I was just looking at Zorin. I use PopOS as a daily driver and one of my favorite things about it is that it supports the firmware update manager. Zorin Connect is highly compelling, but without the firmware update manager I'm not quite sold.
Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be
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Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be
#32> 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…
They are targeting users that don't want to install their packages or learn how to set up a new wm or theme. That's simply it. As much as distros and the Linux ecosystem prides itself on its customizability, there will always be people (myself included) that simply want an easy way to run something with preinstalled defaults that matches my aesthetic and functional requirements. Yes, I could install Ubuntu, and then go ahead and install some other packages and a theme. This saves me several steps and they'll presumably keep it updated and compatible with each other nicely in a way that I couldn't care to as an end user with my modified Ubuntu.
Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 so…
> but typically someone doesn't go through the trouble of releasing their own disk image unless they're doing something novel. That's what I'm saying though, what is novel about this? So novel that it made sense to make a new distribution for it?
The word 'Distros' is in itself called roughly a packaging.
What differs is the following:
Display Environment
Kernel
Preinstalled packages
Package manager
Display Server
Build tools
Resource requirement
Philosophy
+ some addition tweaks by various distros to improve experience.
Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be
#34How 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.
Your question should be reversed. Nvidia itself doesn't care about open sourcing their driver so that it could be integrated as a kernel module. They provide a closed source blob which isn't even updated quite often.
- Lookup for what Linus Torvalds said about Nvidia.
For the dependency part, idk what problem you're facing. As long as you install using your package manager, you don't have to care about dependencies most of the time. However, if you build it from source there might be some errors here and there which you can easy solve. The best part is that after solving the issue you can also contribute to their project by informing them of a required dependency.
Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be
#35Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be
#36> 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 think Linux users believe they have choice when in actuality its the same shit just repackaged in a different way again and again. Sure there are innovations that happen between distros, with some having novel philosophies, but its not as often as users would like to think
The main differences between distros are the desktop environments and the package managers.
I'd say those are meaningful choices.
Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be
#37Does it finally support HiDPI? The last time I tried it (a few years back) it didn't.
Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be
#38How 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.
Your question should be reversed. Nvidia itself doesn't care about open sourcing their driver so that it could be integrated as a kernel module. They provide a closed source blob which isn't even updated quite often. - Lookup for what Linus Torvalds said about Nvidia. For the dependency part, idk what problem you're facing. As long as you install using your package manager, you don't have to care about dependencies m…
The main problem is that some projects require versions of other projects that are of the form "later than X but no later than Y". These projects can conflict with the requirements of other projects.
Regarding NVidia, yes I know about the gesture which Torvalds (rightfully) made to them. The problem is that I (and lots of people) are dependent on NVidia, so we are dependent on OSes which are supported by them.
Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be
#39> 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…
Not everybody wants to setup Ubuntu to be the way ZorinOS comes out of the box? Surely this concept is not so foreign to you in 2021, after questions like yours have been rehashed on HN thousands of times.
The fundamental question of what distinguishes an OS is relevant to the thread, and worthy of ongoing discussion.
Re: Zorin OS 16 is what a Linux desktop distribution should be
#40How 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.
Look into Docker or appimage if you want that. Any distro supports it