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Zorin OS

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Re: Zorin OS

#91

Post by lproven »

gxonatano wrote: post #58

I know there's a place for distros like these, designed to be familiar to users of Windows or MacOS, but to me it shows Linux at its laziest: where exciting new ideas in system and UI design are skipped over, in favor of bad design ideas from 1995 (looking at you, Start menu). On MacOS and Windows you're stuck with whatever OS UI those respective corporations decide you get—the Apple menu, the Start menu, floating wi…

> in favor of bad design ideas from 1995 (looking at you, Start menu)

For what it's worth, that's the point when your comment jumped the shark. I knew then that this was just a rant.

The Start menu was a _superb_ piece of design, as was Win95 in general. If nothing else, the existence proof of this is the sheer number of other desktops that imitate the design:

KDE; GNOME 1/2; MATE; Xfce; QNX Neutrino Photon; Inferno; OS/2 Warp 4; BeOS Tracker; Enlightenment; Moksha; XPde; Fvwm95; IceWM; JWM; Lumina; LXDE; LXQt; Cinnamon; GNOME Flashback; EDE; Budgie; UKUI; Deepin; Aura; FyneDesk.

I could probably find more, but 24 should do for now. Even combining forks, there are over 20.

You may not like it, and that's a legitimate view I am not arguing with, but billions of people use desktop interfaces modelled upon it, representing the combined work of thousands of developers, reimplementing it in dozens of languages.

Re: Zorin OS

#92

Post by qn9n »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #43

I miss my early days of CS college and tinkering with distro installs and installs and so on. In fact it was so fulfilling that it felt like “cooking your own meal”. I never used Windows. So in last two decades my experience has been Linux distros to osx/macos. If it was not for the internet cafe computer+internet usage before college (had no other exposure to either, otherwise) my experience of Windows would have be…

Elementary's terminal emulator and the notification bell which rang every time my computer finished a bell is embedded in my brain. I learned how to program properly on that OS and enjoyed every minute of it.

Re: Zorin OS

#93

Post by lproven »

qn9n wrote: post #88
frollogaston wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a longtime Mac user, I kinda wish it had a start menu. So much useful stuff easily accessible. But also, none of those choices affect my productivity all that much.

As a longtime Mac user, just use Command-Space.

I'm both. (Mac and Windows since 1988, before Linux existed.) The point of the start menu is that you can search; the point of Spotlight is that the computer searches.

With Spotlight, you're telling the computer to run something you know is there, without bothering looking for it. You need to know it's there.

With a dedicated app launcher, such as say the macOS Launchpad, you can explore what apps are available to you. Once you know, you can quickly open it with cmd+space and 2-3 letters.

You can't open things that aren't there. You need to find what's available.

They are different tools for different purposes, which is why Launchpad is also there.

Re: Zorin OS

#94

Post by lproven »

guestbest wrote: post #38

Is this the spiritual successor to Lindows?

Lindows became Linspire.

Because Microsoft sued over the name:

https://www.networkcomputing.com/data-center-networking/micr...

Linspire was paid-for, and later introduced Freespire as the free community version.

https://practical-tech.com/2007/08/05/linspire-ceo-kevin-car...

Remarkably enough, it is still available. I reviewed the then-latest version in 2023.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/15/freespire-95-breezes-...

It's a successor in name only; the company acquired the Freespire and Xandros brands. The product, sadly, is unrelated. (I say "sadly" because it had a pretty good desktop based on KDE 2.x.)

But -- yes, you're right, it sort of is.

Re: Zorin OS

#95

Post by pjmlp »

penguin_booze wrote: post #78
afavour wrote: post #12

I hope this succeeds where others have, well, not failed, but not had overwhelming success. Years ago I installed Linux Mint on a family member's computer but they got frustrated enough with it (and required my regular intervention enough) that we ended up switching away. Zorin boasting about you being able to play "an enormous library of your favorite games" or boasting about the vast software library feels like ask…

OOC, what were the frustrations about? I jumped ship as soon as Ubuntu started shipping with Unity. For me, as a moderate power-user, it's been pretty smooth sailing so far.

As someone that nowadays lives mostly on Windows, and uses Linux since kernel 1.0.9 days, Unity DE was so much better experience than GNOME will ever be again.

After Unity got removed from Ubuntu as default DE, I eventually adopted XFCE.

Re: Zorin OS

#96

Post by lproven »

netbioserror wrote: post #27

Being Ubuntu based, I really think Zorin should be combining efforts with Linux Mint. There is quite a bit of work duplicated here. IMO Mint is the prime project; I prefer an ideal form of the core OS to a facade of others. Mint's choices have, as a side-effect, made it rather familiar anyways.

They're both in Dublin, as well.

Clement Lefevbre is French, and Artyom and Kyrill Zorin are Ukrainian, although they grew up in Dublin. I met them and had lunch with them. They sound like it. :-)

The big difference is that Mint is free and runs on donations; the premium Zorin OS edition is paid-for and had paid support.

I can't see how the business models would combine. But, apart from that, I think you're right.

Both have an Xfce edition, and in Zorin's case, it's free.

Mint's flagship has a fork of GNOME 3 called Cinnamon. Zorin uses real upstream GNOME, but with pre-installed GNOME extensions to recreate a Windows-like desktop. Zorin sponsors Dash-to-Panel, and was involved in the original fork from Dash-to-Dock. It also uses Arc menu and a bunch of other extensions, and they're on Github, but they're not in the GNOME extensions store.

And there's also GNOME Flashback, which is a separate Windows-like desktop based on GNOME $Current tech, but maintained by the GNOME team.

There must be some way to combine these things and make a better experience with the combined efforts, but none of the three companies wants it.

Re: Zorin OS

#97

Post by abhinavk »

trklausss wrote: post #31

My only issue with this project is that, after navigating the webpage for a while, I can't see _any_ reference to open source software, and compliance with their licenses. They should at least put a link anywhere in the webpage, where people can click and at least be redirected to their components. I know compliance is about "you only provide it if asked for", but they could be a bit more proactive and _embrace_ that…

https://zorin.com/about/#source-code

The link is also in the middle of the home page.

Re: Zorin OS

#98

Post by pjmlp »

gxonatano wrote: post #58

I know there's a place for distros like these, designed to be familiar to users of Windows or MacOS, but to me it shows Linux at its laziest: where exciting new ideas in system and UI design are skipped over, in favor of bad design ideas from 1995 (looking at you, Start menu). On MacOS and Windows you're stuck with whatever OS UI those respective corporations decide you get—the Apple menu, the Start menu, floating wi…

The only UNIXes that I consider ever caring for the whole experience as a full stack, for users and application developers alike, were Irix, Sun NeWS, Solaris, NeXTSTEP and its evolution as OS X.

Sure you can argue Linux distributions can also offer something similar, the problem is which flavours and for how long, which brings us to shipping the Linux kernel underneath Java and Web frameworks, as being the most successful approach thus far.

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