Zorin OS 18 beta makes Linux look like anything but Linux Although Zorin doesn't aim to closely track its Ubuntu upstream, version 18 of its eponymous OS has been a long time coming. The beta version of Zorin OS 18 arrives with some promising changes. Initially, the beta is of the "Core" edition, meaning that it uses a GNOME-based desktop and doesn't include Zorin OS's comprehensive …
I see you have been downvoted three times so far merely for expressing a positive opinion of a decent Linux distro. These downvoters tend to think of themselves as Linux purists or Puritans. Better cover up the legs on that piano lest people gets excited in their nether regions. I know it's a supposed myth, but it's true here and now in the Linux world. These people consider vi to be too much of an innovation. Stick to ed. After all, UNIX was written in ed. And use a browser derived from Firefox but with all the branding taken out. It will have a stupidly derived name that falls somewhere between ironic and tongue-in-cheek. I'm still waiting for MethaneClathrateJackal. That'll have 'em begging to download it.
I have on several occasions expressed my disdain for what I term YALD - Yet Another Linux Distro. My scorn is reserved for the endless Gnome or XFCE desktop distros which look exactly the same but have a different package manager or a different text editor - that is about the extent of the differentiation. They don't bring anything actually different to the table, they have pitiful uptake, and they eventually wither on the vine. Zorin OS is not in that category.
If you like Zorin OS, use it. And thumb your nose at the bores who ramble on about the intricacies of tr and [:class:].
"I see you have been downvoted three times so far merely for expressing a positive opinion of a decent Linux distro"
And why exactly is that a problem ? Some people don't agree with the remark and they downvoted as a means of stating that they don't agree with it.
I personally didn't vote either way.
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GNU distros only tend to differ by default DE and package manager (the available packages in the repository may differ, but that's not really a problem, as well you compile from source code if it's not packaged) - otherwise those are mostly the same - thus there is no "best distro", unless you were to define which aspect has the highest importance.
When it comes to the aspect of the goal of GNU (being free software), Zorin is one of the worst distros, due to all the proprietary software it touts as features, rather than flaws.
It would be good for casual users who are used to Windows. If I was ever going to switch my mom to Linux the UI would be by far the biggest hurdle. A Linux distro that looked as similar as possible would almost make me consider that. Almost. It still isn't worth it because no matter how easy I thought it was she'd find all the ways where things are different and be confused by them!
FWIW, everyone who I have 'migrated' to a Linux desktop (Cinnamon, Gnome, and Xfce) has been happily up and running within minutes, i.e. although they may have some questions it's not been a traumatic, weeping and wailing, gritted teeth experience. And none of these half dozen or so have been IT geeks, just ordinary people, in some cases very non-IT minded. Suggests most folk tend to just get on with it. In the end the mouse, keyboard, screen interface is pretty well established these days, whatever quirks there may be.
Linux doesn't even have a UI.
Most normies don't actually care what the GUI looks like - just that they can operate it and most GNU DE's are far easier to operate than window's GUI.
Many of them only use a web browser and maybe need to view pdf's and MOX documents and putting a few shortcuts on the desktop and showing them how the launcher menu works makes it easy for them to use.
Xfce4 works quite well.
Mint with Mate Desktop is fine. Also it has many choices of desktop. I'm not interested in the current incarnation of Gnome, or in theming to look like Vista, Win8 or Win1x or mac, though all possible on Mate. I've a mix of Win9x-NT2003 era styles. Also four "places" bars that auto-hide and resize (a tad awkward with multiple monitors as you need to position slightly diagonally).
Left = Local data programs (file manager, control panel, editing etc).
Right = Remote data using programs (email, browsers, putty, filezilla, connect server etc).
Bottom/Sub = Status, notifications, connections, select desktop, date etc.
Top = Start menu, terminal, kill task, and list of windows/programs running.
The Mate "places" is very flexible. The Mate Themes manager is very flexible. I've Mate on whatever OS the R-Pi is running too. It's fine on my sub-HD 11″ laptop (ex-Chromebook), ancient laptops, server, newer 17″ FHD laptop with 32″ 4K 2nd screen, a portable USB-C/HDMI 16" QHD screen and workstation with 23″ 4K screen. The scaling by setting font DPI works well, so even on QHD and 4K screens I do not have the Hi-DPI mode engaged. You might want it for a 16″ 4K.
