Zorin OS
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In old newsprint there was a term "below the fold" with a literal meaning. If it's below the fold it's less important than what is "above the fold" since no one reads below the fold.
Is it burying the lede to point out that it's Linux (or GNU/Linux+Ubuntu extra packages how ever we want to pronounce it)? I would guess probably not.
On a 32" monitor in portrait mode I did have to scroll quite a bit to see those bits. It was worse on my phone, and was even worse on a landscape monitor. "It's Linux" is far less important than what Forbes has to say about it, and it being Linux is more important than it being privacy respecting (which probably means Firefox as the default browser) to the page authors, but who am I to question them. Maybe this is the year of the Linux desktop.
They understand that technically-oriented people will research the OS and its underlying components, but their target audience isn’t technical. Therefore, bombarding them with overly technical details on the home page is counterproductive.
In my opinion, ZorinOS has effectively marketed itself.
TBH in the current environment I still think the best OS for "revive an old computer for a not very tech savvy person" is ChromeOS. I've never tried the open source alternatives for that but I'd be much happier setting up a relative with a glorified browser as an OS than something that attempts to do everything.
minus the cost of supporting windows
minus the cost of malware and virii on windows
hmm, so that works pretty well, IMHO :-P
You can get windows laptops for $100–$500 just get one of those and put Linux on it? Not a single person's grandmother (except maybe that one that plays Skyrim) needs a $1400 laptop, total waste of resources.
Way back in the day, I set up my grandpa with Slackware and FVWM. Yeah, I had to edit a configuration file to add a program - but that also meant that once I set it up, it would never break.
[0]: https://fydeos.io/
Zorin negates this worry entirely and allows you to install one OS for everyone and then just choose the Windows or Mac mode depending on the end-user.
After Unity got removed from Ubuntu as default DE, I eventually adopted XFCE.
But I've found Ubuntu with Gnome 46 and a few tweaks to offer most of what I like about Unity (and macOS).
And no, many normies use Windows just as out of factory, as anyone that has had to fix the cousin's computer during a holidays visit is well aware.
Which means they do not "get a functional and unobtrusive operating system."
My experience of Windows users is that if they do not know how to tweak it, they complain about it.
> Which Linux users, from the myriad of Dritrowach rankings?
Any of them
I would like to see someone using Kali Linux for a DAW, without issues, it is any of them, after all.
Why would you use Kali Linux for a DAW? It's designed for penetration testing.
Most linux distributions ship pipewire which handles everything that Jack, ALSA, and Pulseaudio does, including many of the advanced low latency features.
Moreover, it's no longer required to recompile Linux to get the realtime features, that ships by default these days.
Hell, Pop_OS! has better support for my headphones than Windows ever had. Windows decided that 1% should be "excruciatingly loud and unlistenable", whereas in Linux it shows me the interfaces available and lets me select a different audio routing.
You haven't responded to the rest of my post, and your response of "If I can't do it on Kali Linux then it isn't possible because the poster said any Linux distro" honestly leads me to believe you're more interested in nitpicking arguments to "win", rather than debating and understanding. But, I'm going to be generous with my time and energy here and answer nonetheless.
In response to "Which distro?", literally any of the general purpose ones that have an update of this year. Whatever distros come up when you type how to move from windows to linux into google.
A quick search shows that Linux Mint and Zorin are kind of favoured in articles. But hell, Pop_OS!, Fedora, Ubuntu, whatever. You're probably not going to turn Kali or Puppy Linux into a perfect DAW environment without a lot of tweaking, but a simple google shows a bunch of suggested distributions that would work fine, and a specialist search of "linux distributions for audio production" would get you a better selection. None of these distributions you generally have to tweak a whole bunch, at least any more than you would have to tweak windows 11 to get it working right without advertising in the desktop (lmao).
We are a long way away from having to deal with Pulseaudio, Pipewire was feature complete for general purpose use in 2021 before it even hit 1.0, and almost all distributions now ship it, that's how much of an improvement to the Linux audio stack it is. Linux audio is good enough now that big audio companies like e.g. Presonus, are now supporting Linux: https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-us/articles/1921455826958...
And tools like VCV Rack work OOTB on Linux, I even got an Interesting copy of Renoise running in WINE out of the box.
If you want to see a considered opinion on Linux for audio production, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idcGxMFwvv8
There's a whole bunch more, too. A good bunch of these work on Linux, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8HvTr_q2Yw (Although you'd be better off with Ardour, which is listed)
Your lengthy response is a good example of Linux forums, that eventually I got tired to visit, though.
Remember my first distro used kernel 1.0.9, and I still use Linux distros at work, just not on my own laptops, so I am quite aware of the tweaking that never went away.
It was supposed to be hyperbole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole
I took it as obvious that I was excluding specialised distros.
> so I am quite aware of the tweaking that never went away.
