Lots of comments suggesting Zorin is for beginners who don’t know Linux and just want something like Windows. I’d just like to say that I have been using Linux as my daily driver for over 20 years now. I’ve done a lot of distro hopping, everything from Puppy and DSL to Garuda and Ubuntu.
Zorin is a great OS for people who like understandable work flows and a polished interface. Lots of excellent options in Linux land, but even with all my years of experience I’m quite happy to settle in with Zorin.
A Linux distro can be “for beginners” because it includes reasonable defaults and tools that make it easier to use. But it will never really be “only” for beginners.
Every Linux distro uses basically the same kernel. They all offer a console to access the command line. So, as an expert, what can I not do in basically any version of Linux?
With things like Distrobox, I can even get any other version of Linux on my version of Linux.
I could be installing applications from the AUR 15 minutes after installing ZorinOS. I could be running containers, compiling code, deploying cloud infrastructure, doing offensive cybersecurity, playing games in Steam, transcoding video, or running AI agents the console. What exactly can I not do on Zorin that need an “expert” distro for?
People are a bit too elitist sometimes.
Not a Zorin user by the way.
I took time over the weekend to put Bazzite as my primary OS on both my desktop and ROG Ally. Not because it necessarily performs better but just because I’ve had enough of all the creepy AI shit that MS is doing.
How did you decide between that and Zorin?
I have used Zorin for the past year for gaming. It’s been mostly fine, but they are a bit slow to upgrade certain things in the interest of stability. Zorin is on a two year cycle for major releases, which can mean waiting awhile for certain package upgrades. This is probably for the best for non-gamers and regular users, but some games I wanted to play required the latest graphics driver, which in turn required some newer dependencies in the OS.
Lately, I’ve been kinda toying with the idea of switching to Bazzite because every time I tinker with the graphics driver in Zorin, I break it. Additionally, sometimes some random package upgrade breaks things. I eventually get it working, but it is never fun to login for the night planning to play with a friend and then need to instead fix an issue. I’m thinking Bazzite might be a bit more suited for my gaming use cases given that it’s their priority. I don’t know for sure though. I could really care less about the OS and have no ego about doing things myself. Fuck Windows, but beyond that, I just want a zero maintenance OS that lets me game.
I’m sure Zorin is solid. I went with Bazzite since it does a lot for gaming out of the box and makes updates pretty easy. I have another Laptop with PopOS on it and have really enjoyed that as well. Again - pretty straight-forward experience if you are coming from Windows.
Zorin looks like a great starting-off point for normal (non-tech) people migrating from Windows. Visually it’s much more polished than Mint, based on Gnome and Ubuntu LTS.
Ubuntu LTS means it can also work in a corporate setting as it will get all the vendor support.
The Pro version is a bit of a bait-and-switch as I understand the only unique point is are the skins that give you Window 11 and MacOS look-alike themes. All the rest seems to be an open source software bundle. For Windows (or Mac) users the price isn’t really a negative and can be smart marketing.
For all of us used to the common Linux DE’s, dabble or dive into Arch, do heavy gaming? We aren’t the target audience. And that’s fine.
Is zorin-os that good? I don’t really like its model of bundling a whole lot of free software together and then charging money for it.
Although you can just get the free version.
ZorinOS is a decent stepping stone for those coming from windows. It was my first Linux daily driver when I made the switch. It got me comfortable enough with Linux to dive in and start learning before I started distro hopping. I ended up on Mint and now just recommend that, but Zorin got me over the hump to become a full time Linux user.
Might be fun to make a live USB and see how much it’s changed in the last ten years. I’ve got a 4 day weekend coming up… might have to try that.
It is Ubuntu with some attention to the UI and UX, and just like Ubuntu the “pro” version has a price. Which you pay a premium to have things preinstalled.
The Zorin prices are donations to help pay the distro maintainers. You can choose 0 dollars, or atleast you used to be able to
I personally like Zorin better than Mint. Mint is very dated looking, while Zorin feels more in line with a modern OS. They also try to create an easy experience for non-techie people to use Linux. They need some model to keep themselves going though. The money for pro also unlocks some features they’ve added to the OS and the free software is still free, they just make it easy to acquire it for non-techie people who don’t want to spend time trying to do their own research, or don’t know how to.
It’s good for people who are use to windows and aren’t comfortable with linux yet, it was the first distro I used when I switched to Linux but now I’ve been on Fedora for the past four years or so
for non-techie users that want to switch it’s great. Yes the updates are slow and few/far between but I mean if you go the paid route you get tech support and a few other software packages/themes.
