Zorin 17.2 Core - The bugs and flaws that makes me not totally switch to Zorin

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I installed Zorin OS on my laptop since the 17.1 and i fell in love with the smoothness, the capacity to customize everything to the way i want, the low cpu usage. But there is still somethings that fully render my capacity to migrate to zorin os completely.

My main nitpicks are:

  1. Having to change between being able to do a screenshare on discord or having smooth windows animations?

I noticed there is a long-standing bug on zorin wayland that makes screenshare completely broken with some aplications and the easiest fix is to switch to X. But when doing so, some windows animations are absolutely choppy and the system doesn't feel as smooth. I also noticed OBS is a pain to use, especially changing webcam settings such as exposure. So i usually boot into windows11 just to be able to record something with my webcam properly set up or to do a video call on discord.

  1. My mobile phone can't connect to the wifi hotstop.

I tried searching a fix for it but i wasn't interested in having to replace a built-in option of the OS and i thought it was such a simple feature that works without problems in windows11 that it holds me back since i use this feature a lot.

  1. WHY CAN'T THE USER SET A PRIMARY AUDIO SOURCE??

every time i boot into zorin, i have to manually change the audio device so i can correctly reduce the volume. I know you can fix this using the terminal and creating a startup script but since it's so easy to remediate with user made scripts, why does the os doesn't give the option to do so?

  1. ( Personal reason ). Compatibility

The thing is, most of the software that i use is built into some kind of electron cr@p so i thought the migration would be simple. But its very noticeable the difference in having to use Figma on the desktop instead of the browser version, same for Framer. I also missed the option of a whatsapp desktop client, YES i know that whatsapp web covers 90% of the features but i really use the video call/calls in general and from what i noticed, this is only available in windows machines.

Having that said, i will keep using zorin on a dual boot because i believe in the vision the OS is aiming. But i would not recommend it for my aunt's pc. From a linux distribution that tries to encapsulate and make things "just work", there is clearly a lack of focus on the basic functions of the OS. I never thought that doing a video call while screensharing would be a delicate situation where i need to hard-check every compatibility, changing from wayland to X, seeing if the obs will not crash when trying to change webcam exposure.

Having update to 17.2, i thought finally some of these issues would be seen but hey, i guess i can switch to always show scrollbar on windows now. :+1:

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Welcome to the forum!

  1. Having to change between being able to do a screenshare on discord or having smooth windows animations?

This is annoyingly due to Wayland issues. I just use wayland 24/7, so I get to have fun with some minor issues, but I know for Nvidia users (idk if you're one) that's a non option.

Hopefully in the future this gets remedied and dealt with, but for now, yes this is annoying. However, if you want to use discord with Wayland, you can, you just have to use another client to make it work nicely. As for OBS, I haven't had an issue with that (and I stream), but webcams sometimes can be fiddly.

  1. My mobile phone can't connect to the wifi hotstop.

By this do you mean you want to make your computer itself a hotspot for your phone? I actually haven't done this in Zorin, no need to, but I know ubuntu has the feature in its wireless menu, so I could check later.

  1. WHY CAN'T THE USER SET A PRIMARY AUDIO SOURCE??

Extremely annoying. I find using Pavucontrol allows me to configure the audio how I like and it saves my settings. Default Gnome volume settings just seem to have a mind of their own, so I resort to ulterior methods. Extremely valid criticism, in my eyes.

Compatibility

Always a pain point when it comes to the transition period. You could always look into alternatives if the windows-centric applications you use don't suit Linux, but it's valid to be upset by it.

Alot of these things do work on the open source drivers, and are fine, but if you need Nvidia drivers for doing some desktop work, then yeah, everything kinda gets annoying pretty quick.

Realistically, imo, the default should still be X, to avoid the majority of your complaints here. But it's always good seeing opinions on a new user coming in and taking a look, so thank you :slight_smile:

Also, I'm going to ask if it's alright to move this to Feedback, as this seems more like a feedback thing than it is you wanting to find solutions for this (albeit there are some issues that can be addressed).

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About number 2, I mean making the computer work like a wifi-repeater basically, in w11 i can connect the ethernet cable on the laptop and make the laptop repeat the signal seeing that the router is far away. Sadly, i only get 'connection error' when trying connection on my phone.

About the Wayland issues, i would gladly switch to X if not for the choppy animations i get with windows. If there is a fix to this i would gladly hear.

You are welcome to move this to feedback. :+1:

My specs if needed.

Screenshot from 2024-10-03 12-43-34

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Can you please post a video demonstrating this?
As a description, "choppy" is valid, but the reader is free to envision this in many ways.

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Sure, just a minute for me to boot into X and i will try to comeback with the video :+1:

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I didn't found how to upload videos to the forum so i hosted in google drive.

This only happens in X for me, choppy as if the windows was doing two animations at once, going to the top left and the bottom middle.