Zorin 18 has fallen into the trap of tying (as many Linux desktops do) the audio sub-system (pulse, pipewire, jack) into the GUI.
Which is to say, removing pipewire, in the case of Zorin 18, removes the GUI.
Some other desktops have the same issue with the file browser, remove that and the GUI is removed.
To me that's totally bull.... these functions are not a core dependency for a desktop...it goes against the Unix ethos.
With prior releases of Zorin Core, you could:
1- remove pulse without the Linux install then insisting that you must have an audio stack (as others do) and installing pipewire
2- can remove pulse without the desktop disappearing.
All I want is ALSA. Yes you can disable pulse/pipewire but for my use case I don't want any lingering smell from them on my install.
So I will stick with 17.3 for the next decade or so then move to fluxbox/tint2 cause I need X11 for my "stuff".
Note: I love Zorin..I use the "mobile" desktop which means I don't need to use stupid menus (all my main apps are one click away and secondary apps just two) and I don't blame Zorin for this pipewire dependency, that's all down to Gnome.
Bluck
Not heard of this Zorin distro but I hope the non-profit/foundation/org behind it is called Zorin Industries.
Not that anyone cares but here comes my opinion on desktop Linux...
Never too fussed about the underlying distro but I have been running a distro spin with XFCE as my daily driver for over 15 years now.
Super-customisable, relatively lightweight, stays out of the way. The best feature? It keeps stable UX and doesn't get mangled every few years by "material design" or some other focus-grouped UI trend.
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> I hope the non-profit/foundation/org behind it is called Zorin Industries.
Source: https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1893339509204394392
«
Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels haven't aged well. For example, Moonraker - published almost exactly 70 years ago in April 1955 - features a villain who's a super-rich industrialist and rocket-maker seeking to cause chaos because he's a secret Nazi. Such a silly idea!
»
"Why not just have the sausage?"
You can have your sausage but it will cost you a few hundred for a new plate from which to eat it. Sausage 11 is incompatible with your sausage 10 plate and sausage 10 is widely advertised as becoming toxic after October. Alternatively you can have this which won't taste too different from the sausage you're used to, is just as good or, in the view of many, better, and you can eat it from any old plate you choose.
Does that answer your question?
Bhudist monks in thailand become monks on adulthood. By then they have already tasted the deliciuos taste of meat, and long for it. So, when they become monks and abandon meat, they come up will all sorts of ways to make "veggie" meat, that looks and tastes like meat.
Windows refugees that grew up on windows are forced out of windows for many a reason. If a Linux distro can make itself look and taste like windows as much as possible, the refugees will be grateful. Mint and Zorin are two such distros.
>Equating windows to meat and GNU/Linux to vegetables.
Using windows is rather akin to eating excrement (but the used can't tell, as it's shiny and polished (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2008_season)?useskin=monobook#You_Can't_Polish_Poop) and haven't eaten real food before), while using GNU is like eating meat and vegetables - which I guess would be rather off putting at first to such previous used.
While adding some excrement (proprietary software) to the food might make it more palatable to such users - there has been a relentless drive to add more and more excrement and the pile is now larger than the food!
> Why not just have the sausage?
Because pigs are smart and they don't want to die.
For years I used the "I won't eat anything with a face" line. It doesn't wash. A-holes tried to quibble about oysters, like this one:
https://dianaverse.com/2020/04/07/bivalveganpart1/
It's bullshit. I speak as both a biologist and a vegetarian: this is a complete bunch of arse and nothing else.
So now I put it differently.
I don't eat anything that doesn't want to be eaten, and which can express that by moving away, or hiding, or closing its shell, or whatever.
"I don't eat anything that doesn't want to be eaten"
Nevertheless most animals that ever lived got eaten, whether or not they wanted to, the exceptions being those that decayed. Much the same goes for plants but they didn't even get to have an opinion. (I'm also a biologist but more specifically a botanical palaeoecologist.)
Plants don't want to be eaten you know?
Many plants respond to being browsed on by becoming more bitter and/or signalling to other plants to become bitter or produce toxins.
Most plants simply can't move, therefore cannot move away or hide.
The link points out that bivalues close the shell via a similar mechanism to rapid plant movement.