What tweaking? People tweak WIndows too.
As the comment further up this thread pointed out, you need to tweak Windows to make it " functional and unobtrusive operating system."
Windows is as constant of a PITA as Linux. But alas, these criticisms are never taken seriously.
> Your lengthy response is a good example of Linux forums, that eventually I got tired to visit, though.
It takes four times as much writing to refute bullshit as it does to write it.
My system works out of the box with basically no Tweaking other than clicking "install" on a bunch of things in the software installer.
Meanwhile Windows complaints that I have seen in the last few months from people in communities I am in:
"Is there any way to get windows to stop updating applications at random times? I have bad internet so if I'm trying to play games it lags me out in the middle of a match all the time"
"On Windows it seems like every app has a background task when I boot up that lets it do what it wants regardless of if I want it to"
"(misc comments about Windows 11 blocking Google Chrome)"
"I love Taskbar Tweaker but it errors on startup saying it can't load libraries and doesn't support windows 11, and won't work, and then I click ok and it works"
"Why is destiny 2 not using my GPU? I had to manually go through and select it to use my GPU lol"
"I want to play sims 2 but it doesn't work under windows 11 and I don't want to install a bunch of modding tools to get it to work, but VMWare/Virtualbox doesn't work because you can't do hardware acceleration without disabling a bunch of Windows bullshit" (The Sims 2 works out of the box on Wine and is rated Platinum on ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com/app/3314070 )
"It is possible to keep the non-ai subscription to Office 365, but they hide it (link to article explaining how to tweak Windows)"
From what I've seen, Windows users tweak that shit just to get it to work normally, way more than I have ever had to touch my OS. Many of these things JustWork on Linux or are not problems.
This has nothing to do with “zorin”. Proton, wine, lutris, are available for all Linuxes
I have been using Linux since the '90s and haven't used anything else in at least a decade, but I struggled to understand what all the pieces were and what I was supposed to do with them when I wanted to play a Steam game with my kid several months ago. I'm still not sure I did it right; I think I probably did install Lutris, maybe, but I have no idea what problem it is meant to solve.
Out of the top 1000 games on steam: https://www.protondb.com/dashboard
29 are "borked" (unplayable)
26 are "bronze" (issues playing like "might crash")
82 are "silver" ("runs with minor issues but is playable")
823 are "gold"/"platinum" (works perfectly with tweaks, and works perfectly ootb)
> TBH in the current environment I still think the best OS for "revive an old computer for a not very tech savvy person" is ChromeOS.
Only 52 games are listed as "certified" for proton on Chrome OS.
Installing Steam and running games through Steam will fix that, but it won't help with users downloading the Epic Game Store or GOG or the Rockstar Launcher.
Having helped a few users get acclimated with Linux, I've found that there are always a few rough edges around games. Zorin seems to hide them very well out of the box, though, much better than any of the other distros I've tried.
Proton _is_ Wine. Fixes in Proton get upstreamed into Wine, and Valve hires developers to work on Proton, Wine, and Mesa. Wine isn't in the dark ages anymore and is able to run the majority of things you throw at it confidently and capably.
> but it won't help with users downloading the Epic Game Store or GOG or the Rockstar Launcher.
That's... why we have Lutris? You literally cannot shake a stick without coming across those. Even just typing "epic games on linux" into google and being a dumbass that reads the AI overview, it will tell you that Heroic and Lutris exist: https://i.imgur.com/KBiw1cR.png
After that, you just click some buttons that are clearly marked and wait for things to install, and it just works: https://i.imgur.com/XUFJaUu.png
To be clear, I literally just did this because I wanted to try Fall Guys on my laptop with an aggressively underpowered graphics card. It took only minimal intervention from me (clicking "install" and "next", and then logging in to Epic).
It's not as seamless as hitting "Install" on Steam would be, but if you're able to mod games on Windows (i.e. "follow instructions") you're more than able to deal with the state of gaming on Linux in the present day, and in many ways it is somewhat easier than Windows with the way Linux handles software upgrades.
I think it's fairer to say Proton includes Wine, because it ships with software that is not part of Wine such as DXVK.
If you open up `winetricks` in a default installation, you can just select to install all of these extra components yourself -- including DXVK (Not that I'm suggesting that someone who is green-eared does that without a guide, but it is literally just clicking checkboxes and then "OK"), and Lutris is another kind of Wine distribution that manages your games and pulls down these extra libraries for you. Most people either add stuff as non-steam games (which handily keeps track of all of the games for you too), which lets you run it via Proton, or just uses Lutris (or Heroic I guess).
But like, even the default distribution of Wine is able to handle things very, very capably now and a lot of things that required tinkering JustWork(tm). I say that as someone who ran a single Arch Linux distribution for 7 years straight back in the mid-late 2010s
Getting a recent version of Wine on anything but Arch-based distros without some kind of confusing intermediary is quite tricky, so making Wine somewhat usable goes a long way for non-tech-savvy users.
