Do you guys realize how much potential Zorin OS has? It's perfect to do any task I want. I have a windows dual-boot, but Zorin is the reason I use one more than another. If I was part of an organization, all the computers would have Zorin OS on them. It's just perfect. Zorin OS has so much potential on operating systems and if I had extra money, I'd definitely buy Zorin OS Pro, let me know your thoughts
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They've been working on Zorin Grid for some time now, which would be really appealing for a lot of small- and medium-sized businesses, and even households with many computers (like kids, etc).
Unfortunately, they've delayed this for a few years now and seem to have lost a bit of steam on that. However, if they can finally consolidate their product offering and improve their online presence, they'll be setting up themselves for a bright future.
I agree with the OP, i also don’t understand why many others are suggesting Mint over Zorin. If i read on other webpages, people ask a easy to use OS for their computer/laptop and they always comes with Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Pop OS, debian, endeavour os or manjaro. I never see someone mentioning Zorin. While it has all the templates to make it easier for everyone , no one really mentions Zorin.
I wonder why ?
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I think I can answer this... But some may not like my answers...
- Habit. Many suggestions are based on years old habits of relaying what they were told was a good starting point.
- Desktop Environments: The others offer multiple D.E.'s that are easy to use. I have heard comments on this forum disparaging Cinnamon - But Cinnamon is highly configurable and the settings are laid out in a user friendly way that makes everything easy to find.
Zorin OS offers Gnome and soon - Gnome only. Gnome is somewhat easy for ZorinGroup to configure to their liking, to present a pretty UI, but is less user friendly since settings and menu's are harder to find. Many options are hidden entirely behind gsettings and not included in menu's (so users cannot find them) and Gnome continues to remove more and more settings. Zorin OS is not competitive with Desktop environments. Soon, they will be even less competitive as they drop Lite.
Users struggle to configure GDM3... They cannot even change its wallpaper.
But in Cinnamon, XFCE, Mate and other D.E.'s it is a simple setting in a simple GUI settings editor.
Extensions are confusing and not officially supported. They can break without warning on updates from Gnome. - Home Built Apps: Other distros like Mint and POP_OS offer a wide variety of home built applications. Zorin OS offers very few. There is the Zorin Menu, which was forked to make Arc Menu. And Zorin Appearance. But very little else. Zorin OS includes some forked apps like GSConnect to make Zorin Connect but there is little to Zorin OS that gets attention for having offered something unique to GnuLinux.
- Package Management: Zorin OS adheres to Gnome - Flatpak's strongly which is unhelpful to new migrants coming from Windows. Instead of sticking to the Standard APT and keeping things simple and straightforward, Zorin OS Package Management is piecemeal and confusing. This results in Zorin OS applications defaulting to Flatpak's too often, with the new users unable to figure out why their packages are not working (Sandboxed, cannot communicate with the system). This is also true of WINE. Most new migrants would like to keep access to their necessary Windows Applications and Zorin's support for WINE has been fragmented.
- Communication: Other distros have pretty open communication between the developers. With Zorin OS, users ask questions but few answers. Feedback is often responded to with actions, not words; however much of the feedback that is not aligned with ZorinGroups personal goals gets ignored and dismissed with a wave of one hand (Flatpaks, Wayland, Lite and a long, long list of other suggestions). This lack of communication coupled with a dismissive air toward the things that are troublesome for new migrants but Good For Gnome is quite frankly, very off-putting.
What I like about Zorin OS is that it is solid, stable, well maintained and very quick with patches and updates to address regressions or breakage.
But I personally do not consider it the best distro for migrating from Windows OS.
And I speak from experience. When I first migrated from Windows OS, Zorin Core was a nightmare to configure and get things working on, troubleshoot and yes, even to customize to match my workload / workflow.
I ended up on Zorin OS because I began distro hopping to find its replacement and ended up trying out Zorin OS Lite. Zorin Lite matched all my criteria with ease. Suddenly, the nightmare ended and within a couple of hours, my computer was fully running smoothly, my way, to my workflow, problem free.
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It's basically down to 'horses for courses' and 'each to their own'. Whilst I applaud what Texstar did in creating a systemd free OS, it created an issue for me in having to downgrade my Graphics card in order for me to install it. I certainly would not recommend it for a Windows migrator. It comes in KDE (Plasma), xfce, and MATE flavours. The plus point of it is it probably has the lowest amount of resources used when running at idle. Then a number of the PCLOS community members only recently have released PCLOS Debian. No systemd. The DE's on offer are KDE (Plasma), xfce, Cinnamon, budgie and MATE. In keeping with Texstar's rpm version, Synaptic Package Manager is key. They incorporate a 'simple update manager' icon of a circle that when everything is up-to-date it is green with a lighter green tick inside. It turns red when there are updates to be installed and this is done via Synaptic or command line - you are given the choice after clicking on the circle icon and select 'View Updates' which then gives you Synaptic or Command Line - the choice is yours. In the rpm version of PCLOS, to apply updates in Synaptic you have to 'reload', then 'Mark all upgrades', then 'Apply' - you don't need 'reload' in the Debian releases. I created a VM of the Cinnamon version of PCLOS Debian and uploaded a screen capture. I need to redo this as it had some errors on my part, in particular the LibreOffice Installer that each DE comes with. It was a new experience for me and where I went wrong was treating it like Synaptic - you only need to select the first box at launch and then it pulls everything in. I have still got to do videos for xfce, budgie, and MATE. I will hopefully get around to those soon. Currently uploading the pearOS niceC0re 12 Beta fail that came out in 2021 - it never progressed. The last release was shoddy to say the least as it just won't install, you can only run it as a VM or just run it live which is a shame - Alexandru Bălan clearly has not got the staying power of the likes of Texstar, who would like to retire! Then there is Q4OS. This has it's own method of theming which they call 'Look Switcher':
So basically, when you install Look Switcher from the Welcome Screen Apps installer, what it cleverly does is pull in all the various Windows themes from Global Themes for you, together with one 'Mac' theme called Future in light and dark variants, so you don't have to go searching.