Although, there are a few plants that grow fruits and/or nectar that want the fruit and/or nectar to be eaten - just not the rest of the plant - but you're not going to survive eating just fruit.
Any DNA based lifeform has evolved to struggle to survive - anything that didn't is extinct.
Eating anything seems wrong, but it seems exclusively eating people would be most ethical (as that permanently prevents a lot of external suffering), but that's illegal.
The only mainstream Linux distros for Windows refugees that supports 32 bit machines is Linux Mint Debian Edition.
And not even the current one. When support for that is gone, 32Bit laptops will have to go to more obscure distros, or to the landfill.
In my neck of the (Venezuelan) woods, there are still plenty of 32bit only laptops floating around (some with eMMC or SSDs), and people who would be gratefull to have a 32bit laptop with linux (as opposed to just their cellphones) to write the homework and brwose the text internet for reference material, and access govt sites.
Devuan is a mainstream proprietary distro and it does support i686 (but you shouldn't run it without removing the proprietary software first, which isn't a mainstream" activity).
Quite a few distros still support i686; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_GNU/Linux_distributions?useskin=monobook#Instruction_set_architecture_support but it seems that long term the only distros that will retain 32 bit support for any architecture is Gentoo and Guix.
Compiling Gentoo-libre on a 32 bit netbook works fine as long as you keep it free of rust and LLVM - the newest version of GCC takes "only" 24h to compile (the slow HDD and 1GB RAM is probably most of the reason it is slow).
On 32 bit machines, it's generally best to avoid "modern" distro's that default to "modern" DE's, as those are so bloated that you'll have terrible performance until you change the DE and end up with bad performance.
Furthermore, any recent version of the kernel, Linux seem to have broken graphics drivers for many of the netbook intel integrated cards - meaning you can't see anything on the display without nomodeset (textmode).
Meanwhile, an old version of Trisquel like 9.0 (unfortunately they dropped 32 bit for later versions) will run just fine (those old 32 bit computers almost always come with a Wi-Fi card that works with free software) - although the package manager likely won't work - but you can install an updated binary of GNU icecat and other software and you can compile from source - meaning you can browse the internet, view pdf's and images and write homework.
> 32Bit laptops will have to go to more obscure distros,
This is true. But there _are_ options and this might make them _less_ obscure.
* Alpine Linux
* Slackware (and a bunch of remixes)
* Adelie Linux
* TinyCore Linux
* T2
And...
* NetBSD
* OpenBSD
* Haiku
Back in the mists of time when I moved to Linux, I started with a fairly minimal desktop. It hasn't changed much, and seems to cope with everything I want to do. The same structure runs smoothly on everything from a Raspberry Pi 4B to an AMD Ryzen5. Windows using family are astonished at how quickly and glitch-free it runs. They don't say anything, but they go noticeably quiet if they're around when I start any of the machines.
>we've had to downgrade a couple of machines from Noble back to Jammy because of their non-upgradable, no-longer-supported Nvidia GPUs.
As far as I can tell the NVS 4200M works fine with Nouveau.
Even though there might not be great reclocking, web browsing etc won't have issues.
>Zorin OS 18 will offer to run the matching web app instead.
It is unacceptable that Zorin would recommend to the user such proprietary software.
>most desktop Linux distributions are also free
Most distributions of the kernel, Linux are proprietary software, same as GNU/Linux distributions.
>Linux development now is more about fit and finish, improving polish and user-friendliness
Shoving more proprietary software down the users throat is anything but friendly.
Please think about the objective here - giving Windows users an easy route off. They are not renouncing the world and all its sins to go and wear a hair shirt, they are wanting to make the best use of the hardware they have to run a maintained OS to accomplish their existing tasks in a way they know best. You and I are familiar with other ways to accomplish those tasks, they are not and easy steps are needed; the more and easier that can be provided the better.
To put it bluntly, the Zorin approach can work where yours wouldn't.
>giving Windows users an easy route off.
Unfortunately, the route to the slightest bit of freedom isn't a easy one.
Redirecting them right back into the trap of microsoft and many other proprietary software companies at every turns means there will likely be no difference between running windows (if you install microsoft's spyware onto GNU/Linux - they can spy almost as good as on windows) and the end result being only the relentless soiling of the freedom of GNU - as when a proprietary program is added to a proprietary distro, it is never taken back out (unless it becomes totally obsolete).