I think for people who just want to keep older machines going and simply want to do work and browse/stream it’s fine. beyond that? good luck. I’ve heard that upgrading it is worse than Ubuntu and it’s based on Ubuntu so…
But Zorin has pretty good PR so that’s what’s going for them. Honestly though if you want a new user on linux that isn’t comfortable with it just yet I feel there are better options that “just work” like Bazzite or Mint.
Zorin is less about it just works and more that its feel is closer to windows for people looking to switch but arent ready to dive head first into unfamiliar waters. I used Zorin at my first distro for about a year as I got comfortable then just switched to Ubuntu and installed dash to panel and arc menu myself. It was a good OS for getting used to things
If it lessens the impact of switching operating systems, and holds them in long enough to get comfortable with Linux, alternatively provides just enough Windows-like veneer to be comfortable enough then it is still a win.
So essentially, a bunch of them are going to try this and be disappointed and then go on to shit all over Linux as a whole…
Or perhaps dip their toes enough to look into distro-hopping.
Some of them might. But I wouldn’t put too much faith in them, though.
What level of faith do you require from people trying out the OS? What damage is done?
That’s not my point. My point is, they try Zorin, they don’t like it, and now they go on about how much Linux sucks as they run back to Windows. I highly doubt many of them will bother distro-hopping. As far as must users will be concerned, they tried Linux and it sucked. They’re almost definitely not going to want to spend more time redoing their system a bunch until they find one they like, nor are they going to want to spend the time with dotfiles getting it the way they want.
If they did research on other distros before installing Zorin, they probably wouldn’t have gone with Zorin…
They’re riding a bandwagon, not setting their own path.
I don’t understand this attitude. I did a bunch of research, used Ventoy to try out five different distros and went with Zorin. I think Zorin is a very good intro to Linux for noobs. It’s a pretty polished experience and would say if Zorin doesn’t convince complete noobs to switch, then they likely wouldn’t have switched. What other distros might I ask, were you thinking they’d have chosen instead?
Gotta have to congratulate the folks over at Zorin OS for this succes. Mad props!
Though, I gotta wonder: Can we expect similar numbers for Linux Mint or Ubuntu? Or, has Zorin OS somehow won the post-W10 SEO-wars? And, if so, how?
They have better marketing and establishing user benefit, their next project is GRID which is supposed to be for an IT admin to mass deploy software,patches and policies from a dashboard, like you do with Windows. So they will gain credit with IT pros
They have UIs that look just like Windows out of the box. A lot of their marketing is to cater to Windows refugees as “we’re the easiest ones to get used to”.
Well Zorin is ubuntu based, so i feel like that’s a win for Ubuntu (and debian)
And also the world
It’s Ubuntu based, but it’s doing a lot of what Ubuntu is for. If canonical is happy with that that’s awesome, but I would suspect that they want these people going to Ubuntu itself. Ubuntu remains recommended against by a lot of people.
in early 2000s there was a project written in pascal that was called xpde.
it was a desktop environment that was replicating everything in xp, control panel, file manager, device manager, desktop, everything.
i don’t know how it got closed/discontinued. was it a legal issue or developers ran out of steam.
I’m not to familiar with zorin, and I don’t see it recommended often. What’s the deal? Any criticisms of it? Especially for new users?
Yeah, you always hear Mint
Hi, I just switched my home PC to Zorin. I picked it thinking that it would be the simplest version of Linux for my family members to start using, given its similarity to Windows. So far no issues with them using it but it is noticably slower to load programs.
I use will continue using Mint on my personal devices despite my dislike for using the terminal, having grown up doing everything through the Windows GUI.
slower to load programs
Maybe that’s why it feels familiar to Windows users. /S
Are there specific things you dislike about terminal?
Just try it.
I did and I was pretty impressed. The way they modified the Gnome desktop with extensions is the way Gnome should’ve been in the first place. It’s actually usable.
Hey I’m really enjoying GNOME after I added 8 extensions that do what I expect a desktop environment to do
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Which is weird right? Who is recommending this distro for it to surge? Is this actually a lot of downloads when compared to other distros? I’ve never seen it listed once in any of the many “which distro should I switch to?” posts.
Zorin has been featured in some major publications — like Forbes
I’ve never actually read a Forbes article on my own. I’ve seen some Forbes articles posted though. Maybe all these downloads are just from Forbes junkies and they saw the article.
