There has been a flood of adverse opinions on the forum about Zorin 18. I admit I am a bit biased, having used various Zorin versions over the years. In the case of Z-18 I have a desktop with Zorin 18 Core upgraded from the Beta, with XFCE installed as well.
More recently I have replaced WIN-11 with Zorin 18 Core r2 on a refurbished Dell Latitude 7310 (with only 8GB RAM) carefully following the online instructions. Disabling "Secure Boot" in the Dell BIOS took time, as it was rather argumentative. Enabling a Bluetooth mouse I had to read the instructions. I tried to see myself as a newcomer, one of the 2m downloads. For a normal user following instructions and not some online influencer, I see no real problems, except connecting your browser and email accounts (I prefer Firefox and Thunderbird).
Overall, I have experienced no real problems of any type even after trying to replicate some of the complaints. Some of the problems arise because of really old equipment, and I believe a Lite version would help. Perhaps some older PCs have reached their 'use by' date. In a "throwaway society", if your kettle doesn't work, you replace it (and maybe create work for the recyclers melting down e-waste).
Please note these are only the opinions of an old man, born in a different era (1930s), when everything was repaired and reused.
Very happy Zorin 18 Pro user here. This distro has fixed things for me that all other distros had failed to be stable with. (Edit: tagging @AZorin in hopes to get visibility from the team)
With that said, I do worry about three things:
- that Zorin's falling too far behind their Ubuntu/Debian LTS base
- I read comments of Zorin planning to drop wayland
- that Zorin's team may be making decisions without polling users (?)
I really do hope they're paying attention to feedback from the community, I decided to try Zorin because many highly regarded tech youtubers are recommending it, and these are the same youtubers recommending Niri window manager (which requires Wayland)
I just spent a few hours setting up Niri in Zorin, and this has become my dream setup by a long shot
But the reason I looked into Zorin OS 19 and hopefully Ubuntu/Debian base updates had precisely to do with a package I was unable to install the latest deb for, and was forced to use flatpak for it, basically turning a 5 minute fix with the deb, into a 1 hour battle with flatpak's sandbox
Falling to far behind Ubuntu/Debian LTS has real consequences for users, and so does dropping Wayland support
Hope the Zorin team keep doing the amazing job they've been doing and I'm more than glad to help where needed in order to speed up LTS upgrade and Wayland support 
Hey welcome! I'm with you, in that I am a very happy (and enthusiastic) user of Zorin, having been on Windows since it came out, and supporting windows users since 2006.
But I'm confused about your comment regarding Wayland. From what I have read the opposite is true - there is concern over Zorin GNOME dropping Xorg at some point due to their downstream position from Ubuntu/Debian. Where have you heard the rumor that Zorin might be dropping Wayland?
Zorin OS 18 Core already uses Wayland by default, with Xorg still available as an option for users who prefer it, or whose hardware must have it.
Our recent forum discussions are more concerned about the increasing GNOME/Ubuntu shift toward Wayland-only (e.g., GNOME 50 dropping X11) rather than abandoning it. Sure, there are concerns about Wayland’s stability and hardware support, but its not going anywhere. On the contrary, we are worried about Xorg becoming increasingly deprecated.
I'm curious why you chose Zorin, since you have chosen to use Niri instead of GNOME. Zorin is tightly integrated with GNOME, and although Xfce also works very well as an alternate DE, Niri apparently does not. At least according to what is generally agreed to on the Zorin forums. The consensus for Niri on Zorin 18 is “don’t do it; if you want Niri, pick a distro that ships it.” Plus the Niri project itself explicitly recommends using a distro where Niri is packaged and supported (Fedora COPR, NixOS, Arch, etc.) rather than forcing it into other environments.....
so that's why I ask, why Zorin, wayland or otherwise?
Zorin is not "falling behind" its Ubuntu/Debian LTS base. It is there on purpose.
