Hi everyone!
As a fairly experienced Linux user who’s comfortable in the terminal and troubleshooting issues I wanted to share my experience so far with Zorin 18.
The last time I tried it was with Zorin OS 17. It was already a beautiful and well-polished distro, but the performance still felt a bit off. I kept using it anyway because I genuinely enjoy the refined experience it offers.
Today I did a clean install of Zorin OS 18, and wow — what a huge improvement! The system feels incredibly fast and smooth. I’m not sure if it’s the newer kernel, GNOME 46, Wayland, or a combination of everything, but the difference is very noticeable. Everything just flies.
On top of the excellent performance, the polish is outstanding. For example, VAAPI hardware video decoding is enabled and working perfectly right out of the box.
This is huge for battery life on laptops. I did not test yet, but Zorin 18 may be on par with W11!
Additionally, during the installation, I tried the option to Dual boot with Windows 11. This typically never works and require manual setup, but surprisingly it worked by default! Wow this is just amazing. Great job Zorin!
And great job for all the other projects involved here as well. Zorin is a bliss in the linux community and that is why I keep supporting it on each release.
Thanks for making a stable, fast, and very beautiful OS!