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Zorin OS

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Re: Zorin OS

#181

Post by cosmic_cheese »

prmoustache wrote: post #159
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that I believe is dragging down “mass audience” sorts of distros like Zorin is that they’re only Windows-like in a vague sense, leaving them in an “uncanny valley” of sorts. One of these distros really needs to commit to the bit of Windows-like-ness so it’s a seamless drop-in to the greatest degree possible.

I don't know, when I installed a linux distro with xfce on her laptop after he hdd died it took my partner months to realize she wasn't using windows. I mean she only figured out libreoffice was installed instead of the pirated copy of office she used to run and complained the menus were different. Little she knew that a more recent version of Office would too have different menus/items placement anyway.

This probably depends on the user. Someone leaning less technical might not catch on or care, but someone who’s even just technical enough to be able to get themselves in trouble probably will. The more technical one becomes, the more tuned into the details of their OS and the more likely it is for those details to become incorporated into their workflow. When those details change it’s then hard to miss.

So there’s some number of users who could probably just be switched over by PC vendors preinstalling Linux, but there’s other groups who’d benefit from something more truly Windows-like.

Aside from those groups, I think there’s a crowd that could be attracted by simply selling your distro as being like “Windows when it was still good, except this time you get to keep it forever”. I think there’s a decent number of people who’ve become fatigued with modern Windows but don’t care enough to switch who’d be pushed over the edge by a distro that’s a near perfect reproduction of XP, 7, etc. Nostalgia can be a powerful motivator.

Re: Zorin OS

#182

Post by jraph »

carlosjobim wrote: post #176
jraph wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with them, I find selling free software to be a pretty solid and ethical way of funding free software, but why would they not have the right to have an opinion on this? I certainly have strong opinions about many software vendors, who distribute proprietary software, often full of ads and tracking on top of that, why would I not have the right to find that strongly unethical?

Since it seems to be without any grounds that the other user is anonymously accusing named individuals of acting unethically, I wanted to ask what gives him that right? If he has a real argument, let's look into it. If not, then he's slandering innocent people without any due and the question is then why in the world they should care about this persons opinion?

> the question is then why in the world they should care about this persons opinion?

Oh yeah, that's totally different. All we know if that this commenter finds the practice unethical and that's it. There's pretty much nothing one can do with this information without some further backing.

> he's slandering innocent people

That's a bit strong, they are just saying that it seems unethical. They find that maybe it's unethical. It's not less nuanced than that. Ethics is all about opinion anyway. We all have our own views on what's ethical and what's not so this can't be an objective statement from the start.

Re: Zorin OS

#183

Post by jraph »

pjmlp wrote: post #168
jraph wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the problem is which flavours Whatever distro which is pre-installed on the computer you buy, or whatever your geek acquaintance picks, or whatever you pick as a geek yourself (any mainstream distro will do). > for how long The lifetime of the computer in all of the cases, or, in the last case, until you want to try out something else. Seems decent in any case.

Worked very well for netbooks, with OEM specific distros. It was a vision on what something like Android would be.

Not sure what's your point, netbooks like the eee PC are starting to become ancient history anyway.

When it comes to our current era, Dell, Lenovo and HP computers sold with Linux are fine, and there's KDE-related hardware that seem nice too [1] (at KDE they understood that it's important to be the default OS, so they are pushing towards this). system76 too I've heard. Obviously choice is more limited than for Windows (although macOS is doing well with limited choice too), more biased towards pro, but there are decent options. The installed distros are quite standard too, there's some customization but not more than what we see on Windows computers.

[1] https://kde.org/fr/hardware/

Re: Zorin OS

#184

Post by Aerbil313 »

prmoustache wrote: post #159
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that I believe is dragging down “mass audience” sorts of distros like Zorin is that they’re only Windows-like in a vague sense, leaving them in an “uncanny valley” of sorts. One of these distros really needs to commit to the bit of Windows-like-ness so it’s a seamless drop-in to the greatest degree possible.

