Re: Wrong: "A polished distro from China that Western desktops could learn from" - why? Zorin OS Pro
"I tried zorn honestly I take exception with it mostly because they charge and what is get is mostly free stuff and a experience that could be better on a free distro."
I get that, because they charge, which some aren't going to like ideologically. But I also feel they should be rewarded for their work developing and curating a polished-but-still-highly-functional operating system, because maintaining a distribution or any open source project requires time and effort.. One which works very well for touchscreen x86 tablet PCs, like my Panasonic FZ-G1 MkIII.
Zorin offer a free version as well. I'm not 100% sure, but believe Zorin OS Pro can be user-built for free.
Moreover paying is going to happen somewhere along the line: for the hardware itself and in several cases - the software - the OS - Zorin OS Pro, or Windows license and some apps. Some are not willing to pay for an OS, so why are they willing to pay for the hardware?
The difference to me is the business practice and ethics around that payment. With Microsoft there are privacy and security concerns, as well hardware support. Not so it would appear with Zorin - and it's still Linux underneath.
I think Linux on the desktop needs some kind of commercial input, through Zorin and Ubuntu, which incentivise polished-but-function systems. Why do we have to excuse ourselves for half-baked rough round the edges experiences, just because it's Linux? Many of the other Linux distros are, frankly, poor in UI. In those UI is just superficial variation, people in gaming chairs getting excited about a style of window manager to my mind. What's with the funny extra sideways on/off button on Mint? Most of them I've tried and they are woefully poor with touchscreens, unlike Zorin which works very well on touchscreen (with a few one-off tweaks).
But I get the concern about paying. Some so-called open source projects, they are really vauxpen open source. I would side with those wary of payment when it comes to things that call themselves open source DevOps, frameworks, libraries but aren't. If I look at those kind of projects and it's supported by one vendor and their website page has "Pricing", then I'm hesitant.
But for an OS, no, I'm less hardline when it comes to paying. I paid for the hardware and I see the OS as part of that so I'm more open to paying for someone who has done a good job there. But at the same time I'm a big believer in open source projects supported by diverse foundations, like Linux, Apache, js.org etc.