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?
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.
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 $50 and get access to the pro version, which can mimic any of the major desktops and also lets you use their exclusive creative suite. If that’s any good, it’s no wonder people are flocking to it. Linux is still kinda mid for creatives.
Kinda seems like the new Mint, not that Mint is going anywhere.
I thought there was a charge or something. I guess that’s what turned me off from it.
IIRC their web site used to make it sound like it was a paid product but it was always possible to get it for free. Can’t remember the exact details, perhaps something similar to those “name your price” softwares that have a pre-filled recommended value but it’s also possible to choose €0? I checked what it looks like nowadays and the Pro version does come up first if you go to downloads, and then there’s a free Core version below it.
Which is weird right? Who is recommending this distro for it to surge? Is this actually a lot of downloads when compared to other distros? I’ve never seen it listed once in any of the many “which distro should I switch to?” posts.
Tried it when I was starting out. But I may have read somewhere that it uses telemetry. So uninstalled later.
Oh, that’s why Windows users install it then
I think you might have it confused with another distro? no telemetry in zorin
ZorinOS used to send anonymous pings and the user did not had the option to opt out. https://zorin.com/legal/privacy/before-31-may-2018/ Seems now its an opt in service.
It only recieves major updates every two years, which means it gets outdated over time. The themes included are great for beginners though.
Yeah, you always hear Mint
I saw a comment stating that it charges 45$ for Zorin OS Pro, which is basically the normal OS but with some open-source software installed on it (Blender, Kdenlive, Audacity, etc.)
That must be what I saw before and decided against it.
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.
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.
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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.
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. Delightful news!
Zorin has been around for a long time. See distrowatch.
Been a while since I distrohopped heh
Remember when Covid happened, and suddenly every normie was using Zoom, instead of existing, well-established platforms?
Yeah!
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.
Yeah but that’s the thing they’re in completely different circles. They might as well be from another planet to us lol
Lindows died to soon
It still exists as Linspire
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.
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
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
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.
it’s great for anybody that doesn’t need it for gaming. that LTS packages always gets painfully stale for non-steam
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?
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.
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.
I have only tried two games yet, schedule 1 and cs2, but read the comment I left to the other guy. I have explained there more. Also, I have done digging and it appears Nvidia just has shit drivers support for their cards on Linux and the open source ones are buggy on new rtx cards.
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
I actually installed zorin os pro yesterday and tested on simple games like schedule 1 and cs2… And in fact ,the games performance dropped significantly. Especially for a game like schedule 1 that I had no problem max preset on 2k at 80-100 FPS… now it’s barely running at 30 FPS in middle of the Forrest on the same settings which is mental difference and I even have to use over clock on my legion.
So far, not that good, if I be honest. Also ran into second screen support problems, bios problems and in general the os seems to bug out sometimes.
I swapped the auto assigned drivers for GPU to prioritary tested ones for my GPU and the performance didn’t really increase, but it did fix my second screen detection issue albeit now some of the settings disappeared.
Linux mint on the other hand is 😎, but I don’t use them for the same purpose as I wanted to use zorin os pro.
Overall, it feels like it is definitely more sluggish and bug prone os compared to windows. I am happy with the sealed os and no more windows ai crap push, despite I had modded windows installed… but the performance in games is horrendous.
Edit.
Should probably add that my CPU usage is never higher than 15% and my ram is ddr5 5600mhz of 32gb, which is sufficient so only bottle neck right now is GPU which i didn’t have as much problems on windows as I have on zorin os pro.
Yes, the sampled games are only two, but it paints a good picture to me how much better performance was. Also I can’t even use frame gen 4 anymore, as zorin just doesn’t support it. Which sucks, even tho I would ever use it for a few games only.
I have no idea about zorinOS. Try a gaming focused distro like CachyOS or Bazzite to likely get better results.
I’ve never used Zorin, so I can’t tell you what the problems are caused by. I’d just recommend using a more mainstream and polished distro for gaming. Personally I’ve been using Fedora for a while and every game I try performs great. Can’t really compare to Windows anymore as it’s been a few years since the last time I used it on my hardware.
Generally, Nvidia drivers are absolutely horrendous on Linux. However, there are distros that make installing the right ones extremely easy or even skip that part entirely. You can try Pop!_OS and select the Nvidia ISO or Manjaro, which I believe had an installer for Nvidia drivers.
For specific games, I recommend checking out their respective ProtonDB pages. For me all games work out of the box and I never need any tweaks. Though it’s a good place in case you run into any. Some games like Civilization VI have disastrous native Linux ports, so you need to manually change to Proton in the game’s properties on Steam. I don’t think it’s the case for CS2, since Valve’s games usually have great native Linux support.