I've seen Zorin on computers sold for cheap in several second-hand stores. All PCs that have no hope of running Windows 11 (and probably struggled to run Windows 10 before getting a RAM+SSD upgrade). For reusing old tech, it's not a bad solution, though some users might have someone install Windows 10 later anyway.
My anecdotal experience with the steam and steamOS has been that the windows versions of games run better via proton than their native linux versions.
One game i have didn't run even run when i was on windows, but the windows version worked in Linux..
Was it an old game? Those tend to do that
>My anecdotal experience with the steam and steamOS has been that the windows versions of games run better via proton than their native linux versions.
This is very interesting, does anyone have insights into why? I can only guess the games/their engines are more mindful of optimizing their calls to the native windows APIs, which when translated turns out to be pretty efficient on the output side too
For older games, the biggest advantage WINE has over Windows is WINE's prefix model, which lets you essentially build purpose built environments, not dissimilar to vendoring your dependencies into an OCI container. And if you're running a file system with CoW powers, those separate environments don't even take up a great deal of storage since the vast majority of the prefix is bit for bit identical.
I've experienced the same thing with game console emulators. The Windows version run smoother on Linux than natively compiled ones do.
I mean she only figured out libreoffice was installed instead of the pirated copy of office she used to run and complained the menus were different. Little she knew that a more recent version of Office would too have different menus/items placement anyway.
The rise of smartphones has eliminated an entire class of computer users. People who just want to do some Google searches, chat on Facebook, etc. can just use phones, and they do. (Caveat: I think a lot of people in the 30-50 age group still prefer a PC, because that's what they're used to, but that cohort is a one-off and is slowly diminishing. Furthermore, I've observed that as people near retirement, they are less interested in sitting in front of a computer screen, which will diminish this cohort relatively soon).
So who still uses a computer? I think it's just PC gamers, highschool/college students, and white-collar professionals.
PC gamers are very satisfied with the state of Linux, because games are relatively simple applications, and the Linux ecosystem has been able to provide a great compatibility environment for Windows games.
Students and professionals are less likely to be satisfied with Linux, and it's not really Linux's fault, but a lot of software just doesn't work on Linux. And even if it did, small issues like case-sensitive filesystems could easily provide enough friction to prevent these users from switching. Lastly, these users are willing to spend a modest amount of money to save them time, and a Windows PC with the cost of the OS bundled isn't exactly expensive. Windows 10 was released over 10 years ago, and these users are likely to buy a new PC within that time, meaning they'll always get the latest Windows version, so upgrading their OS isn't really something they think about.
Keep in mind, I'm not saying any of this is good or correct or moral or non-cringe, I'm just saying that this is the real reason why Linux adoption is a more complex issue these days.
2 years ago but her computer had been installed at least 6 or 7 years before, that was Office 2016 period I believe. Granted the ribbon already existed but the default placements of a number of elements were slightly different than what you see in Office 365 today.
My point is that she didn't really care or realize it wasn't windows until she asked me for MS Office and I told her I couldn't install it on this Linux OS and that I didn't have any license for it. I think the respect the license part was what surprised her the most as a person who grew up in the digital age and got used to pasting random images found on the internet in social medias.
So there’s some number of users who could probably just be switched over by PC vendors preinstalling Linux, but there’s other groups who’d benefit from something more truly Windows-like.
Aside from those groups, I think there’s a crowd that could be attracted by simply selling your distro as being like “Windows when it was still good, except this time you get to keep it forever”. I think there’s a decent number of people who’ve become fatigued with modern Windows but don’t care enough to switch who’d be pushed over the edge by a distro that’s a near perfect reproduction of XP, 7, etc. Nostalgia can be a powerful motivator.
While it wasn't a good fit as a techie, I rated Zorin the best distro for 'general desktop computing' for "normal" people who have used Windows their whole life.
I was impressed by how integrated and easy to use the desktop environment was. Now, this is not a statement of Gnome vs KDE etc etc, it is of the experience of using it - e.g. simple settings for making the general OS feel like Windows or MacOS, lots of sensible things.
Pop OS has a whole new desktop metaphor. That doesn't bother a techie; it can totally throw non-technical folks.
Zorin coerces GNOME into a Windows-like design, but unlike too many distros, it looks good while doing it, and the paid version comes with a tonne of apps pre-installed and paid support.
I didn't like the way they sell this on their page, "Bundled with alternatives to over $5,000 of professional software". They list the commercial alternatives with their prices but no mention of what's the bundled alternative. Probably the usual free software that any user with a modicum of familiarity with an app store can install in minutes.
The lack of transparency about what software they bundle, and the implication that this software is entirely equivalent to the commercial/professional one feels a bit dishonest and puts me off.