>They are not renouncing the world and all its sins to go and wear a hair shirt
Using a computer without being totally controlled == wearing a hair shirt?
>to accomplish their existing tasks in a way they know best
Unfortunately, if they want to use GNU, they're going to have to learn the other way the tasks are done - but only once - unlike having to learn again and again as with proprietary software.
> As far as I can tell the NVS 4200M works fine with Nouveau.
It is not the primary GPU. It is a secondary GPU for offload.
I have not been able to get Optimus switching working with Nouveau.
I even did an "ask HN". Nothing. Crickets.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45346099
You are very loud about this stuff. _You_ tell me how to do it.
>I even did an "ask HN". Nothing. Crickets.
I see a reply linking to the answer;
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PRIME#For_open_source_drivers_-_PRIME
https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/Optimus.html
You need to first remove or disable the proprietary nvidia driver (module blacklist) and make sure that the nouveau driver and mesa is correctly installed - check with `sudo lspci -v` that nouveau is loaded correctly and then try `glxinfo | grep Mesa` once Xorg is loaded.
There might be problems with Nouveau not loading due to proprietary things still being loaded, but you should be skilled enough to work it out.
Optimus switching seems too fiddily - I recommend prime instead.
DRI_PRIME=0 glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer" (generally the integrated graphics, but not always)
DRI_PRIME=1 glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer" (generally the dedicated graphics, but not always)
If you want Xorg and all programs to default to DRI_PRIME=1, in .bash_profile you add; `export DRI_PRIME=1`.
If you want to default to DRI_PRIME=0, then you don't make any configuration, except for each program you want to run with; DRI_PRIME=1, you set that variable - easy to do with a bash script;
#!/bin/bash
DRI_PRIME=1 <program>
> I see a reply linking to the answer;
You did not look closely enough. That was me.
> You need to first remove or disable the proprietary nvidia driver
[...]
> due to proprietary things still being loaded
The *ENTIRE POINT HERE* is that the proprietary driver will not and cannot load. I am beginning to seriously doubt your reading comprehension.
The thing you cite as an answer is not in fact the answer; it is the problem. It is obsolete. Your proposals do not in fact address the current problem. Nor do these old docs.
> Optimus switching seems too fiddily - I recommend prime instead.
It is a hardware feature. I do not get a choice. That is the single GPU switching method these machines support.
Think Solaris, KDE, Windows 98. Without all the fancy borderless windows, disappearing scrollbars and fly-out panels that overload the processor and graphics cards with alpha blending, glow and z-depth ? Sometimes it's hard to figure out where the exact border is, where the scrollbars are , where the corner is to resize.
It just seems to me that the only differentiator these days is 23 million different user interfaces and color-schemes.
Can we have a single deploy system where you don't have to "install" an application ? The application lives in a container. Installing is a matter of just throwing that container in the /Applications folder. If i want to move it : copy the container. That container can be compressed file (think like a ZIP file). The application cannot step outside of its container. It can't write anything, apart from application generated documents, outside its container. Application generated documents can only go in the /user/documents/... folder.
Gone would be the endless problems with missing files, crap left over everywhere. If an application requires certain other packages : they go in the requesting applications folder. Disk space is cheap and plenty. The package has a layout that let's the OS automatically detect the executable(s), icon(s) so those appear automatically on your launcher. You can pin those as you please.
Every time i have a new computer i need to spend hours loading all the programs and getting the system back with all my settings.
The above mechanism would be a matter of simply copying the /applications and /user folders to a new machine.
And i'd be able to find a programs window border and scrollbars.
I don't need another user glass user interface with pastel colors. I need something that works.
"The application lives in a container."
If you mean a container in the Docker sense - why? Why not the good, old-fashioned directory tree that lives in /opt? It's a long-solved problem that suffers from being re-solved in increasingly complex ways.
With "container" i mean a single directory or file per application. Everything that belongs to the application lives in that space. It can't step outside that space.
If i install a new computer i can simply copy that folder over and i'm done.
The drive would essentially have 3 root folders : /Os , /Application and /User. The operating system and all its stuff lives in /OS. Applications live in containers in /Applications. So /applications/Inkscape would contain Inkscape. my home directory is in /users/Vincent.
