Zorin OS 18 from Windows 10

General Help
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Hi all. I'm trying to educate myself for a permanent move from Windows, currently Windows 10.

I hope everyone can grasp having used a MSFT OS for well, since the early DOS days. Windows since the beginning. I was in IT for nearly 20 years. So... not only memory is messing with me but muscle memory too!

I want to ask you all do you have any recommended YouTube channels that can sort of take my hand and walk me through the 'mental upgrade' needed to move from Windows into Zorin & Linux.

I ask because I don't want to grow frustrated and abandon the whole idea. I've no desire to stay with Windows.

I DO want to move into Zorin but I want to make sure I do it the right way, not leave any doors or windows open to the public. I most certainly do not want to 'learn things the hard way'.

Thanks so much for any recommended videos. I searched myself but every single one I found did not address the 'how' to do a task in Zorin you used to do in Windows - but now you do it this way OR you do it another way OR you got to do something completely different.

I hope I'm stating clearly what I want in these videos.

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My issue with videos is that unlike text, it is very hard to search content.
There may well be what you are looking for in many videos, stuffed away somewhere at a time marker in the video.
But finding that segment in a search is... not easy, if possible at all.

Most have long introductions... then chatter about something else. Then get to the meat of it where they gloss over the very most basic things. Then they find something to complain about.
Then they talk about GnuLinux as a whole.
Then ask you like, share, subscribe. Probably, the outro is an advertisement for a sponsor.

Zorin OS can be run as a Try Zorin demo from creating a LiveUSB. In this way, you can try it out without installing it.
You can move right to the tasks you already know that you do - sussing out differences that you would immediately notice.
Have you explored the Try Zorin option, yet?

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I don't know as much as some of the folks here, but I can tell you from my experience that Zorin is a very well built OS with a great user interface. I made the jump after running Windows 7 well past the end of support. I heard so much about the invasion of privacy in Win 10 that I didn't want to even try it. I picked Zorin because the learning curve would be hopefully, shorter. It definately was. I'm not a super techie, I do things with my PC: write articles, presentations, research online, email, participate in forums, have a collection of pictures and videos, etc. I also had to make sure the "boss" was happy (aka my wife). If I switched us to something quirky or complicated I would pay dearly! (ha ha).

So we converted to Zorin 16. At first I had a dual boot system. After just 2 weeks I realized I was never signing onto the Windows side for anything (I bought a new laptop for this, and of course it came with Win 10). Then I re-installed Zorin and wiped the drive getting rid of Windows. Then for a while I had a virtual machine running Windows 7 (I had my installation disk and created an ISO file) for some utilities on Windows that i liked. After the Zorin 17 upgrade I stopped using it because I found FOSS utilities on Linux that did the same things. So it was a process.

The wife was good with it. Her only request was I install Only Office because it "looked" more like MS Office than the default Libre Office. She uses it to this day and I use Libre Office. But other than that no complaints. My biggest complaint was that the file manager was not as good as Windows File Explorer. Since then I have found another program to use called Nemo that is similar to what Windows has.

Hardware wise I had no problems: I had an old Brother laser printer, a Logitech Wave wireless keyboard and mouse combo, an LG ext monitor and an old Seagate ext 1Tb hard drive (the drive was formatted for Windows (NTSF). Zorin had no trouble reading it, so I was able to move all my files over. No issues. Zorin recognized everything.

The folks on this forum are very helpful and not arrogant, something I have heard some are on other forums. They have been very helpful and patient with me when I was a newbie (really I still am). They not only tell you what to do but explain why, which helps long time Windows users like me to understand Linux better.

So, I hope you take the dive, the water is fine! You can always go the root of a dual boot system or run Zorin in a VM to try it out. I'm confident you will find it will meet your needs.

Tip: make sure you back up your browser bookmarks, especially if you use multiple browsers so you can import them on Linux which uses just about all the same browsers (even Microsoft Edge has a Linux version, but why would anyone want it?).

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Hi! Yes indeed I tried the fly before you 'buy' from a USB stick. I also tried out the latest Mint as well. Zorin got the nod from me.

You're right about the videos... you'd think with everything being AI now, they'd have searched all the audio for keywords then tag the videos with those keywords.

Well, do you have any favorite websites I might want to visit?

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HI and thanks too for the reply. I'm going to have read this a couple of times before I can draft a good reply. I really am thinking of getting rid of the dual boot process. My main reason?

