Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zorin OS

zorin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 208 posts

Re: Zorin OS

#191

Post by frollogaston »

lproven wrote: post #93
qn9n wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

Exactly, except the problem with Launchpad is it's cumbersome and takes up the entire screen. I never use it, just have to know exactly what I'm looking for and use cmd-space.

Re: Zorin OS

#192

Post by belthesar »

unpaydijk wrote: post #166
lawlessone wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>. If it detects that there's a Linux version of a Windows installer, it'll guide the user towards the Linux version instead, My anecdotal experience with the steam and steamOS has been that the windows versions of games run better via proton than their native linux versions. One game i have didn't run even run when i was on windows, but the windows version worked in Linux..

>One game i have didn't run even run when i was on windows, but the windows version worked in Linux.. Was it an old game? Those tend to do that >My anecdotal experience with the steam and steamOS has been that the windows versions of games run better via proton than their native linux versions. This is very interesting, does anyone have insights into why? I can only guess the games/their engines are more mindful of o…

There's a joke that "the most stable Linux ABI is Win32". Like sibling commenters have pointed out, many Linux game ports either used system libraries that may or may not be compatible after years of changes, or bring along vendored libraries that may not play well. Valve tried to encourage Linux builds for games during their first foray into Linux gaming with the Steam Runtime, but even they have largely abandoned updating it in lieu of advancing WINE and sibling systems like DXVK, vkd3d-proton, dgvoodoo2, et al. Much more engineering effort goes into the Windows game tech stack than native Linux ones have.

For older games, the biggest advantage WINE has over Windows is WINE's prefix model, which lets you essentially build purpose built environments, not dissimilar to vendoring your dependencies into an OCI container. And if you're running a file system with CoW powers, those separate environments don't even take up a great deal of storage since the vast majority of the prefix is bit for bit identical.

Re: Zorin OS

#193

Post by heavyset_go »

lawlessone wrote: post #147
jeroenhd wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage of Zorin is that it comes with some level of Wine integration. If it detects that there's a Linux version of a Windows installer, it'll guide the user towards the Linux version instead, but opening .EXEs works quite well out of the box as well. Getting a recent version of Wine on anything but Arch-based distros without some kind of confusing intermediary is quite tricky, so making Wine somewhat usable g…

>. If it detects that there's a Linux version of a Windows installer, it'll guide the user towards the Linux version instead, My anecdotal experience with the steam and steamOS has been that the windows versions of games run better via proton than their native linux versions. One game i have didn't run even run when i was on windows, but the windows version worked in Linux..

> My anecdotal experience with the steam and steamOS has been that the windows versions of games run better via proton than their native linux versions.

I've experienced the same thing with game console emulators. The Windows version run smoother on Linux than natively compiled ones do.

Re: Zorin OS

#194

Post by adithyassekhar »

qn9n wrote: post #177
marci wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's in the homepage, in the blue and green parts near the middle (Reliable | Secure). But still, they have the place for windows and macos in the tagline, they could add linux.

I believe, given their target audience, it doesn’t matter. The information is available for those who care, but for the non-technical user who is fed up with their current OS, the message is: “Feel at home on ZorinOS and experience a performance and security boost.” They understand that technically-oriented people will research the OS and its underlying components, but their target audience isn’t technical. Therefore…

Non technical audience won't be visiting a Linux distro website.

Re: Zorin OS

#195

Post by lproven »

frollogaston wrote: post #191
lproven wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

Exactly, except the problem with Launchpad is it's cumbersome and takes up the entire screen. I never use it, just have to know exactly what I'm looking for and use cmd-space.

> just have to know exactly what I'm looking for

And how do you acquire that knowledge? Browsing. Looking and reading, and remembering.

Mac OS X had no mechanism for this, but iOS does. iOS's Springboard launcher is lifted directly from the Dashboard in OS X "Tiger". Apple simplified it for the phone to only show apps. Then later they grafted it back in its simplified phone form -- Dashboard having been removed in the meantime.

Before that you had to browse the filesystem. To do that you need to know where to look.

That's how it worked on classic MacOS, and Windows 1 and 2, and DR-GEM, and AmigaOS, and RISC OS, and basically all other 1980s GUIs.

(Proprietary Unix left you with a terminal. Job done.)

The innovation in Windows 3 was having an app launcher program with groups. It was called Program Manager. It had groups, because it's quicker to look in the group related to what you want than in all apps. ProgMan was stolen from OS/2 1.1 by the way.

Win 95 had a further innovation that built on that. It shrank Program Manager down from a full-screen app to a single button, that opened up on a hierarchical list, and that list had icons in it because some people are more visual and recognise icons better than names.

Me, I'm a reader, I want words not pictures. Pictures waste my time and my screen space. That's why it's important to offer a choice. GNOME takes away choice. The GNOME devs have a Vision and you must use it. The KDE devs don't have a vision. They have nearly as many visions as developers, and they try to accommodate all of them.