Moving stuff to a new machine is a matter of copying those two folders. Those folders could even be links to a remote storage. That way you can have a master install on a remote machine. When you fire it up that loads the local machines /users/<current_loggedin_user>/Applicationsettings/Inkscape and off it goes.
Now you have centrally managed applications with local user settings.
So some programs could be locally installed, or live on a server where they are centrally managed. That way everyone uses the same version.
As an admin : once i got the application configured properly on my local machine deploy is easy : copy the folder from my install to the server.
I Have 3 computers. It is hell keeping applications in sync. Documents are easy : Github, Dropbox or any kind of cloud store. Applications ? unless they are "portable applications" it is frustrating. Make everything portable. Detach the applications from the OS
> Can we have a single deploy system where you don't have to "install" an application ?
There are several.
1. This is the basic model of the ROX Desktop: https://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/
2. Its app format is cross-platform: https://0install.net/
But there's something built on that which satisfies your:
> That container can be compressed file (think like a ZIP file).
3. The ROX appdir format, in a compressed file, is AppImage: https://appimage.org/
> Installing is a matter of just throwing that container in the /Applications folder.
That is of course how macOS works. That is entirely doable on Linux: it's how GNUstep works. Most recently, I wrote about GSDE...
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/06/two_new_debian_desktops/
It runs, with a lot of work, on Debian 13. Try it?
BTW I entirely agree with your points about flat UI.
Was percolating on migrating an office of around three dozen WinDoze boxes to some flavor of *nix.
They're already half-way there, using FF/TB/LO for most of the daily activities.
Tried MX, Zorin, Ubuntu, straight Debian, others.
The big stumbling block is a couple of the managers are used to dialing in via TightVNC.
Don't want RDP. Need screen sharing like they're used to.
It's all single user, no hopping around from account to account. Staff sits down and gets to work.
Haven't found a single simple app that can be installed in *nix which will reliably share the GUI at system boot.
Trying to craft a systemctl service to use KRFB just crashes. Auto-login is required to get it to run at the user level. Ugh.
Did get it working with X at one point, but it had to run this loop so the remote screen was hugely long and kept resetting itself. Awful.
No, don't want RustDesk, NoMachine, or any of their ilk. Want to give the managers their little icons they can click on to be dialed into the machine as needed, move the mouse around if they have to, paste the clipboard back 'n forth. And it has to work before login, in case the the remote host gets rebooted.
As smart as *nix is, as polished as desktop is looking these days, at least in this regard it's alas still not ready for prime time.
On the general topic of Windows vs. Linux: I just went through a process of installing Linux (xubuntu) on a PC, and going back and forth between the two to try to decide which I prefer.
They both have advantages and disadvantages. If you add a new disk (SSD in my case), Windows Just Recognizes It. Not so Linux: I had to research how to set things up in /etc/fstab, and even now I'm not sure about some of the parameters. "Disk" formats were messy, too, since Windows and Linux disagree. I was eventually able to get my NTFS drive to be readable and writable under Linux. (I had hundreds of gigabytes of data on that drive, so I had to make it work if I was going to move.)
Linux loses on little (you might say minor) fit-and-finish things. Like I want a colored mouse cursor. There is such a thing on both Windows and Linux (redglass in the Linux I was using). In Windows it works flawlessly; under Linux, the red cursor changes to a white cursor in certain places (like mousing a URL). I was able to widen the scroll bars in Thunderbird under Windows, so I could actually see where I was in an email; not yet in Linux. Microsoft Terminal has a nicer interface than Xubuntu's (I haven't tried others yet), e.g. its tabbed interface.
I use a twin panel file manager in Windows (FreeCommander XE); such file managers exist in Linux, but are mostly more primitive. I ended up with Krusader, but it crashed at least twice for unknown reasons. And getting plugins to work was (still is) not straightforward.
On the other hand, window placement seems to work better in Xubuntu. Every time I re-start Vivaldi in Windows, it seems to have an allergy to the screen boundaries, leaving several useless pixels of unused space on all sides, until I manually move it and expand it. In Xubuntu, it's in exactly the same place every time--just where I want it.
Finally, I have a certain program that currently runs only under Windows. It's the only one of its kind, so if I'm going to run it in Linux, I'll need to figure out Wine.
None of these issues--on either side--is a killer. But right now I'm running Windows.
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