You're kinda splitting hairs, here. If you've used Creative Cloud recently then you know it's downright awful compared to CS6.
If anyone told you they need Photoshop for their work you wouldn't feel at all silly to offer MS Paint as "an alternative"?
Zorin's page doesn't name any alternative, just a lot of names of commercial software. They sure do suggest that the alternatives are reasonably equivalent to those, which is a huge stretch. I can think of 2-3 paid Office alternatives that would give MS Office a run for its money but that's not what Zorin offers and I have to find this out on Reddit instead of their own page. They bundle the free stuff that also comes with a most other Linux distributions.
> You're kinda splitting hairs, here.
I'm not the one trying to debate word definitions when the complaint was very clear. The vagueness and the framing of the comparison are intentionally misleading to sell a product. Bending over backwards to defend this behavior just draws even more attention to its sketchiness.
The real comparison is 'stable distribution for developer/techie type people' vs 'stable distribution that is easy to use for newbies'. Zorin is the latter, comparing the two doesn't quite make sense. If you are the former, you wouldn't pick ZorinOS.
Not to say you can't do anything on Zorin you couldn't on PopOS, but the point of Zorin is a well integrated operating system for non-technical people, which means packages won't always be latest because they want to ship a stable operating system for non-technical people.
If you had an older system and wanted to use it for basic web type activities, Zorin would probably be a better fit for that scenario
Sure, you can do all of the things that it does in more custom ways assembling and using those disparate pieces yourself. Sure, it is probably less efficient on disk space and resources as it uses a variety of software installation approaches including Flatpak. Sure, its Windows compatibility is just Wine. Sure, it’s hard to find info on the main product page about what it’s actually running. None of those things matter when you want a computing system that is polished, free, and lets you start being productive instead of managing your system. If that’s not for you, don’t use it! You’ll be fine.
The other more aesthetical aspect is that at least with Zorin 17 they really mimic Windows in a positive way, in that they leverage the 'muscle memory' of non-technical users.
My experience putting it on other people's laptops is that they just intuitively know where to find things because of how the DE is analogue to what they are already familiar with.
There's also quite a few good reviews on Zorin on YouTube.
People should also note Zorin sells a "pro" version for around $50. I'm sure most people could achieve the same features the pro edition has without much trouble, but it also helps them with development costs and everything else.
- Ubuntu based, so it has full compatibility with every .deb package that you find online
- Not actually Ubuntu, so it doesn't have that weird Canonical corporate push stuff (ads in terminal, etc.)
- Has a .exe hook preinstalled that asks you if you want to install Wine to run Windows apps
- Has a very Windows-like layout so it's instantly familiar (which is not uncommon, but Ubuntu certainly goes the other way)
- Ubuntu based, so it has full compatibility with every .deb package that you find online
I don't think that .deb files are universally portable.
You're not going to be installing random Debian packages from the Debian FTP server, but for most proprietary software that resorts to "install this .deb", it'll work most of the time, which beats many other distributions.
On the other hand, installing software this way is a great way for upgrades to the next major version to fail spectacularly halfway through, so I'm not so sure if it's a feature or not.
That being said, I still think this is a bit of a strange option when there's several Ubuntu flavors with more Windows-esque desktops, plus Linux Mint which offers a lot of these benefits with a much larger userbase and therefore better support (though Zorin is more "modern" looking). Not a bad option but not one I'd think to recommend often.
https://blog.elementary.io/os-8-available-now/#:~:text=In%20...
Also, strange to move those into settings IMO.
That sounds spammy and misleading to me. I’m assuming they’re just including open source alternatives and assuming the same value as commercial offerings.
I personally think the messaging is fine, but the above comment was a clear example that some people could get it wrong.
Gimp finally has non-destructive editing, so is almost in same category as those two. And Krita is good for pixels as well.
But I get what you're saying.
>Thanks to the advanced security features of Linux, Zorin OS is resistant to PC viruses and malware
The whole landing page is full of those statements. It seems like they are targeting a demographics with low tech literacy, but I don't know how productive those statements are really.
"Zorin OS is built from the same software that powers the New York Stock Exchange and computers on the International Space Station.
Thanks to its advanced security features, Zorin OS is resistant to PC viruses and malware."
The root is that the writers are pushing Linux, and writing through that lens, instead of internalizing the ur-problem that the readers have of "needing to get off Windows" (for whatever reason) and writing content that addresses that.
And I say this as a fan of Zorin.
1. A tech layperson, and ...
2. In the market for downloading an OS?
Normal people buy computers and use OS that is installed on them.
It would probably make more sense to be targeting OEMs or something.
If somebody is navigating to a website for an OS, they already have some sort of clue that a new OS would be solving their problem, which indicates that they do have some level of understanding beyond what most people would. Really the average computer user today doesn't know that an OS is a separable part of their computer... most people think of computers as "Mac computers", or "Windows computers".