It’s a 3 year old article, but Zorin has been building its relationships with the media and putting some effort in to marketing. The journalist here explains why he features Zorin OS in his articles. Probably a lesson here for FOSS and Linux in general. If you want adoption, you need to tell people about it where they are and not hope they find you. It’s not, “if you build it they will come.” It’s “if you build it and tell them about it, they will come.” I think the average Linux user is probably not an expert on how to spread Linux because the average Linux user is into niches and doesn’t believe in marketing and probably even has an aversion to it.
I think it’s just a really good Windows-like. It uses a modified GNOME that looks pretty good. Though as a KDE fangirl, I probably wouldn’t be able to see it as anything other than GNOME. (◕દ◕)
It’s based on Ubuntu, so I’m sure support is good and breakage is infrequent.
It also looks like you can pay $50 and get access to the pro version, which can mimic any of the major desktops and also lets you use their exclusive creative suite. If that’s any good, it’s no wonder people are flocking to it. Linux is still kinda mid for creatives.
Kinda seems like the new Mint, not that Mint is going anywhere.
All the information I found about the “creative suite” is that it’s Krita, Kdenlive, Darktable, etc.
Yeah, looks like it’s just preinstalled with Pro.
Kinda bogus that they’d use that as a selling point. Makes it seem like there’s some sort of exclusivity.
the paid version, I believe, also provides one on one tech support for it.
I thought there was a charge or something. I guess that’s what turned me off from it.
IIRC their web site used to make it sound like it was a paid product but it was always possible to get it for free. Can’t remember the exact details, perhaps something similar to those “name your price” softwares that have a pre-filled recommended value but it’s also possible to choose €0? I checked what it looks like nowadays and the Pro version does come up first if you go to downloads, and then there’s a free Core version below it.
It looks and feels a bit like windows with the theming it has out of the box. So it’s probably an easier on ramp and possibly recommended in “what Linux is most like windows” google searches and the like.
It only recieves major updates every two years, which means it gets outdated over time. The themes included are great for beginners though.
Tried it when I was starting out. But I may have read somewhere that it uses telemetry. So uninstalled later.
Oh, that’s why Windows users install it then
I think you might have it confused with another distro? no telemetry in zorin
ZorinOS used to send anonymous pings and the user did not had the option to opt out. https://zorin.com/legal/privacy/before-31-may-2018/ Seems now its an opt in service.
Lindows died to soon
It still exists as Linspire
What even is zorin os lol I’ve never even heard of it. Normies really do surprise me often like this, like they mathematically calculate to pick the strangest least expected things through the most alien of mechanisms, it’s always fun trying to figure it out after the fact. Delightful news!
Remember when Covid happened, and suddenly every normie was using Zoom, instead of existing, well-established platforms?
Zorin OS has been around since 2009
I really don’t get why you wouldn’t just use mint coming from windows. who is making these recs? I only hear “mint! mint!” in my circles
I know at least one person who has had a couple of false starts with migrating to Linux, is now on Zorin and thinks Zorin is much more polished looking than Mint.
Zorin has been around for a long time. See distrowatch.
Been a while since I distrohopped heh
640k780k ought to be enough for anybody…it’s great for anybody that doesn’t need it for gaming. that LTS packages always gets painfully stale for non-steam
Not really. I’m using Kubuntu 24.04 LTS and it’s working fine
begging people to consider that not everything is a universal affects everyone problem but a problem nonetheless it’s called survivor bias. zorin is a unique offender for producing their even number LTS on the following off numbered year . they only got 24.04 like last month. some non-steam struggles when using older packages
So, they know it’s only windows users that downloads it? Interesting - their version 17 must have sucked so much that people switched back, and now they give it another go?
18 is pretty darn good
Is that headline number for the free or paid for version? I couldn’t tell from the article.
Looks like all downloads are direct from them, so it’s much harder for distros using torrents to know their install base, but I suspect they’re not much different.
I’ve seen increased activity with the Arch, Mint & Raspios torrents that I seed - although I don’t have cold figures to say how much by.
Why would someone get a free OS from anywhere other than the developer website?
Download mirrors and torrents to save the developer’s bandwidth cost and to get the files faster. Safe, if you know how to verify the integrity of the files.
And only if you get the torrent / magnet from the official site.
I still have two more laptops to install Linux on, one will have Linux mint and the gaming one , I will keep having windows as it still offers 10-20 % better performance while gaming than any Linux os.
as it still offers 10-20 % better performance while gaming than any Linux os.
Maybe we’re playing different games, but this has not been my experience
Which games did you see such performance differences in? Usually it’s the exact same (with a, let’s say, 3% margin of error) or slightly better on Linux.
