IMHO, this is a great example of what a Gnome desktop should be like, at least by default. The rest of my family might actually be able (and willing) to use this.
It is built on Gnome (3.38). The Zorin taskbar looks based on the Dash To Panel extension. Zorin ships with Gnome or XFCE for the light edition. There is no KDE spin.
It is Linux. Seems to be a direct competitor to ElementaryOS. If you already have a mac then no reason. And those who want a mac at all costs will not settle for anything less. This OS is for those who want a polished, cohesive, user-focused Linux-based OS. All these alternatives arose after Ubuntu dropped the ball in the desktop-laptop OS space and decided to focus on server and cloud more or less exclusively. Most of them are built on top of Ubuntu LTS base.
Both have adapted GNOME 3 to me far more Windows-like. Both have simplified installation, include drivers and codecs that Ubuntu does not. Both have worked on end-user-friendly facilities such as backup, networking, better app stores and so on.
Both are more-polished, maybe slightly-better integrated, easier derivatives of Ubuntu.
Elementary is a half-baked cosmetic macOS ripoff that doesn't even have a global menu -- just an empty panel.
I think I'll make some small donation to Ubuntu to show them some appreciation. I am new to Linux. I attempted to install Linux in the past and got stuck somewhere and was either unwilling to or didn't have time to proceed to a full install. About a year ago I got mad with windows and gave Ubuntu a try and loved it from he first try. It installed flawlessly on a couple of machines(laptops) and could even tether from my Iphone through USB. Was quite impressed. I don't really need crazy features but a stable and snappy machine that Im in control of and Ubuntu can deliver that for me. I recently installed a live Ubuntu with persistent storage on small stick on my work's machine. When I sign off my work day I restart with the live image and the machine isn't impacted at all. Beside the booting time which is a bit slow (from the stick) the OS behaves absolutely fantastic, love it. I may now be inclined to try other Linux distributions, now that I've been warming up to Linux for the past 12 months but Ubuntu is quite a keeper. I converted my wife computer from windows to Ubuntu and she seems quite happy as well. Automatic updates and nagging popups were some complaints from her and on Ubuntu she had none.
I wish hibernate mode worked but Im by far happier with Ubuntu even without it.
I mean if you have a mac and love Linux also (like me) there's always a reason or two to go back to Linux. It may not be as polished as Mac, but there are also things that a Mac isn't polished with (for example a native package manager).
Then it's finally time for my guests laptop yearly update. Until now I always hated the exercise - no real way to upgrade just wiping everything out, dangling update sites in the settings which throw error popups, three different package managers which seem to do exactly the same thing... I start with low expectations.
Ah, fond memories of Compiz with Wobbly Windows. Wonder how they’ve done it here, whether it’s resurrected Compiz stuff or implemented the same concepts from scratch.
From the looks of it, they're leveraging a fork of a library I ported from Compiz a few years ago (called libanimation). I'm quite happy to see this, as I thought it was a dead end and wouldn't get any users, but it looks like its been very useful to this project and I'd be interested to see where the development is continuing so that I can help them out.
Wobbly windows is such a truly excellent feature; I really don’t understand why more platforms (most significantly Windows and macOS) don’t go with it, even if more restrained (Zorin’s jelly looks a bit too loose for my liking). They make the entire experience much more tactile and make windows all round much nicer to work with.
(For my part, I now use tiling window managers, where wobbly windows won’t work well except for floating windows. But on all-floating window managers—)
Is it faster than Windows 10? Does it use less memory than Windows 10? Does it use less hard disk than Windows 10? Does it display fonts more clearly, more smoothly than Windows 10?
From extensive testing of pretty much all recent distros/desktops - yes, except for the last question. Font rendering is nearly but IMHO not quite as finely-controllable, and can on occasion go badly wrong and look terrible.
Saying that, macOS is considerably ahead of Win10 on this front, and also on colour synchronisation.
I've tested both. Very similar. Both are GNOME remodelled to be more Windows-like. Mint has its own fork, Cinnamon, with some nice new features such as a richer file manager and default accessories with proper menu bars, not GNOME's annoying "client-side decorations"; Zorin just adapts GNOME with extensions, AFAICT.
Mint is free and has a large, active, helpful community.
Zorin is paid-for.
Honestly, I can't see any good reason to pay for it myself.
Zorin Lite isn't bad, though. One of the prettiest, best-customised Xfce deployments I've seen yet, and it's free.
Zorin OS 16 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26841166 - April 2021 (76 comments)