True, and often overlooked in the world of Linux.
> but I don't know how productive those statements are really.
What it really means is that it comes with 20GB of so of preinstalled Flatpak apps for a whole bunch of use cases: graphic art, sound and music production, video and podcast editing, live streaming, etc.
Stuff you need domain-specific knowledge to find and install on Linux, and which on Windows costs real money and probably will get you a tonne of spyware, ad banners etc.
Nothing vastly demanding if you have the knowledge.
Rather than giving you an app store and leaving you to it to find it, learn it, navigate it, and find the apps you need and avoid anything dodgy, they take a whole catalogue of premium big-name FOSS apps and preload the lot.
It's big, and when I reviewed it, it filled my VM and then a real disk partition -- but in real life, you nuke Windows and dedicate a laptop to this, and then it's fine.
My most recent review:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/03/zorin_os_173/
My first:
So it seems to me that this homepage was very successful, at least in this case of a linux user being able to recommend it to a non-techie.
They should at least put a link anywhere in the webpage, where people can click and at least be redirected to their components.
I know compliance is about "you only provide it if asked for", but they could be a bit more proactive and _embrace_ that they are using FOSS, not merely try to sell it.
By the way: How does selling of the Pro version work with GPL? Or is it covered because they offer the Core version?
Also you can charge money for GPL software. If someone wants to pirate Zorin OS, that person seems outside their non-techie target audience
The link is also in the middle of the home page.
I wish OEMs had made Linux distros first class citizens for their laptops and computers and I wish these distros also imagined “regular people” using their OS/software. I guess both never happening kinda kept nullifying each other. Maybes it’s too late now?
In fact there was a time (around a decade ago?) when the Linux based laptops had started becoming kinda “normal” — I remember buying a Linux Dell Vistro with Linux pre-installed from Dell, had helped a friend buy an XPS with linux pre-installed. We both haven’t touched anything other than a Mac in a really long time and last two times I had to buy a laptop I found zero Linux options (in India) — let alone “good” options.
PS. Oh, my favourite was always Elementary OS even though it was clearly in beta when I migrated to the macs. There was just something about that distro.
What more are you waiting for? Pretty much the only holdout is Nvidia, and they don't really make great laptop chips anyways. Almost every x86 chipset with UEFI and ACPI supports Linux to some degree. At this point, if your chip isn't running Linux it's because you've made a concerted effort to prevent users from accessing the bootloader.
When people say 'first class citizen' I feel like it's always a moving goalpost. First it's 'working WiFi drivers' but Broadcom modems have been supported for a decade now. Then it's 'proper Wayland support' but even Nvidia has a working Wayland session now. So then the goalpost moves to 'but I want Wayland on XFCE' and the cycle starts anew. These days, the 'regular people' workload I see on most computers boils down to gaming and running Google Chrome. Linux does both of those fine; it's the culture that has to change before people accept it. Look at how successfully the Steam Deck penetrated the market.
But which distro to target?, Ubuntu, Linux mint or fedora, or all of them. That would take a lot of effort to developing and validating (And no, we don't only validate the kernel, it's not enough).
I've been so entrenched in Linux for the last two decades and have come to Stockholm-syndrome myself enough to genuinely like modern Gnome desktop, and Sway nowadays, so a part of me isn't completely sure why you'd want Windows on Linux, but of course I'm not the target audience for something like Zorin.
That said (and this is coming from a guy who is running Linux on the computer typing this and has spent a lot of time customizing Sway [1] and lots of other tinkering to the desktop), I'm skeptical of the claim that moving to Linux will be "faster". I haven't used Windows 11 yet at all, but for day-to-day desktop use I haven't really noticed Windows being slower than Linux. I haven't done benchmarks but I doubt the people running something like Zorin will either; it's all vibes based, and personally I don't really think that Linux feels faster than Windows, at least not Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows 10.
I bought the current version back then. I dont remember the number so X. Less than a month later they released the new version X+1 and that was at €39 I believe for a discounted upgrade.
(numbers may not be 100% accurate it has been a while)
But they do have a free version and that is nice of them.
I personally use Mint/Ubuntu with XFCE which I found it to be the closest to my work habit and the closer to Windows (I use both Linux and Windows).
About ZorinOS Pro, I think it is too expensive. They are competing with Free Windows, Free MacOS, and Free Mint/Ubuntu/Fedora/Arch. That said, if it works for them, let them be. AS long as they respect the GPL/LGPL and contribute back, I don't see a problem.
The $48 Pro version resells open source software (Blender is mentioned on their website) and slaps on a few themes. Even if legal, this just seems highly unethical.
Why? ZorinOS users can still download Blender for free if they don't pay for the mega-pack. You have to imagine that it's not very hard for Zorin to follow GPL guidelines ("here are your 13,000 source tarballs, good sir") with this business.
