I was unable to get the sound card to stop popping when on Zorin. Same for Mint. Would pop anytime sound played after more than a few minutes. No updates to the sound driver or any of the configuration fixed it. I also had GPU issues and was unable to play many games. I finally moved on to CachyOS and it’s been rock solid everywhere.
Its a good lazy out of box distro which is why I use it. I don’t have to tweak or install much to get work done once installed. Most additions I have made are for some nice quality of life or just a niche thing (sending text to a network port for a virtual machine. oh and the virtual machine software). I complained that they should use kde and finally installed it myself but again I don’t have to configure or add anything after installation to be using it for most things I do so I can hit the ground running. Again. Lazy.
Zorin has laudable aims but it’s delivered in a flawed way. It’s essentially Gnome with extensions to make it look and feel like other GUIs. Problem is, Gnome is not a good base for this type of approach - it is fundamentally not flexible and not designed for this. So Zorin is basically deliberating breaking Gnome to make it into something it’s just not meant to be under the hood.
Zorin looks very nice graphically and seems good at at first but then niggles come along. Minor but constantly present.
I think it’s probably OK for a Linux newbie but not ideal long term and doesn’t have the user base to make it as easy to get support as Mint for example.
If you do want to mimick other GUIs then really don’t start with Gnome. You can achieve much better results using KDE on any distro; KDE by design is flexible and it doesnt require breaking fundamental design decisions made for Gnome to mimick something else. Only downside to do-it-yourself with KDE is if you do want to perfectly mimick another GUI then it is a manual process of finding themes and skins that match the aesthetic you want.
That’s becuase Linux is it’s own thing and not focused on trying to mimick other DEs (even if some GUis have superifical similarities to Windows or MacOS).
I get what Zorin is trying to do, but I think using Gnome is a mistake but also for me the basic idea of “familiar to ease you in” doesn’t really work. Better for people to learn how Linux is different - there is a choice in design philosophies but all of them are shaped around what Linux is and how it works rather than what Windows or MacOS are.
Familiarity is very important for onboarding users. You’d be surprised how easy people give up because something is different. Kde Plasma is great, I run it myself, but information overload and flexibility is more likely to deter the average pc user than to win them over.
Started with Zorin but had a rough time. I didn’t realize until actual months later that my issues were due to a hardware fault and had nothing to do with the OS. By the time I realized, however, I had settled on Mint. I’ve since tried a handful of distros but always come back to Mint because I’m so used to it now. I do recommend Zorin for its level of polish and apparent desire to simplify the transition for folks coming from Windows.
The fact that they default to Brave Browser already makes me wary. I have plenty of issues with Mozilla myself, especially their recent trend of integrating AI into the browser but I would rather use a fork or even vanilla Chromium rather than Brave. I know it’s just the default and you can switch easily but the fact they landed on THAT out of all available options doesn’t give me confidence, I would go with Mint instead.
Brave might not be as hardcore “foss” oriented like some other browsers. But the stats don’t lie. Out of the box it gives good protection, non techies won’t be hardening their firefox configs. Zorin is about giving an easy onboarding. Brave just fits that user friendly design principle.
Just because Brave comes out as “the best” on privacy tests doesn’t mean it’s worth it to support a commercial browser that pushes AI, cryptocurrencies, that blocks ads while replacing them with their own locked behind their system that they get a cut from, that added their referral links to websites you visited and only removed them after severe backlash, whose CEO is a notorious homophobe that donated 1000$ to a campaign aiming to ban gay marriage rights in California. Zorin might claim they chose it based on merit and remove a lot of these features from it but they still push people to use it and increase its market share.
Most browsers push AI, I’ve never touched their crypto stuff in years of use, so easy to toggle off.
Honestly I like the concept of what they tried to do with ads and crypto. It’s a model that atleast pays back the user, al other ads are just leeching off your data without giving anything back.
Yah okay that last one I can’t defend 🙄. CEO’s certainly should shut their mouths more nowadays
Loved Zorin, it was the first Distro that made me fall in love with linux. Definitely install it and try it out for yourself. It’s essentially a pretty and better functioning Ubuntu without the spyware
No idea what the other commenter is on about, I used Zorin ~2 years ago. It’s a great distro for people new to Linux, and IMO has the cleanest aesthetic of any distro I’ve used. It was also super stable and reliable.
My issue with it (and ultimately the reason why I moved) is that it aims to be very stable which means its packages can get very outdated. I think the Nvidia drivers they used at the time I was on it were two years old. It’s not something most people would notice especially with how much Flatpak is used nowadays, but you’ll run into annoying cases where that thing you want to update isn’t available in that package manager.
Even looking at the website, Zorin 18 is out but it seems people on Zorin 17 will have to wait a few weeks for a way to upgrade.
