Switching to linux has been the best decision i've made all year.

Just wish there was a good one-click-setup virtual display option for Sunshine that "just works." It's my white whale of features.

year of the

it’s been decades.

Should we tell them?

So I've mucked around with ubuntu... gonna switch over to linux. Ideally something more user friendly at first.

Can someone TLDR Zorin OS vs Mint?

For now I just want something I can swap out my main device until I have more time to finish learning ubuntu.

(Haiku user, patiently waiting for our year to come.)

It's basically a linux distro that's meant to appeal to Windows users who want to keep the Windows look and feel.

In other words, blasphemy in this church.

If you don’t mind me asking, why did you choose Zorin? How do you hear about Zorin?

Is ZorinOS niche? It's Ubuntu with a Windows ricing.

Marketing

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.

Try KDE Connect for connecting to your phone. Works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Also available on both Android and iOS.

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.

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with it (and ultimately the reason why I moved) is that it aims to be very stable which means its packages can get very outdated.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.

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.

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.

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💫".

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

but the average person installing Linux wants to be able to tinker.

But that's the issue, no? To really take users away from Windows and MacOS there needs to be a distro that works without tinkering.

Nope; the average person wants to only customise/personalise, not tinker.

I'm suggesting this distro to friends and family moving off of windows and wanting to save money. They think using command line is too "extra".

I don't think the focus should be on the average current Linux user. Guaranteed that if Linux gained substantial market share, the fraction of tinkerers would dwindle substantially

I would dare say the "average person", as in, Windows refugee, probably doesn't want to tinker, they do want things to just kinda work as expected and just want freedom and options.

I don't see why Zorin couldn't be a valid jumping off point for new users to get their feet wet. As much as I love more tinkery distros, I will usually onboard somebody with something like Mint because it's just familiar enough but still lets you explore the how and why, without requiring it.