Windows and Linux will not share bluetooth keyboard pairing, unlike they will share bluetooth mouse paiting. It's an irritation I don't need.

Just today I started monkeying around with my Steam account on Linux. I got my two favorite games up and running... then realized I needed to go back to Windows to turn on Steam's cloud save. Prior to doing this, in Linux, Steam used their existing cloud save which was more than a year old! So boot Windows, turn on cloud save then start the game, which triggered cloud sync... exit game, do the same for the second game, exit it then restart the system, Zorin starts... now both games have their most current saves inside Steam on Linux.

Oh for a browser, I run Vivaldi...

This was my hooray project for the day!

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They may have, but they don't let us see it. You would think with all the A.I., videos and text produced by it would have an editor check it for accuracy... but that is horribly lacking.

Well. No. Not really. I do not follow the PopTech articles, like "It's FOSS." They are primarily a soapbox for Big Corporate to push us to their interests and desires.
We can get away from Microsoft and Windows... But the sad reality is that mentality has wormed it's way into GnuLinux,. as you will discover.

Many users do post videos on this forum when they see Zorin OS featured, though, such as in this thread:

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I use Vivaldi... and Firefox, Brave, Waterfox, Librewolf, Floorp, Mulvad, Zen and SRWare Iron (German clone of Chrome with some of the Google spying removed). Crazy I know, but I like trying out different ones, and I practice "browser isolation" or compartmentalization for privacy.

There is a channel called "Explaining Computers" by a Brit named Chris Barnatt. His videos are very well done and full of info. He has done two on Zorin:
Zorin 17:

Zorin 18:

Both are a little over 20 minutes long. You can skim over the parts you don't need.

Michael Horn is good too...

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Try this one and see if it helps. He has a Linux course there of 85 lessons, plus other topics.

Learn Linux TV

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I would also give FreeOffice a try from SoftMaker. Just before lockdown I purchased a 5 machine licence of the Pro version. It was the only Office Suite that provided .docx files that did not lose formatting when displayed on works machines running Office 2019/365.

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There’s a YouTube channel called Mohammed Besar, but the content is in Arabic. You can listen to it, play the videos, and translate them directly from YouTube.

Here’s the channel link: :backhand_index_pointing_right:https://www.youtube.com/@mmbesar

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I did too! I kept using Windows 7, up until 2014, when the installation got corrupted after a long life of use, causing computer crashes. When I bought my old computer back in 2012, that was already at the time, when computers didn't come with their installation media.

And for reason's unknown, the factor backup restore partition, refused to work as well. I downloaded a Windows 7 installation ISO, burned to disk. But guess what? The OS7 installation medium, didn't have a CDROM driver for my old notebook, so I couldn't run through the installation, cause it would error out.

I was really upset, because I knew since WinXP, the installation mediums came with CDROM drivers, it wasn't like the 90's, when you had to manually install those, so this shouldn't be happening. I tried to find the driver from the Acer website, but couldn't find it. I took it as a sign, that I needed to move on, cause this catch 22 is not solvable.

I switched over to Zorin OS9. It was a great OS, that only had one problem, boot cash would get filled up, causing no boot situation, after a long period of use, and had to be manually cleared, a big oversite on the Zorin teams part IMO. I then switched over to Zorin OS 12 when it came out, and Zorin team fixed the boot problem.

Then I switched to Zorin OS 16 when it came out, and I'm still on it for a limited time, waiting for the upgrader to be ready for use, to switch to OS 18.

Music to my ears, I absolutely love that! Microsoft have done us wrong so many times, and thats before the new Win10 & Win11 privacy nightmare. If Microsoft went back to the early 2000's or 90's and pulled this, they would be in court, paying huge fines for being a virus/malware OS. My have times changed!

I've been hearing about this lately, people are saying its really good! I just have what comes with Zorin OS, and thats Libri Office. Of course, in my line of work, I don't use a office suite like I did back in school. Most of what I do with office, is document the work I did on a machine, and then print out a receipt for my customers.

HP & Brother printers are the most compatible on Linux, most users can get them going, without needing to install proprietary drivers, as HP & Brother are in the Linux kernel. So, as long as the pre-requisite printer/scanner tools are installed, you won't have issues. Wifi based printers can still be a bit tricky though, as compared to wired options.

Your going to be really surprised to hear this, but I kid you not, I'm still using an HP Laserjet 2100, which dates to 2001. I don't have huge printer requirements, (like color printing) and it suits my needs. The fact you got your Logitech Wave wireless keyboard and mouse working out of the box, thats just pure awesome!