You also can't prove that any of these volunteers are against downstream repackaging of their work. If they were really ideologically against the idea of people being able to sell Free Software, then they probably wouldn't be putting time into a GPL project. Commercial redistribution of GPL software has been a thing since the 90s, with much larger pricetags than $48.
You reserve certain rights to the code, that's not to say no one gets paid for _putting in work_.
If anything these models are about as close to providing _some_ manner of income to upstream projects. If Zorin donates a portion back, that is.
Because as far as I know, there's nothing stopping you from installing the free version of Zorin OS and then installing Blender, Krita, Inkscape, etc.
Why should they concern themselves with you taking issue? What I mean is what gives you the right to have an opinion on their conduct?
I certainly have strong opinions about many software vendors, who distribute proprietary software, often full of ads and tracking on top of that, why would I not have the right to find that strongly unethical?
If he has a real argument, let's look into it. If not, then he's slandering innocent people without any due and the question is then why in the world they should care about this persons opinion?
Oh yeah, that's totally different. All we know if that this commenter finds the practice unethical and that's it. There's pretty much nothing one can do with this information without some further backing.
> he's slandering innocent people
That's a bit strong, they are just saying that it seems unethical. They find that maybe it's unethical. It's not less nuanced than that. Ethics is all about opinion anyway. We all have our own views on what's ethical and what's not so this can't be an objective statement from the start.
Put differently, I find it sad when user-friendliness is valued over user-centrism. Linux is full of software that is user-centric more than user-friendly: look at Vim, for instance, which is famously difficult to quit, yet is designed to be ergonomic and efficient in a way which puts the user first. The Vim philosophy (modal editing, ergonomic arrow keys, etc.) has even been extended to web browsers (Qutebrowser, for instance), and to window managers (i3, sway, etc.). These types of programs, in my opinion, are where Linux really shines.
Most people commenting here, however, describe this familiar/innovative or friendly/centric dichotomy in terms of user archetypes: "techie" and "normal" people. That feels unnecessarily essentialist, implying that "normal" people aren't curious enough to learn something unfamiliar, like a new style of user interface. But if we always assumed that, we'd never have had any innovative interfaces at all: mouse-driven desktop interfaces, smartphone touch screens, or any of it.
Of course, Linux distros are diverse enough to have something for everyone. I just think that conventional, familiar ones like this represent a missed opportunity.
With Spotlight, you're telling the computer to run something you know is there, without bothering looking for it. You need to know it's there.
With a dedicated app launcher, such as say the macOS Launchpad, you can explore what apps are available to you. Once you know, you can quickly open it with cmd+space and 2-3 letters.
You can't open things that aren't there. You need to find what's available.
They are different tools for different purposes, which is why Launchpad is also there.
And how do you acquire that knowledge? Browsing. Looking and reading, and remembering.
Mac OS X had no mechanism for this, but iOS does. iOS's Springboard launcher is lifted directly from the Dashboard in OS X "Tiger". Apple simplified it for the phone to only show apps. Then later they grafted it back in its simplified phone form -- Dashboard having been removed in the meantime.
Before that you had to browse the filesystem. To do that you need to know where to look.
That's how it worked on classic MacOS, and Windows 1 and 2, and DR-GEM, and AmigaOS, and RISC OS, and basically all other 1980s GUIs.
(Proprietary Unix left you with a terminal. Job done.)
The innovation in Windows 3 was having an app launcher program with groups. It was called Program Manager. It had groups, because it's quicker to look in the group related to what you want than in all apps. ProgMan was stolen from OS/2 1.1 by the way.
Win 95 had a further innovation that built on that. It shrank Program Manager down from a full-screen app to a single button, that opened up on a hierarchical list, and that list had icons in it because some people are more visual and recognise icons better than names.
Me, I'm a reader, I want words not pictures. Pictures waste my time and my screen space. That's why it's important to offer a choice. GNOME takes away choice. The GNOME devs have a Vision and you must use it. The KDE devs don't have a vision. They have nearly as many visions as developers, and they try to accommodate all of them.
Not everyone: just the devs. Examples:
* I use widescreens. We all use widescreens now. I want the title bars on the side, like in wm2, not on top. That's not an option.
* I liked BeOS. I think title bars should be tabbed, like in web browsers. That's not an option.
* I hate hamburger menus. I want menu bars. There is no global option for that. You can't have it.
* I hate CSD. I want a title bar I can middle-click to send behind all other windows, like KDE 1, 2, 3 and 4 did, as well as every other non-GNOME desktop. I also liked Windowblinds on classic MacOS: the ability to roll up windows into the title bar. Again, like in some older KDE versions. There's no option for that any more.
There is important choice, accommodating different needs and usage patterns, and there is cosmetic choice, merely affecting how things look but not the underlying mechanisms of how they work.
Supporting diversity of usage is more important than diversity of appearance.
