Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be • Hacker News Board

Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be

#11

Post by edoceo » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #7

edoceo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zorin is like ChromeOS w/o Google. It's pretty, comes with the stuff you* want, "just works" It's UI is actually quite nice for older users who you don't want on ChromeOS. *You is the "average" normie user, not you (or me) specifically.

> You is the "average" normie user, not you (or me) specifically. Ok, I disagree with this characterization of users, but whatever. Why is it better than stock Ubuntu? What in the hell makes it so special that adding another distro to the 300 already out there seemed like a good idea?

I answered why you should "bother". But I don't know the answer for the new question of why it's "better".

Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be

#12

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

edoceo wrote: post #11

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You is the "average" normie user, not you (or me) specifically. Ok, I disagree with this characterization of users, but whatever. Why is it better than stock Ubuntu? What in the hell makes it so special that adding another distro to the 300 already out there seemed like a good idea?

I answered why you should "bother". But I don't know the answer for the new question of why it's "better".

All you said was:

> It's pretty, comes with the stuff you* want, "just works"

Which describes about 200 of the 300+ distros out there by their own marketing copy.

Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be

#13

Post by princevegeta89 » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 8:59 PM UTC

I've tried Zorin and while it's great, KDE Neon seems better. It's amazingly snappy and looks more polished

Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be

#14

Post by edoceo » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #10

edoceo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that those words have actual meaning to actual users. You think its "useless" but like, that's just your opinion man.

Do they? What does "fun" mean here? "Beautiful"? "Easy to use"? These are all subjective terms at best. I can call Motif beautiful and no one can say I'm wrong.

Because Motif is objectively beautiful :)

Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be

#15

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

sureglymop wrote: post #9

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #2

> Since it's based on Ubuntu 20.04.3 ...ok, can someone explain why anyone should bother with this when Ubuntu 20.04.3 already exists? What does it do so much differently that makes it "fun, productive, and rock solid"? As far as I can tell from this marketing copy, it's just Ubuntu with specific set of preinstalled packages and maybe a special theme. Honestly, there are so many of these "OS"s that I kinda want to ju…

I somewhat agree, except when it comes to Pop!OS (which is what I use). Their tiling wm and shell are a huge improvement over regular gnome and their package distribution (including nvidia drivers and other stuff) makes it more solid than Ubuntu for me. I could live with Ubuntu though.

Pop!_OS makes some kind of sense because it is paired with System76's purpose-built hardware so they want to be able to tweak everything so that it works properly on that specific hardware. Still seems unnecessary but at least I can understand that.

Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be

#16

Post by istingray » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #2

> Since it's based on Ubuntu 20.04.3 ...ok, can someone explain why anyone should bother with this when Ubuntu 20.04.3 already exists? What does it do so much differently that makes it "fun, productive, and rock solid"? As far as I can tell from this marketing copy, it's just Ubuntu with specific set of preinstalled packages and maybe a special theme. Honestly, there are so many of these "OS"s that I kinda want to ju…

As someone new to Linux, I'm curious about this as well.

As a comparison, take Android. Thinking broadly about fragmentation, Android is fragmented because of so many different hardware vendors who use Android on their phones. They make hardware and have an incentive to customize Android to work on their phone because it's free and helps them sell phones. But the vendors don't try to call it anything but Android usually (not sure).

But this isn't the case for Linux. Basically zero vendors are Linux first, only a small number like System76 or Purism. So where's the incentive to create all these distros?

I can only conclude that the incentive to create more distros is created by builders. It's not companies (as in Android's case), and it's not users as users have better things to do. It's a bit odd to me.

PopOS by System76 perhaps is similar to Android then. System76 wants to differentiate. I have read their guide to how it's different than stock Ubuntu [1] But why not call it "Ubuntu - customized for System76" version or something. But look, I'm a huge fan of System76 so if they say it's needed, I trust them. And sure, the tweaks they've added seem fine (disk encryption on install, power profiler)...but making it distinct from Ubuntu to me is a negative. I trust Ubuntu, why sell me something else? I added mouse drivers and custom keyboard commands to PopOS - is it now iStingray OS?

Disclosure: I'm new to Linux, switched 2 weeks ago due to Apple's surveillance. Am on a System76 laptop running PopOS. I support System76 and donated to PopOS directly.

[1] https://support.system76.com/articles/difference-between-pop...

Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be

#17

Post by amelius » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

How easy is it to install different versions of packages side by side?

This is my first question when it comes to Linux distributions, having been through dependency hell too many times.

Of course, a distribution should also be officially supported by important vendors such as NVidia.

Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be

#18

Post by seniorivn » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

istingray wrote: post #16

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #2

> Since it's based on Ubuntu 20.04.3 ...ok, can someone explain why anyone should bother with this when Ubuntu 20.04.3 already exists? What does it do so much differently that makes it "fun, productive, and rock solid"? As far as I can tell from this marketing copy, it's just Ubuntu with specific set of preinstalled packages and maybe a special theme. Honestly, there are so many of these "OS"s that I kinda want to ju…

As someone new to Linux, I'm curious about this as well. As a comparison, take Android. Thinking broadly about fragmentation, Android is fragmented because of so many different hardware vendors who use Android on their phones. They make hardware and have an incentive to customize Android to work on their phone because it's free and helps them sell phones. But the vendors don't try to call it anything but Android usua…

Ubuntu is a trademark, they can fork it as they did, but if they want to use their name, they need permission and Ubuntu has a strict policy on that

Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be

#19

Post by smoldesu » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #2

> Since it's based on Ubuntu 20.04.3 ...ok, can someone explain why anyone should bother with this when Ubuntu 20.04.3 already exists? What does it do so much differently that makes it "fun, productive, and rock solid"? As far as I can tell from this marketing copy, it's just Ubuntu with specific set of preinstalled packages and maybe a special theme. Honestly, there are so many of these "OS"s that I kinda want to ju…

The ultimate explanation is that none of these distros are necessarily competing with one another. I use Ubuntu on my media server, Arch on my desktop, Debian in my cloud instances, BSD on my router and I play with NixOS on my dev machine. You could argue that it doesn't matter since they're all POSIX-based, but typically someone doesn't go through the trouble of releasing their own disk image unless they're doing something novel.

Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be

#20

Post by istingray » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

seniorivn wrote: post #18

istingray wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone new to Linux, I'm curious about this as well. As a comparison, take Android. Thinking broadly about fragmentation, Android is fragmented because of so many different hardware vendors who use Android on their phones. They make hardware and have an incentive to customize Android to work on their phone because it's free and helps them sell phones. But the vendors don't try to call it anything but Android usua…

Ubuntu is a trademark, they can fork it as they did, but if they want to use their name, they need permission and Ubuntu has a strict policy on that

Ah got it, so that makes sense. I bet the licensing around Android also explains some of the fragmentation etc. IMO it would serve System76's brand to have a tight Ubuntu partnership/license, at least for me as a customer. Maybe that's in their roadmap.