Yeah I used it somewhat years ago which is why when I really made the switch I put it on my laptop. I actually still want to go to an image based distro but there is a bunch of stuff I sorta gotta get sorted and like all my zorin comments. so lazy. I mean im not but there is a lot of non laptop os things I got to do as well.
When I used Zorin OS in the past (roughly 3 years ago), it was a pretty miserable experience, and was absolute garbage in comparison to Ubuntu and Mint back then, mainly due to a lack of polish.
That being said, it has been worked on quite a bit since then, and while I’m cautiously optimistic, I’ll stick to recommending Mint for non-gaming and Bazzite for gaming users new to linux for the time being.
Yeah, I actually booted Zorin and started the install process last night, intending to put it on my secondary SSD, but instead of the usual “where would you like to install?”, the prompts were written in a way that didn’t assure me that it wasn’t going to mess with my primary SSD, then I ran out of time and bailed for the night.
This was the tool that I was most curious about anyway, so this will be much easier.
KDE connect is such an under appreciated killer app it’s not even funny.
When I go to house sit for a friend I just hook my laptop to their HDMI, pull out KDE Connect, and bam I’m kicking back 10 feet away watching my streaming stuff on my system with adblock running and everything, and the media controls just work.
I’m strongly considering using a Pi 3b+ as a TV machine where KDE Connect is the primary interface. It just works so well.
I also love getting text alerts or low battery notifications on my desktop without having to keep looking at my phone. It’s just amazing.
My favorite thing is media pausing automatically when I get a phone call and resuming when I hang up. I listen to music all day while I work, so when someone calls it automatically pauses and I don’t have to pause it myself or turn down my speakers. Really helpful for busy customer call days when I’m on the support rotation.
Notifications are also pretty great, useful for 2fa notifications since I’m at my machine for work all day.
Got me into Linux, 1.5 years ago. Tried Mint first, but that was pre some of their UI updates. I found the look quite outdated when I tried it. From there I started out by dual booting Zorin and Windows. Slowly moved everything over to linux and haven’t looked back since(only work laptop run windows now).
Nothing more to say than a very solid distro. Doesn’t update often, but that has the advantage of never breaking lol. Also installed it on all my parents devices and it “just works💫”.
Anyone have strong opinions about Zorin?
Already downloading it out of curiosity. The app to connect with your phone over the local network looks cool.
I was unable to get the sound card to stop popping when on Zorin. Same for Mint. Would pop anytime sound played after more than a few minutes. No updates to the sound driver or any of the configuration fixed it. I also had GPU issues and was unable to play many games. I finally moved on to CachyOS and it’s been rock solid everywhere.
The app to connect with your phone is a straight ripoff of KDE Connect with rebranding.
Its a good lazy out of box distro which is why I use it. I don’t have to tweak or install much to get work done once installed. Most additions I have made are for some nice quality of life or just a niche thing (sending text to a network port for a virtual machine. oh and the virtual machine software). I complained that they should use kde and finally installed it myself but again I don’t have to configure or add anything after installation to be using it for most things I do so I can hit the ground running. Again. Lazy.
Zorin has laudable aims but it’s delivered in a flawed way. It’s essentially Gnome with extensions to make it look and feel like other GUIs. Problem is, Gnome is not a good base for this type of approach - it is fundamentally not flexible and not designed for this. So Zorin is basically deliberating breaking Gnome to make it into something it’s just not meant to be under the hood.
Zorin looks very nice graphically and seems good at at first but then niggles come along. Minor but constantly present.
I think it’s probably OK for a Linux newbie but not ideal long term and doesn’t have the user base to make it as easy to get support as Mint for example.
If you do want to mimick other GUIs then really don’t start with Gnome. You can achieve much better results using KDE on any distro; KDE by design is flexible and it doesnt require breaking fundamental design decisions made for Gnome to mimick something else. Only downside to do-it-yourself with KDE is if you do want to perfectly mimick another GUI then it is a manual process of finding themes and skins that match the aesthetic you want.
That’s becuase Linux is it’s own thing and not focused on trying to mimick other DEs (even if some GUis have superifical similarities to Windows or MacOS).
I get what Zorin is trying to do, but I think using Gnome is a mistake but also for me the basic idea of “familiar to ease you in” doesn’t really work. Better for people to learn how Linux is different - there is a choice in design philosophies but all of them are shaped around what Linux is and how it works rather than what Windows or MacOS are.
Familiarity is very important for onboarding users. You’d be surprised how easy people give up because something is different. Kde Plasma is great, I run it myself, but information overload and flexibility is more likely to deter the average pc user than to win them over.
Started with Zorin but had a rough time. I didn’t realize until actual months later that my issues were due to a hardware fault and had nothing to do with the OS. By the time I realized, however, I had settled on Mint. I’ve since tried a handful of distros but always come back to Mint because I’m so used to it now. I do recommend Zorin for its level of polish and apparent desire to simplify the transition for folks coming from Windows.