Both the full desktops that natively support Wayland fail to do this.
I've been doing tech support since 1988. I've seen many many PCs with hundreds of apps, some maybe heading into thousands, sometimes with custom hackery to get different versions running in parallel and stuff.
Yes this is a thing. It is common.
And the typical user does not know what an "app" is, or what OS they are using. I've lost count of the number of people that told me their computer was running Word or Office (not Windows), or who think they access the Web via Google because they don't know what a web browser is.
Here is some proof, in case you don't believe me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ
If you can name the 20 apps you use the most often, you are the elite of the elite, the top 1% of 1% of computer users.
Normal people are not like that. They don't know what they use or what it's called or what OS they run or what an "OS" is, and they outnumber us by approximately a million to one.
> sometimes with custom hackery to get different versions running in parallel and stuff.
Most users just aren't doing this, they open up their Mac, install a few applications and then just use it as intended; they don't need to customise things and wouldn't care to spend the time even if it benefited them. If they are capable of implementing these custom hacks and things they are likely intelligent enough to navigate via Finder and Spotlight for almost all use cases.
> If you can name the 20 apps you use the most often, you are the elite of the elite, the top 1% of 1% of computer users.
I don't think so, most people I know whether that's friends or colleagues (some technical, some not) use maybe 3–5 apps:
Browser Word Processer Spreadsheets Notes Task Management (reminders, asana, jira or something) Music Player (some just use the browser)
people don't have 20+ applications to remember day in day out.
Hell even as a power user I only really use:
Terminal Browser IDE Creative Tools (Logic, Final Cut, Compressor, etc.) Notes Reminders Music Player
It says:
* "I'm a terminal user"
* "I am a programmer"
(Which means, "I am therefore more technical than 99.9% of people"
* "I use an OS carefully handcrafted to make the file manager an acceptable app browser"
(Because what you describe is impossible on any form of Windows or non-Apple Unix)
* "I use a sophisticated tool which can find things both by name and by description"
You are not arguing my point; you are in fact reinforcing it.
For what it's worth, that's the point when your comment jumped the shark. I knew then that this was just a rant.
The Start menu was a _superb_ piece of design, as was Win95 in general. If nothing else, the existence proof of this is the sheer number of other desktops that imitate the design:
KDE; GNOME 1/2; MATE; Xfce; QNX Neutrino Photon; Inferno; OS/2 Warp 4; BeOS Tracker; Enlightenment; Moksha; XPde; Fvwm95; IceWM; JWM; Lumina; LXDE; LXQt; Cinnamon; GNOME Flashback; EDE; Budgie; UKUI; Deepin; Aura; FyneDesk.
I could probably find more, but 24 should do for now. Even combining forks, there are over 20.
You may not like it, and that's a legitimate view I am not arguing with, but billions of people use desktop interfaces modelled upon it, representing the combined work of thousands of developers, reimplementing it in dozens of languages.
That's where you're wrong. The desktop environments that imitate Win95 elements do it to provide something familiar for their users. The KDE team is not sitting around going, "you know what was designed really well? The Start Menu!" In fact, many of the desktop environments you mention (GNOME Flashback, Cinnamon) were a conservative reaction to the new GNOME 3 design which broke from the Windows aesthetic. The Wikipedia page for Cinnamon, for instance, says it aims to "follow traditional desktop metaphor conventions" and aims for a "gentle learning curve." They're explicitly choosing familiarity over innovation.
> The Start menu was a _superb_ piece of design
Not really. It achieves a reasonably clean look, but at the expense of excessively hierarchicalizing programs and documents. GNOME's Activities panel allows you to click "Activities" then click the program you want to run. Even better, you can just tap the Super key, type a letter or two of the program, and press enter. On Windows 95, I remember trying to launch a calculator, and clicking Start, then clicking Programs, then clicking Utilities, then clicking Calculator. In 1995, lots of people were complaining about the Start Menu, how clunky it was and how it slowed down common tasks. GNOME 3's approach is better, as is MacOS's Launchpad, as well as lots of other desktop launchers.
> billions of people use desktop interfaces modelled upon it, representing the combined work of thousands of developers, reimplementing it in dozens of languages.
The idea that pervasive ideas are somehow good, just because they're popular, is a well-known logical fallacy called Argumentum ad Populum. The Start Menu was never good. It was just popular. One does not follow from the other.
Most DEs do that today, including KDE, Cinnamon, Xfce (at least in some config), and Windows itself (although that last one does to much including web searches when you do this).
The categories in the start menu have its advantages, that's how I discovered what program exists and does what as a child in a KDE based distro. I fail to see what's wrong with a start menu + this feature you are citing. It does discovery + efficience very well. Gnome 3's Android-like icon grid without categories (from what I recall and from the screenshots I see) seems awful for discoverability seems awful. If you don't know the icon or the name of the program you are looking, the icon grid seems awful (although I recognize keyword search should get you there, but keyword search + the categories that other DE provide seems more useful - and today, it's rare to have deep hierarchies like in win95)
Tell me, what pre-Windows 95 GUI designs are you familiar with? I don't mean know slightly, I mean know well.