Zorin is designed for Windows and Mac OS refugees. The main thing such user want is stability plus an “install and use right out of the box” UX: the deliberate lag between Ubuntu’s LTS release and Zorin’s next major version is therefore a trade-off to integrate and test their customizations; for its target audience it’s a feature, not a bug.
Zorin OS 18, released October 2025, is now based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with kernel 6.17 and support to June 2029, so it is aligned with the latest Ubuntu LTS. It is not falling behind - it is intentionally so.
It is actually the other way around, as @wsmather pointed out.
So, you are safe, while everyone else that needs Xorg are being left out in the cold.
The vast majority of stable packages do not need to be the "Latest" and less stable or more prone to bugs and regressions, versions.
Yes, there can be isolated cases where a newer version has a necessary new feature a user needs - which may be the case for you and the package you mentioned.
But the vast majority of the time, chasing "later" packages only to see a higher number on the version is not the best approach.
Early on, ZorinGroup opted to switch Zorin OS to LTS in order to cover the broadest range of users.
Those like you and me - must adapt to that, rather than asking the majority adapt to us.
Would you like to share the steps for the Niri setup in Zorin with us? I tried but haven't gotten very far. I'm really interested how you got it to work.
Do you have some screenshots of your desktop with Niri?
If you look at he last versions releases, you understand that Zorin19 will not be ready before end of 2027
2021-08-17: Zorin OS 16
2023-12-20: Zorin OS 17
2025-10-14: Zorin OS 18
As Zorin in based on Ubuntu the following can be considered:
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS hopes to use as default Kernel 7.0
So, maybe a Zorin19 will be based on U26.04 and it could mean that also GNOME_50 can be applied. For all other speculations it is way too early.
...
A Zorin with Cosmic could be nice, but not before Zorin20
Thanks for the warm welcome @wsmather !
Definitely misread the dropping of Xorg in favor of Wayland as the other way around, brain's probably fried from all late-night Niri stuff I've been cooking here 
I would've worried about Xorg being dropped if I was using Zorin on other machines besides my personal one, most other linux boxes I have are setup with VNC for remote access, and it's still trivial to get VNC working on X11 vs Wayland which can have some annoying edge-cases still
Definitely happy to have been wrong about this point
Also surprised about the amount of replies in such a short amount of time, my definition of a thriving community 
Alright you lot - time to get girlfriends.
Hop to it.
Actually, setting up Niri was just a "nice-to-have" for me, mainly interested in it because I do agree with Theo Browne that UX for devs working on multiple projects in VS Code at the same time is broken and Niri is a very welcome solution to that
With that said, I probably will spend 50% of my time on Wayland session, and the other 50% on Niri
Would've probably said I'll spend less time on Niri (or scrapped it altogether) if I had encountered any setbacks, but having a completely new window manager set up in a night meets my threshold of "this works as is"
And to more directly answer "why Zorin?", just grew tired of fixing edge-cases I always have a way of finding on other distros and am happy to pay precisely for the conveniences Zorin provides out-of-the-box, honestly things like Kdenlive using my NVIDIA card for rendering with zero config on my end is magic, and that's just one of 20+ things I've gathered Zorin just has it figured out where others don't
Ah, no, yea, I do agree LTS is the way to go, just worried current LTS used by Zorin is already nearly two years old and there's a new LTS out already
But honestly, on my personal computer I consider myself more of the broader range of users than one that chases the latest and greatest, so no problem with adapting
I'm actually really happy to be having this conversation with you lot, definitely giving me a strong (introspective) sense that I was overthinking things here
2 posts were split to a new topic: Niri on Zorin
Maybe we open an own thread for Niri and here we can continue during the next two years the gossip and wish list for Zorin19 ...
You folks are talking about Zorin OS 19 for reasons I can't fathom whatsoever. Zorin OS 18 literally just got release last fall, and were still waiting on the full release of the upgrader tool. Why its still in BETA in Feb, I just can't fathom. Until OS 18 is brought up to par to my personal standards, I won't be installing it. I am not a BETA tester, I will not destroy my main system, to test a buggy tool.