Thank you so much, benefits of not being an Arch forum. We care about other's, and try our best to help people, while enjoying people's successes on Linux. W eall start out as newbies, then gain knowledge through experience. Explanation helps understanding, because when knowledge is shared, everyone benefits.

Excellent advice. Thanks for sharing your story, it was an enjoyable read. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I ran XP up to 2016, then Vista up to 2020, 8.1 up to 2021. Then, I started with Puppy Linux from 2018, I was trying to max out PC hardware lifetime as much as possible. I've never seen Win 10, went straight jail, I mean ... to 11, spent weeks in getting rid of the bloat, and eventually settled in Zorin OS with dual boot. So, I'm in Zorin, not because of Win 10 end of support, rather Win 11 isn't too convincing, that's somewhat strange, because I'm using Windows since the very early days.

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Zorin OS isn't attracting people that need an ego boost from their operating system, but people who are rather practical. Win 11 is too slow, costly, isn't there something that works out of the box ... ? Yes. I just heard a French village's government switched to Zorin OS this year, it's small-town folks.

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From my understanding, Zorin OS is based on Ubuntu origins. If you're looking for Videos on Zorin OS tutorials I suspect with the advent of Win10 EOL. Many who are switching to Zorin OS that are tech savvy with Linux will be putting out videos.

If you are willing to take the time and effort to come up to speed on how to do things the Linux way (via terminal) There are a TON of linux tutorials out there that will apply to Zorin OS. For me I just stick to the Ubuntu specific for things unless a more generic tutorial out there exists.

usually an Ubuntu video helps I just have to take the time to translate that to the Zorin OS environment.

Bottom line, Zorin OS IS Linux. Linux is the overall Architecture. The different 'flavors' have their own set of rules applied to the architecture.

For the new Windows User I am working on the 'best' solution for my 80yr mother who forgets things and 'must have' her quicken and turbotax. Right now that seems to be WinBoat. Tried all my best with wine, bottles, Crossover. WinBoat uses a docker + freeRDP + Windows to make all the 'magic' happen. Cost of this is resources.

So, I recommend such a solution for people coming MS to Linux for the first time to slowly come into the new environment and take time to learn as they continue to be able to be productive with what they are used to. All on the same system.

Cheers Mate

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Funny I bought the Brother laser back when I had no plans on switching to Linux. It's a wireless printer, but like you I just have basic printing needs. Its 10 yrs old so it may go to printer heaven soon, so it's good to know that HP printers are a good option also.

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Wow - we bought a Brother printer about 1.5/2 yrs ago. It was a beast of a deal. IMO they are one of the best. It's good to know it will most likely work with Linux. Ours is used via WiFi, so I'll have to give it a shot.

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Well indeed, thanks to everyone's input. I've been running Zorin OS 18 now for over a week, have yet to find a need to boot back into Windows.

I've a niece in college who uses the Microsoft 365 Office implementation which is totally web driven. So I still have MS accounts... but I'm pretty sure, well reasonably confident, I'll soon be purchasing a new SSD for the laptop and going straight Linux on it. It might not make sense to others, but it's far easier in the long run to swap SSDs than to continue with the dual boot route, at least IMO.

Doing it that way I won't be tempted to get back into Windows if I have to pull the machine apart. :slight_smile:

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I installed Zorin 18 PRO as a dual boot with W10. The installation worked & Zorin came up & I updated it. I shutdown & restarted in Zorin, so it worked well. This morning I started the computer & chose W10. That worked & I tried to return to Zorin & ended up in Zorin safe mode. I accessed journalctl & it showed numerous problems before I was sent to safe mode. It looks like W10 boot overwrote some of Zorin boot. Has anyone else had this problem?

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If Windows fast startup is on, it will overright the ability to boot into Linux. I haven't been a Windows user since Windows7, so you'll have to figure out where that setting is.

If Windows has really messed up your Linux boot, you can boot up using try Zorin OS via USB drive, and run boot repair to fix it.

Also, Secure Boot is made for Windows, but causes problems on Linux, make sure thats disabled in the BIOS. I'm not sure if Windows will work if its off, again, I haven't been on the Windows scene, in a long time.

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"Fast start-up" is a checkbox in Windows Power Settings. I saw a screenshot of it here in forum somewhere. I will try and find.