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1M Downloads of Zorin OS 18

blog.zorin.com

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Re: 1M Downloads of Zorin OS 18

#51

Post by trelane »

sph wrote: post #12
christophilus wrote: post #4

Why Zorin? It’s always struck me as a weird distro. I can’t put my finger on why, but it feels off. I wonder how much of a bump other distros have seen in the same period.

Probably like MX Linux, which has, for some reason, topped the Distrowatch popularity list for years in front of Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Debian. Strangely enough, CachyOS seems to have adopted the same strategy and it's now first place on that site. I've been using Linux since 2001, and I honestly I find it funny how these niche flashy distros are popular with the new generations. Probably because newbies follow…

> baby's first distro Zorin has a privacy policy and terms of service page, as it's published by a for-profit company.

As though Red Hat and Ubuntu weren't a thing for literal decades.

Re: 1M Downloads of Zorin OS 18

#52

Post by constantcrying »

aniviacat wrote: post #45
constantcrying wrote: post #24

If people stopped creating weird spinoff distros, which offer zero value except for a preconfigured Desktop, the entire Linux Desktop ecosystem would be in a far better place. These distros focus on aesthetics choice, but underneath they are always plagued by the same things, tiny maintainer teams completely overwhelmed with the task of managing a distribution. Leading to a great first impression, but an inevitable b…

I don't get why major distros like Kubuntu don't just add a nice looking default theme. ("nice looking" by the standards of the vast majority of people, not some small group of hackers to whom Windows 95 was the pinnacle of design.)

I think Kubuntu looks very reasonable and switching KDE themes is as simple as it gets.

Where I think you are right is that it would be very feasible to create a few different builds of e.g. Kubuntu which come with different presets or make those available during installation, with easy switching in the life desktop environment. Maintaining each one should be quite simple, as it is just a few packages, with some configuration on top.

Re: 1M Downloads of Zorin OS 18

#53

Post by k_roy »

GaryBluto wrote: post #46
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than other distros, Zorin markets (and has marketed) itself as Windows-like, which probably elevates it in search rankings and LLM queries for people looking for a distro that more closely mirrors what they’re familiar with. People really, really want a “Windows, but just the good parts” with as little deviation and required learning as possible in terms of desktop experience. A distro with a DE that nearly perf…

> A distro with a DE that nearly perfectly replicates “greatest hits” Windows versions (2K/XP/7/10) would probably be doing serious numbers right now if it existed. Funnily enough Zorin used to offer this. http://web.archive.org/web/2012fw_/zorin-os.com "Zorin Look Changer" used to "let you select from Windows 7, XP, Vista, Ubuntu Unity, Mac OS X or GNOME 2" themes, whilst newer versions want you to pay nearly $50 fo…

$50 seems cheap for what they have probably put tons of money into to have consistent theming, in terms of both actual aesthetic and functionally.

I say this as someone getting annoyed daily by KDE inconsistencies over decades.

Re: 1M Downloads of Zorin OS 18

#54

Post by [deleted] »

GaryBluto wrote: post #21
hombre_fatal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can so easily vibe code a landing page that these days still having a bad landing page suggests you really don’t care about the details, and that’s a bad sign. It’s a brochure website.

Who decides what a "bad" landing page is? I'd argue many older and more simplistic landing pages look way better than their current equivalents.

[deleted]

Re: 1M Downloads of Zorin OS 18

#55

Post by Cadwhisker »

christophilus wrote: post #4

Why Zorin? It’s always struck me as a weird distro. I can’t put my finger on why, but it feels off. I wonder how much of a bump other distros have seen in the same period.

I have to do tech support for grandma. Every few years, her Windows laptop gets so slow that we get her a new one. This time I will test out a switch to Linux instead of buying a new computer. Zorin is the most attractive option because it's the least strange.

Re: 1M Downloads of Zorin OS 18

#56

Post by II2II »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #18
bee_rider wrote: post #5

They have a very slick and professional looking webpage. Is it weird that that makes me wary? I’m used to the best distros having webpages that look like a wiki or a professor’s website.

You can so easily vibe code a landing page that these days still having a bad landing page suggests you really don’t care about the details, and that’s a bad sign. It’s a brochure website.

> having a bad landing page suggests you really don’t care about the details, and that’s a bad sign.

That depends upon your definition of a good landing page. Personally, I will pay more attention to a Linux distribution if the landing page has information that is valuable to the community. If it looks like they are trying to sell something, I will just move on. In a way, I treat caring about the details as a bad sign (though I realize that I am just prioritizing a different set of details).

Re: 1M Downloads of Zorin OS 18

#57

Post by debo_ »

bee_rider wrote: post #5

They have a very slick and professional looking webpage. Is it weird that that makes me wary? I’m used to the best distros having webpages that look like a wiki or a professor’s website.

It's not weird, but it is wrong. I have used zorin as my daily driver for years now, and it's a great, boring Ubuntu distro. I love it.

Re: 1M Downloads of Zorin OS 18

#58

Post by WD-42 »

constantcrying wrote: post #41
more_corn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This opinion is what’s holding Linux back. Having a clean and pleasant user experience on top of a stable Debian based distributed is the goal.

Exactly, you do that by installing Debian with KDE. Not by creating a new distro, which you do not have the resources to properly maintain, which is then perpetually broken in weird ways, which no user can figure out since the base distribution does not have the problems the completely understaffed maintainers introduced. What all of these distros want to be is a basic configuration script. What they are is a nightma…

Username checks out. Not everyone wants to use Debian stable, with 3 year old packages. And most certainly not everyone wants to use KDE. Choice is what makes the Linux ecosystem great even if it leads to fragmentation. Most distros are created by volunteers, what do you contribute?

Re: 1M Downloads of Zorin OS 18

#59

Post by debo_ »

constantcrying wrote: post #44
garganzol wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A distro working out-of-the-box for a certain user group is not a weird spinoff. Some people love to economize time; a distro that takes care of exactly that is a good deal.

None of these distros economize time. This is not Debian/Arch/Ubuntu with some preconfiguration. Every single user of these distros is in the hands of a tiny number of developers who mostly work on this as a hobby. Things are going to break and they will break in ways nobody will know why, since the base distro does not have these problems. There is a very good reason why the Arch forums do want reports from arch der…

Zorin is not a hobby distro. They are a small company that does this for profit. You may like or dislike that, but your assessment is wrong in this case.

Re: 1M Downloads of Zorin OS 18

#60

Post by Someone1234 »

I've been a Windows user since 3.1; and I've even defended Microsoft in the past (particularly when they made unpopular choices, but for technically correct reasons, like UAC or forcing vendors to rewrite their drivers into userland or using a safer driver model).

BUT, I won't defend Windows 11 and Microsoft's general direction. I feel like there has been a slow cultural shift within Microsoft, from a core of fantastic engineers surrounding by marketing/sales, to the org's direction being set by marketing/sales UX be damned.

Plus it feels like a lot of the technical expertise retired out, and left a bunch of engineers scared to touch core systems instead preferring to build on top using Web tech. It means that Windows/Office stopped improving, and have actually both regressed significantly.

I've actually found myself recommending MacOS, particularly the prior generation of Macbook Airs which are absurdly powerful with absurd battery life for a fair price. Combine that with the lack of user hostility, and UX, that MacOS brings relative to Windows 11, and it is hard to ignore.

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