Zorin OS 19 will not be here for at least 2 to 3 years. So the conversation about OS 19 is completely irrelevant. Until the OS 18 upgrader is ready for prime time, OS 18 will continue to be of 0 interest to me, and I will stick with a no longer supported, however stable, OS 16.
Now, if we want to have a conversation about how Zorin developers should hold themselves to a higher standard, thats a conversation worth having. An LTS is a good thing to have for stability, however being 2-years behind everyone is, I think, is a bit ridiculous.
As I see it, people have 2-choices, either stick with Zorin OS, or go with something else, if you need latest technology support. I've been with Zorin OS since OS 9 when they called it Ultimate back then, their release schedule has always been like this, and that clearly is never going to change.
Why not 17?
Don't knock LMDE 7, you can install Plasma on it, not like their main Cinnamon desktop. The downside, it is using Debian 13 'trixie' and tiled menu does not run nicely on any Plasma 6.3.6 (Including Q4OS 6.4)
[Update on tiled menu. zren its creator hasn't been active for some months so this is likely the issue. However, I still think it is bad the rate KDE keeps updating Plasma to yet another new edition in short space of time.]
I'm new to Linux. Just on the edge of my three month honeymoon fase.
Been a Windows and Apple [combined] user all my life, but very keen on my privacy. Needless to say I won't find that with either. Did my share of tinkering on Windows to keep the spying out the Window [pun.... just noticed ..] up untill I'd break it, could not fix it [ that's Windows for ya ] and needed to do a reinstall and start the whole process over. Next to all the double checking of your settings after some random dodgy described update, there's that relentless push of AI. In absolutely E-VE-RY-THING!. Delete or uninstall one agent, they grow back in another corner twice as fast.
I've been a PC enthousiast all my life since my brother told me that hexcode was 'magic language' for the pink colour on screen. But lately my PC's were making me more furious than excited, so I knew something had to give. So Linux it was.
I tried Winux first - recommendation of another Windows user that crossed borders- but I'm guessing I don't really have to explain why that was a short life lived. Then went to Anduin - ah yesss... I was looking for Windows like distro's that prettty much did stuff out of the box, since I had NO! experience on Linux whatsover - but Anduin gave me all kinds of errors. I just could not get it to work with a lot of my apps. And I've tried reinstalling 5 times.
Then I gave Zorin a go, and here we are today telling my happy story of my honeymoon bliss.
Anyways, To make a very long story even longer: I came here for the rumours on Zorin 19, since I wanted to purchase the Pro version and was wondering if waiting a bit would be worthwhile. Then I saw the comment above about 2 million downloads and people getting fed up because stuff does not work. And so I wanted to give my experience. Which is [ yeah... said I would make it longer... ]
It's been a rocky ride! Learning commands, bumping into installation issues (game's mainly) wondering what that programm is that is running in the background and finding out the hard way Linux ain't no Windows and I need to keep my tinkering on a leash if I don't quite know what I'm doing yet.
I haven't uninstalled Windows yet (I have a dual boot) but I've only booted into it twice, and only to get an export and backup of two apps that I wanted to install on Zorin.
So far my PC crush is totally alive and kicking again and I have not once thought about returning to Microslop. In fact, my mind's been thinking about the planning to swap all my NTFS disks for ext4 in near future.
So I'm getting not everyone here is pleased with the road Zorin is paving for itself, given the history [ of which I have absolutely no knowledge at all ] but it is doing a pretty darn good job in converting us 'lost' users out there. And who knows: I might get pretty good at tinkering on Linux and be here complaining and moaning one day. But as of a few months, I've switched my religion and left that cult in my rearview mirror. Upgrading to 18 Pro it is then.
They don't all need to have issues though, for the negatives to travel fast. And those other distributions (even Mint) don't make the same bold implications that Zorin does in its advertising. Better to have tweaked 17.3 prior to end-of-life for Win 10, than to have rushed 18?