Not everyone: just the devs. Examples:

* I use widescreens. We all use widescreens now. I want the title bars on the side, like in wm2, not on top. That's not an option.

* I liked BeOS. I think title bars should be tabbed, like in web browsers. That's not an option.

* I hate hamburger menus. I want menu bars. There is no global option for that. You can't have it.

* I hate CSD. I want a title bar I can middle-click to send behind all other windows, like KDE 1, 2, 3 and 4 did, as well as every other non-GNOME desktop. I also liked Windowblinds on classic MacOS: the ability to roll up windows into the title bar. Again, like in some older KDE versions. There's no option for that any more.

There is important choice, accommodating different needs and usage patterns, and there is cosmetic choice, merely affecting how things look but not the underlying mechanisms of how they work.

Supporting diversity of usage is more important than diversity of appearance.

Both the full desktops that natively support Wayland fail to do this.

Re: Zorin OS

#196

Post by qn9n »

lproven wrote: post #195
frollogaston wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, except the problem with Launchpad is it's cumbersome and takes up the entire screen. I never use it, just have to know exactly what I'm looking for and use cmd-space.

> just have to know exactly what I'm looking for And how do you acquire that knowledge? Browsing. Looking and reading, and remembering. Mac OS X had no mechanism for this, but iOS does. iOS's Springboard launcher is lifted directly from the Dashboard in OS X "Tiger". Apple simplified it for the phone to only show apps. Then later they grafted it back in its simplified phone form -- Dashboard having been removed in th…

Realistically you shouldn't need thousands of applications so remembering the names of the 20 or so apps I use isn't a big deal.

Re: Zorin OS

#197

Post by qn9n »

flkiwi wrote: post #127
qn9n wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows is like 80? For the average user the average cost of supporting windows is basically 80. You can get windows laptops for $100–$500 just get one of those and put Linux on it? Not a single person's grandmother (except maybe that one that plays Skyrim) needs a $1400 laptop, total waste of resources.

My kid has an excellent Thinkpad I picked up for something like $500. Runs linux (NixOS, specifically) perfectly well. Even the fingerprint reader works! And if he spills something on it, replacing it is substantially less awful.

Yep, pre-owned Thinkpad is going to be your best option, slap a decent Linux distribution on it and that thing will run for years and years. No need to spend thousands on a laptop that will be used by a kid or an elderly person.

Re: Zorin OS

#198

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Zorin OS

#199

Post by fao_ »

pjmlp wrote: post #117
fao_ wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On windows you have to apply "a few tweaks" just to get the start bar to stop showing advertising and work as it should. Windows users in the modern day have to do way more tweaks than Linux users do just to get a functional and unobtrusive operating system.

Which Linux users, from the myriad of Dritrowach rankings? And no, many normies use Windows just as out of factory, as anyone that has had to fix the cousin's computer during a holidays visit is well aware.

Things got a bit deep into the discussion there for a minute so I'm lifting it out

> Your lengthy response is a good example of Linux forums, that eventually I got tired to visit, though.

It takes four times as much writing to refute bullshit as it does to write it.

My system works out of the box with basically no Tweaking other than clicking "install" on a bunch of things in the software installer.

Meanwhile Windows complaints that I have seen in the last few months from people in communities I am in:

"Is there any way to get windows to stop updating applications at random times? I have bad internet so if I'm trying to play games it lags me out in the middle of a match all the time"

"On Windows it seems like every app has a background task when I boot up that lets it do what it wants regardless of if I want it to"

"(misc comments about Windows 11 blocking Google Chrome)"

"I love Taskbar Tweaker but it errors on startup saying it can't load libraries and doesn't support windows 11, and won't work, and then I click ok and it works"

"Why is destiny 2 not using my GPU? I had to manually go through and select it to use my GPU lol"

"I want to play sims 2 but it doesn't work under windows 11 and I don't want to install a bunch of modding tools to get it to work, but VMWare/Virtualbox doesn't work because you can't do hardware acceleration without disabling a bunch of Windows bullshit" (The Sims 2 works out of the box on Wine and is rated Platinum on ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com/app/3314070 )

"It is possible to keep the non-ai subscription to Office 365, but they hide it (link to article explaining how to tweak Windows)"

From what I've seen, Windows users tweak that shit just to get it to work normally, way more than I have ever had to touch my OS. Many of these things JustWork on Linux or are not problems.

Re: Zorin OS

#200

Post by fao_ »

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.

Your claims that "Linux is not a good DAW" does not match up with my experience of opening the Pop_OS! store this weekend, clicking "install" on Furnace and Ardour, and instantly having a way to make music, or of setting up my headphones on Linux, which worked instantly when I plugged them in and let me open "Settings > Sound" to click which chipset of the headphone was used (digital/analogue) to fix the fact that 1% of volume was far too much (doing this is impossible in Windows, because I tried it back when I ran windows -- you just have to be deafened, I assume).
Post reply on HN