The fact that they default to Brave Browser already makes me wary. I have plenty of issues with Mozilla myself, especially their recent trend of integrating AI into the browser but I would rather use a fork or even vanilla Chromium rather than Brave. I know it’s just the default and you can switch easily but the fact they landed on THAT out of all available options doesn’t give me confidence, I would go with Mint instead.
that must be new as I have not uninstalled anything and brave is not on mine. I added several browsers so im not 100% what was on by default.
privacytests.org
Brave might not be as hardcore “foss” oriented like some other browsers. But the stats don’t lie. Out of the box it gives good protection, non techies won’t be hardening their firefox configs. Zorin is about giving an easy onboarding. Brave just fits that user friendly design principle.
Just because Brave comes out as “the best” on privacy tests doesn’t mean it’s worth it to support a commercial browser that pushes AI, cryptocurrencies, that blocks ads while replacing them with their own locked behind their system that they get a cut from, that added their referral links to websites you visited and only removed them after severe backlash, whose CEO is a notorious homophobe that donated 1000$ to a campaign aiming to ban gay marriage rights in California. Zorin might claim they chose it based on merit and remove a lot of these features from it but they still push people to use it and increase its market share.
Most browsers push AI, I’ve never touched their crypto stuff in years of use, so easy to toggle off. Honestly I like the concept of what they tried to do with ads and crypto. It’s a model that atleast pays back the user, al other ads are just leeching off your data without giving anything back.
Yah okay that last one I can’t defend 🙄. CEO’s certainly should shut their mouths more nowadays
Loved Zorin, it was the first Distro that made me fall in love with linux. Definitely install it and try it out for yourself. It’s essentially a pretty and better functioning Ubuntu without the spyware
No idea what the other commenter is on about, I used Zorin ~2 years ago. It’s a great distro for people new to Linux, and IMO has the cleanest aesthetic of any distro I’ve used. It was also super stable and reliable.
My issue with it (and ultimately the reason why I moved) is that it aims to be very stable which means its packages can get very outdated. I think the Nvidia drivers they used at the time I was on it were two years old. It’s not something most people would notice especially with how much Flatpak is used nowadays, but you’ll run into annoying cases where that thing you want to update isn’t available in that package manager.
Even looking at the website, Zorin 18 is out but it seems people on Zorin 17 will have to wait a few weeks for a way to upgrade.
Yeah I used it somewhat years ago which is why when I really made the switch I put it on my laptop. I actually still want to go to an image based distro but there is a bunch of stuff I sorta gotta get sorted and like all my zorin comments. so lazy. I mean im not but there is a lot of non laptop os things I got to do as well.
When I used Zorin OS in the past (roughly 3 years ago), it was a pretty miserable experience, and was absolute garbage in comparison to Ubuntu and Mint back then, mainly due to a lack of polish.
That being said, it has been worked on quite a bit since then, and while I’m cautiously optimistic, I’ll stick to recommending Mint for non-gaming and Bazzite for gaming users new to linux for the time being.
Try KDE Connect for connecting to your phone. Works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Also available on both Android and iOS.
This looks so good. Ok, I’m going to install this instead of the new distro after all. Lol
Nice. Glad I could save you some time and effort.
Thank you.
Yeah, I actually booted Zorin and started the install process last night, intending to put it on my secondary SSD, but instead of the usual “where would you like to install?”, the prompts were written in a way that didn’t assure me that it wasn’t going to mess with my primary SSD, then I ran out of time and bailed for the night.
This was the tool that I was most curious about anyway, so this will be much easier.
KDE connect is such an under appreciated killer app it’s not even funny.
When I go to house sit for a friend I just hook my laptop to their HDMI, pull out KDE Connect, and bam I’m kicking back 10 feet away watching my streaming stuff on my system with adblock running and everything, and the media controls just work.
I’m strongly considering using a Pi 3b+ as a TV machine where KDE Connect is the primary interface. It just works so well.
I also love getting text alerts or low battery notifications on my desktop without having to keep looking at my phone. It’s just amazing.
My favorite thing is media pausing automatically when I get a phone call and resuming when I hang up. I listen to music all day while I work, so when someone calls it automatically pauses and I don’t have to pause it myself or turn down my speakers. Really helpful for busy customer call days when I’m on the support rotation.
Notifications are also pretty great, useful for 2fa notifications since I’m at my machine for work all day.
Got me into Linux, 1.5 years ago. Tried Mint first, but that was pre some of their UI updates. I found the look quite outdated when I tried it. From there I started out by dual booting Zorin and Windows. Slowly moved everything over to linux and haven’t looked back since(only work laptop run windows now).
Nothing more to say than a very solid distro. Doesn’t update often, but that has the advantage of never breaking lol. Also installed it on all my parents devices and it “just works💫”.