Sure you can argue Linux distributions can also offer something similar, the problem is which flavours and for how long, which brings us to shipping the Linux kernel underneath Java and Web frameworks, as being the most successful approach thus far.
Whatever distro which is pre-installed on the computer you buy, or whatever your geek acquaintance picks, or whatever you pick as a geek yourself (any mainstream distro will do).
> for how long
The lifetime of the computer in all of the cases, or, in the last case, until you want to try out something else.
Seems decent in any case.
It was a vision on what something like Android would be.
When it comes to our current era, Dell, Lenovo and HP computers sold with Linux are fine, and there's KDE-related hardware that seem nice too [1] (at KDE they understood that it's important to be the default OS, so they are pushing towards this). system76 too I've heard. Obviously choice is more limited than for Windows (although macOS is doing well with limited choice too), more biased towards pro, but there are decent options. The installed distros are quite standard too, there's some customization but not more than what we see on Windows computers.
Clement Lefevbre is French, and Artyom and Kyrill Zorin are Ukrainian, although they grew up in Dublin. I met them and had lunch with them. They sound like it. :-)
The big difference is that Mint is free and runs on donations; the premium Zorin OS edition is paid-for and had paid support.
I can't see how the business models would combine. But, apart from that, I think you're right.
Both have an Xfce edition, and in Zorin's case, it's free.
Mint's flagship has a fork of GNOME 3 called Cinnamon. Zorin uses real upstream GNOME, but with pre-installed GNOME extensions to recreate a Windows-like desktop. Zorin sponsors Dash-to-Panel, and was involved in the original fork from Dash-to-Dock. It also uses Arc menu and a bunch of other extensions, and they're on Github, but they're not in the GNOME extensions store.
And there's also GNOME Flashback, which is a separate Windows-like desktop based on GNOME $Current tech, but maintained by the GNOME team.
There must be some way to combine these things and make a better experience with the combined efforts, but none of the three companies wants it.
The OS looks interesting, and may be appealing to non-power users who want more freedom and/or privacy.
My advice on dual booting Linux in general:
1. Resize the partition from Windows if you're going to install to the same disk
2. Do not use MBR mode to install anything. Windows updates will break your Grub bootloader, and Grub updates will break the Windows bootloader. Most PCs default to UEFI these days already, but it's always good to check
3. If at all possible, use the computer's UEFI OS dialog rather than chainloading Windows from the Linux bootloader. Kind of requires a user-friendly motherboard GUI, but if Bitlocker decides to turn itself on, you'll be struggling with recovery keys a lot less if you let both bootloaders just manage themselves.
4. If that's not possible or the motherboard OS selection sucks ass, and Bitlocker is enabled, write down the recovery key, boot through the Linux bootloader once (Windows will notice the boot process changed and prompt for a recovery key), and enter the recovery key. After a reboot, Bitlocker should unseal when booting from the Linux bootloader automatically, and now directly booting from the motherboard OS selection will require the recovery key.
5. If you're going to use a new disk, make sure to create a sufficiently large UEFI partition (>1GB, storage is cheap these days!) so bootloader/kernel updates don't break in the coming years.
6. Not really a dual booting issue, but if you're doing tech support for your relative, do yourself a favour and set up a tool like Timeshift (including automatic snapshots on updates, and if your configuration permits automatic integration into Grub). It'll offer system restore-like features, allowing you to revert the system to a known-good configuration in case an update breaks something. Timeshift itself works best on btrfs installs, but it'll also work in rsync mode on any file system, and other tools like it exist.
There are free themes that will also look like macOS if going for the macOS look is your goal: https://forum.zorin.com/t/making-zorin-os-look-like-macos-bi...
Comes down to installing WhiteSur, a few fonts, and an icon pack.
At any rate, as techie, I could make it look like macOS, but I was thinking of installing it on family members' computers without much effort.
nowadays I am a happy and competent debian user
Because Microsoft sued over the name:
https://www.networkcomputing.com/data-center-networking/micr...
Linspire was paid-for, and later introduced Freespire as the free community version.
https://practical-tech.com/2007/08/05/linspire-ceo-kevin-car...
Remarkably enough, it is still available. I reviewed the then-latest version in 2023.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/15/freespire-95-breezes-...
It's a successor in name only; the company acquired the Freespire and Xandros brands. The product, sadly, is unrelated. (I say "sadly" because it had a pretty good desktop based on KDE 2.x.)
But -- yes, you're right, it sort of is.
If it wants to be better than Google, Apple and Microsoft desktop offerings, needs to be available on random shopping mall stores, with the same adoption complexity as the competition.