workaround for the glitchy window animations was acceptable. So, I have "Jelly Mode" enabled, and the windows all act consistently and without glitches, which is what I wanted. Plus, it's always fun to see the windows wobble a little. Brings me back to a younger time in life. As I've said a couple times, it'll be interesting to see what Zorin OS 18 brings to the table. I've left a lot of feedback for Artyom and Kyrill (like how other folks have, too). I trust that Zorin 18 will be a bit more "vetted" in terms of aesthetic consistency, app (and window) behaviors, and so on (which I have since realized during my Linux journey may not always be within the reach of developers using GNOME, but still ... yeah). Moving on ...
The main thing I want to see from Zorin OS 18, is that it boots into X11 by default, not Wayland. So, as long as we start out there, I'm sure the rest is going to be roses.
Follow-up (and a question): In another post I made a short bit ago here as an update (re: NVIDIA), I said I ended up getting a RX 6600 XT. Interesting thing is that as part of my research online, I discovered that in other distributions, developers have backported fixes for issues like window flickering while in X11 mode. My question is, why isn't that (apparently) the case for Zorin OS? Or am I missing something? (It's a sincere question, and I'm honestly curious.) Thanks.