Well I would always recommend Zorin because it's a very easy OS to use. But I personally think a lot of people will say Mint because they really don't know what else is out there. They possibly have never even used Linux, and are just parroting a name they have heard of. Like I use Zorin and also antiX and I would say both those names because I have used them both and approve of them and their easiness to use for a beginner to Linux.
I love Zorin - and indeed, when I got my wife off of Windows, I put Endeavour OS on her lappy at first. Not the smartest Idea. I wanted to make sure it was kept up to date (she was terrible about that on Windows). She asked, "well what's the difference?" I got to thinking, "ok, rolling release isn't desirable for her. Let me show her Mint and Zorin."
So I fired up MY laptop and let her poke around in both distros. She said, "this one" after I booted up Zorin. So that's what's on her laptop. Now, that being said, she ends up using a Chromebook I resurrected, and lets me use that laptop to play and dabble around it. LOL That now means I have both her "old" laptop and my main one. I should have just resurrected the Chromebook! (She uses Google stuff almost exclusively....)
Now, there is one advantage that Mint has for me on my main laptop. This lappy has an RTX 3060 Max-Q along with a Ryzen 7 5800U (which has an iGPU). Mint has this nice little "Prime Applet" that lets me switch between graphics cards at will, without rebooting! It's a Cinnamon spice, so I don't know how well that would work in Zorin. Yes, I can always keep the default "hybrid", but there have been times when I wanted to ONLY use the iGPU - if I know I'll be unplugged for a while, I don't want the dGPU coming on at all. I suppose I could use this as an excuse to dabble in programming. LOL
I wanna get someone I know, like a friend, on Zorin OS. My friend from school is considering switching to linux, but doesn't like wine compatibility for games. My dad is just a anti cheat gamer, which wine and proton cant get past. I just wanna share my feelings about Zorin OS to all my friends but they're either "whats that" or "windows is WAYYY better" Im so glad Zorin cares. It comes with LibreOffice, has a Zorin Connect unlike some other distros, and i like how user friendly the OS is itself
As of today, my brand new Asus Zenbook 14 OLED is running Fedora 41 (Gnome).
I haven't moved away from Zorin. The old Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 still runs Zorin OS Pro, but my latest hardware just didn't feel right for Zorin's old version of Gnome. Several things, like a toggle for keyboard brightness, was missing.
Before I chose Fedora Gnome, I extensively tested both Fedora KDE Plasma, Pop_OS, and a bunch of other distros. I'm savvy enough to figure out most things on my own, so the overwhelming nature of KDE's customization options didn't really scare me.
While I appreciated the fact that nearly everything can be customized, I didn't stop running into weird bugs and errors popping up every now and then. I wouldn't be able to defend this here, but KDE Plasma just didn't feel as polished as Gnome 47, even though the latter does lack many things, to begin with.
Gnome and KDE comparison aside, I think it gets harder to recommend Zorin's older stuff if folks are using newer hardware. I know I've said before that I like Zorin for its rock-solid stability, but newer hardware often needs newer software to go along with it.
As for why Linux Mint gets more recommendation, let me tell you a story. I was chatting with a friend of mine (who is also tech-savvy, but Linux-noob because he hasn't spent any time on Linux things) last night and I sent him over a thousand words explaining what all the different things (distros, desktop environments, the inter-compatibility -- like you can use your preferred DE in nearly any distro -- display servers, etc.) and how people are always fighting about what's best.
Given he wasn't going to go down the same rabbit hole as I, when he asked what would be the best distro for him to use, I thought for a moment, remembered all the praises I shared with him about Zorin OS, and said without much hesitation, "Linux Mint is a safe choice."
The whole reason the Linux topic came up was because PewDiepie uploaded a new PC build video yesterday where you can briefly see him using Linux Mint.
My friend pinged me immediately, impressed that someone as big as PewDiepie is running Linux Mint. That guy is tech-savvy for sure, and I don't know whether he actually uses Linux Mint daily, but if he does, chances are he -- like most people -- didn't want to go down the rabbit hole of options and just chose the one that's proven to be both up-to-date and stable.
All that is to say, unfortunately (for Zorin OS), I tend to agree with what you said, even though I personally like Gnome's polish-ness while admitting it's not the most newcomer-friendly.
Despite my personal dislike of the dated look that comes with Mint's Cinnamon desktop, despite my personal likeness towards Zorin OS, I agree that there's a reason why Linux Mint continues to be an easy recommendation for absolute beginners.