Snap and Flatpak were supposed to solve problems, by making installation of packages universal, easier and remove dependency troubles.
In some ways, it did work. There is a more universal approach with Snaps and Flatpaks. Plus one, there.
But they created whole new problems. Being universal and carrying along their own dependencies meant isolating the packages from the system files. Double sandboxing. This really breaks many applications - many apps out there simply can never be used as Snaps or Flatpaks because of this - which in turn, means that the users will have to rely on using .debs anyway. This creates the necessity of using multiple package formats which is what Snap and Flatpak were supposed to avoid.
It also begs the question as to whether the Universality was needed in the first place. There are ridiculously few packages that are formatted for one distro and cannot be installed on a different distro. It is far more reliable to use alien to convert and .rpm to a .deb than it is to use a Snap or Flatpak.
These statements bear repeating.
Under the hood, it is quite clear that Zorin OS is not just "re-skinned" Ubuntu. Once you get into the files, you see the great many adaptations and changes made. Files made for and formatted for Zorin OS. What is particularly stunning is how infrequently these Zorin Specific files conflict with universality.
As an example: We all know about how installing AMD drivers can cause an issue since the release_ID is Zorin, not Ubuntu. This is on AMD, not Zorin, since AMD lazily opted to make the installer try to recognize known major distros instead of making it fetch the actual distro release_ID. But as an example, it demonstrates a conflict.
Such can happen with many applications because they must reference specific distro files. It is exceptionally rare for these to conflict in Zorin. I have only ever discovered two that did. It was found immediately following the Zorin OS 15 release in Beta form and again the 16 release in Beta form and Kyrill and Artyom immediately corrected them once notified.
Zorin OS Meshes its added software and extensions well. Users can relate to this since many users will install or add their own software or extensions and run into troubles getting them to mesh. You can then easily imagine what the ZorinGroup goes through in development of the next full release of Zorin OS.
ZorinGroup has always prioritized two things in their distro:
- Familiarity
- Performance
Familiarity, we all know about. Performance is more interesting; since it deals far more with what is running in the services than it does with what you can visibly see on the desktop.
For anyone who wants to create a metric by which to gauge how the ZorinGroup spend their time in development - they need only try to recreate Zorin OS. While their knowledge and experience would allow them to do it faster and with a bit less troubleshooting; it would still give any user a better understanding of the myriad of little details, hardware differences and the like that must be checked off on lists for testing.
The latest and Greatest: I suspect that this is an issue that will always rage on. Logically, the latest hardware may indeed need the latest kernel. Sadly, the kernels released seem to be coming with a lot of regressions. It is very difficult to test and balance the most universal kernel to include in a distro. Just looking at the release number is not going to give a good indicator. Yet, we often see users on the forum saying, "This other distro is using kernel 5.17! Why isn't Zorin?" Because a slew of other users wifi would break, that's why.
Sometimes a later version is a good progression. Sometimes it isn't. With Two People manning ZorinGroup - we as users can bear the brunt of the load by individually stepping up to do our own research. As a Team Effort, ZorinGroup and ZorinUsers can accomplish far, far more. This has the added benefit of the users expanding and developing their own horizons, enabling them to achieve more with their daily use Operating System.
This, as a debate, is quite interesting, as it allows us to test our assumptions.
Please continue to weigh the merit of ideas, our own or others - and to accept merit-based conclusions over preferred conclusions.