I don't know, when I installed a linux distro with xfce on her laptop after he hdd died it took my partner months to realize she wasn't using windows. I mean she only figured out libreoffice was installed instead of the pirated copy of office she used to run and complained the menus were different. Little she knew that a more recent version of Office would too have different menus/items placement anyway.

Heh, I know people who are using a Windows PC for decades yet legitimately don't know what "Windows" is. They have a PC. They work in Word. They browse in Chrome. They have no knowledge whatsoever as to what Windows is.

Re: Zorin OS

#185

Post by timeon »

IshKebab wrote: post #113
afavour wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's misleading. There are a lot of people out there who aren't aware that free software exists that provides a lot of the functionality of software that costs $999. They clearly say "alternatives to".

But gimp doesn't provide the functionality of software that costs $999. That's why it's misleading. It's probably more like Affinity Photo which is £68.

Whole Affinity pack is 10% of Photoshop while providing more functionality (just Affinity Designer handles vectors like Illustrator while edits pixels as well).

Gimp finally has non-destructive editing, so is almost in same category as those two. And Krita is good for pixels as well.

Re: Zorin OS

#186

Post by flr03 »

olejorgenb wrote: post #128

I assume it's due to marketing, but it really irks me that I have to scroll down to the bottom and click "View technical details about Zorin OS" to find out that this is a Linux distro build on top of Ubuntu...

If you are technical enough to care you'll find the info in 1 min. If you are not technical enough you won't even know what to do with the info.

Re: Zorin OS

#187

Post by 44520297 »

Around once a year I look for a distro that works on a laptop w/fractional scaling and hibernate. I’ve already done that once this year, if Zorin can handle that then maybe 2026 will my personal year of the linux desktop

Re: Zorin OS

#188

Post by spjt »

tombert wrote: post #25
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…

My cousin got my grandmother moved to Linux Mint with some actual success. All she did was check her email and browse the internet, and Linux can do that perfectly competently.

There's a big difference between noobs on their own and noobs with a competent relative.

Way back in the day, I set up my grandpa with Slackware and FVWM. Yeah, I had to edit a configuration file to add a program - but that also meant that once I set it up, it would never break.

Re: Zorin OS

#189

Post by marssaxman »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #105
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…

> Zorin boasting about you being able to play "an enormous library of your favorite games" This has nothing to do with “zorin”. Proton, wine, lutris, are available for all Linuxes

There is genuine value in having it all set up out of the box, and not having to figure it out yourself.

I have been using Linux since the '90s and haven't used anything else in at least a decade, but I struggled to understand what all the pieces were and what I was supposed to do with them when I wanted to play a Steam game with my kid several months ago. I'm still not sure I did it right; I think I probably did install Lutris, maybe, but I have no idea what problem it is meant to solve.

Re: Zorin OS

#190

Post by graemep »

pjmlp wrote: post #169
fao_ wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't my answer, pay attention to people's username ;) You haven't responded to the rest of my post, and your response of "If I can't do it on Kali Linux then it isn't possible because the poster said any Linux distro" honestly leads me to believe you're more interested in nitpicking arguments to "win", rather than debating and understanding. But, I'm going to be generous with my time and energy here and answer…

My mistake then, doesn't change the point of my remark, as the OP was Indeed asserting any distro. Your lengthy response is a good example of Linux forums, that eventually I got tired to visit, though. Remember my first distro used kernel 1.0.9, and I still use Linux distros at work, just not on my own laptops, so I am quite aware of the tweaking that never went away.

> My mistake then, doesn't change the point of my remark, as the OP was Indeed asserting any distro.

It was supposed to be hyperbole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole

I took it as obvious that I was excluding specialised distros.

> so I am quite aware of the tweaking that never went away.

What tweaking? People tweak WIndows too.

As the comment further up this thread pointed out, you need to tweak Windows to make it " functional and unobtrusive operating system."

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