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I see what you mean. It is not severe... But there is a bit. I suspect this may be due to Mutter.
Mutter is Gnomes compositor. This compositor is used for Xorg.
Since Wayland is the Big Push.... Gnome has... let's say..."neglected" certain facets of mutter. Which is why choppiness present on the new Default To Wayland distros is not present on the previous default to Xorg distros.

A couple things you might try on Xorg:
Enable smoothing on mutter:
gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['kms-modifiers']"
Or
Animations can be disabled to prevent visual lag. But, this also means that the animations will not work.
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations false

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I tried enabling smoothing as you said but the "glitching" still happens pretty constantly. With small windows it doesn't bother as much but sometimes minimizing full screen windows is very glitchy. I guess i could wait for a mutter update while still on wayland, it seems like the only fix for this instead of just disabling animations. Ty for the help though.

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There are others... and I do not wish to pepper you with them unwanted.
An example is
gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['force-fullscreen-redraws']"
You can search for more.
You can also use Gnome-Tweaks tool to set enable gtk animations (true) and set enable animations to true.
This can adjust animation speed which can help choppy visuals. You also can look into optimizing your graphics - depending on which graphics card you have.

So you have options - and you can ask for details on any of the above...

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I don't mind tweaking it until it fixes but i'm new to Zorin and would like to know a clear cause of this problem or if others users are having this problem as well.

Like, what exactly in Mutter is causing this glitch? And what the solution consists of? I think it would be beneficial for other users that might run into this problem to have a clear way to understand what is happening and what is at fault. ( driver compatibility, mutter depreciated settings idk )

I will try to run the scripts that you have sent and comeback to give some feedback. :+1: ( advise if any of the scripts that you sent needs a reboot to apply )

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I am not actually sure... I do not use Gnome.
You can reload the desktop with alt+F2 and enter r into the window and hit the enter key after each test to see if reloading the desktop and shell helps or is necessary.

It is not clear. Hardware differences may apply to this. Whether Fractional Scaling is used also does.
Mutter is a compositor. In Wayland, compositing is handled within Wayland since Wayland is a compositor. This is the appeal of Wayland, that it promises to reduce the amount of coding and cut out the middle process.
This appeals to Gnome, since it means they can remove Mutter and not have to develop it anymore.
And Gnome loves removing things.
Since the cause is unclear at this time - in a complex series of variables, trying different things is our only recourse.

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I reloaded the desktop as you said after running

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['force-fullscreen-redraws']"

and it seems that the glitching got worse, i will try doing the first one
gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['kms-modifiers']"

and refreshing the desktop looking for some changes.

Afterwards i will try the gnome tweak that you have said. Do you know any other script that may have a chance to fix this so i can try later? Btw, Thank you for the help.

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Not without turning to the web in inexperience and looking them up as you would. I do not use Gnome and have not in years. I have evidently forgotten quite a bit of Gnome Essentials, even.

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I know very little of linux so i'm grateful for any help at all.
Can you clear from me what these scripts are doing? Are they changing a parameter of "rendering?" or enabling some feature per se?

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['force-fullscreen-redraws']"

Its silly to ask, but i didn't really understand if more than one experimental-feature can be enabled or only one. I will then screen record me trying and refreshing each script so you can see how its affecting the glitching.

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What that setting does is instruct Mutter to redraw the whole screen when a change to the rendering occurs.
Normally, Mutter is set to only redraw areas that have movement.
By redrawing the screen as a whole, instead of only the area where movement occurs, my hope is that the choppiness is reduced. It may be that the redraw of the affected area is translated during the refresh rate of your monitor, creating a patch of hazy positioning when a window is moved.
This applies more strongly to large windows or full screen windows, than to small dialogs.

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What would be the script to disable that setting? I want to record a video comparing the before and after so you can see if its noticeable.

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Sorry, I should have included that earlier...
gsettings reset org.gnome.mutter experimental-features

You can disable all experimental features with
gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "[]"

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I disabled all experimental features and recorded a fullscreen window and how it behaves into appearing and minimizing.

FEATURES DISABLED

It seems the glitches in this cases are focused on the top left and it shows as a small clone of the window.

FORCE-FULLSCREEN-REDRAWS ENABLED

It seems that the glitches still appears in the same frequency but worse with the "glitched window" now reaching widths close to half the screen.

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What is your monitor refresh rate and are you using fractional scaling?

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I use dual monitors and both run at 60hz with no fractional scaling. One runs at 1080p and the laptop one in 768p. The error is consistent in both monitors.

image

Edit: Turns out is a longstanding bug that has been reported by multiple users and is way more prominent in x11 than wayland.

Seeing by the users video, it's exactly the kind of glitch that i have when not running zorin in wayland. It's probably easy to say that wayland will fix it's screensharing issues before windows animations are fixed on x11.

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