Wait unti you have to upgrade Zorin to a new release. I still haven't gotten mine to work. Stick with Mint or Bazzite if you want a Windows alternate
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
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Wait unti you have to upgrade Zorin to a new release. I still haven’t gotten mine to work. Stick with Mint or Bazzite if you want a Windows alternate
I wouldn't exactly put up Mint as an example for a smooth upgrading experience...
Maybe I lack the technical understanding, but it's absolutely baffling to me, why one has to download mintupgrade. It's a reasonable setup wizard once it's running, but why on earth is that not part of the whole Update tool interface in the first place and gets downloaded automatically?
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Amazing how lemmings will find a way to jump off of any cliff.
"Free OS that works great?"
NO! I WANT TO PAY.
Free as in Freedom and not free as in beer. I donate to a lot of open-source projects such as KDE.
I keep hearing about this "free as in beer." Where are you guys getting free beer? Can I have some?
If you came to my place, I'd give you free beer - I'm a home brewer but not much of a drinker
I'm mostly amazed that they discovered it. When I think of a good transition distro this is not what comes to mind. Must have been some kind of targeted ad campaign. Also there's probably a ton of people that think no good software could possibly be free.
They've been astroturfing the fuck out of it for the last 6 weeks.
This was my guess. This shit doesn't come from nowhere. My bet is that some big wig or VC backed it and is trying to get ROI.
Nah, y'all just young. Zorin's designed to look extremely Windows-like, and they've always gotten a bump when Microsoft has a stroke. Last time they grew a lot was Windows 8.
If anything, this is just a sign of how badly Microsoft has fucked up with Windows 11.
These kind of distros always existed. I'm pretty sure I still have CDs around with Lindows from around the same Mandrake and Knoppix was the cool stuff.
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Zorin? Its a great transition distro. Clean aesthetic, with back end gnome tweaks so you can have it look like KDE/windows. Software store made easy. Everything seems to work OOTB.
with back end gnome tweaks so you can have it look like KDE
you know what looks like KDE?
KDE.
But KDE isn't as integrated throughout the system like GNOME, on Zorin you have 4 desktops styles you can choose that range from GNOME like to KDE like without having to switch DEs.
I know KDE is highly customizable, but it doesn't have the smooth feel of GNOME, and for a distro where their whole vibe is a clean aesthetic GNOME makes more sense
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I mean, I don't mind monetization if it keeps the project alive and they're actually doing work. I do mind free stuff that comes at the price of your data, or free stuff that is eventually bought up, or free stuff that can't sustain itself and constantly splits off and churns through personal drama cycles.
To people who will pay whatever they think a thing is worth, a free OS is worthless
This is unironically a huge issue, and it's just fascinating how the psychology of pricing and valuation works.
Semi-large company needs something. They make a budget for €100k and start looking at different alternatives. They find alternatives a) €120k, b) €80k, c) €15k. I bet you they'll try to ask their superiors to expand their budget in order to buy the premium €120k solution, and they will not in any way consider the €15k one.
Come to think of it, it goes beyond software as well.
so your going with pro then?
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If windows users want to pay for a superior OS even though they don't have to, let them.
Ha, didn't realise Zorin was paid for. I'll stick with Debian. Not only is it free, it was made for lesbians who I also whole heartedly support.
I've had Zorin on an old laptop for a few years now, it's pretty good. I'd previously tried Mint and another distro I can't remember the name of, but I've stuck with Zorin. I'll probably go with it on my PC once I've done a backup.
How does Zorin compare to Mint?
More glitz and glam than many other distros I've tried. It was the first one I tried when trying to leave Windows. Eventually did Mint, Pop, Nobara, and Garuda. Chose Mint to stick with for now and haven't regretted it.
If one of my less savvy friends asked about switching to Linux, I would mention Zorin as a possible option simply because it goes out of its way to feel familiar.
Thanks! I got the feeling that it was trying to feel like windows to ease the pain of transition. I’ve just seen several hype posts for it recently and wondered what was up.
I don't really get this "it has to be similar to Windows" approach. It's gonna be different, the more you try to imitate windows, the more frustrating it will be when you get to things that HAVE to be different.
out of box distro so it comes with a bunch of software pre installed. .
Prettier but has a track record of having more technical issues. Also the devs are a company with absolutely no transparency. At some point there was so few communication that I thought they closed shop.
If you want a similar UI, I would advise going for a vanilla Gnome and adding the desired "Zorin *" extensions. It's a bunch more work to setup but it feels more trustworthy to me.
Uses Gnome instead of Cinnamon, has a paid version, that's all the differences I can think of
I hope they find Mint soon. Zorin never worked well for me.
Why does Zorin exist?
Linux Mint exists to be defuckulated Ubuntu, and to show off the Cinnamon desktop which is defuckulated Gnome.
Neon is KDE's in-house distro, because I guess they get to have one even if it is functionally identical to Kubuntu.
Manjaro is Arch that's ready to go out of the box.
What is Zorin for? Do they develop any software, or do they charge money for re-themed Ubuntu Gnome?
please do not suggest that manajaro is arch ready to use arch. manjaro is just bad. if you want easier to install arch go endeavour os or cachy or some other arch plus gui installer. https://manjarno.pages.dev/
I said that's the reason Manjaro exists, not that it's any good at it.
Nobody has answered me what Zorin is for.
It's for people who don't know what an operating system is (probably over half the world population or much greater) but can understand "this is like Windows but works faster and with less viruses, and it has something like Microsoft Office but free".
It was the most easy to convince others to use it during the Windows 8 era because it looked so much like Windows 7 and likely the same is happening now with the end of life of Windows 10.
Not that hard if you ever spoke to anyone who doesn't really understand computers. Good for you I guess that you came from a family of tech literate people I guess.
Same could be said about Mint; I was asked several times what version of WIndows I had on my laptop. Some people are convinced to this day they met a guy running Windows 9.
This EXACTLY what I'm gonna tell people now with a straight face
Thanks
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DDoSing the AUR
Jesus fucking Christ
they have done that twice
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It's a defuckulated Ubuntu with a a dozen custom Gnome extensions. They do publish the extensions code. It exists because Mint is often ugly and not very ergonomic. See the "file" apps for both distros, Mint's buttons are too small and the progress indicator is a tiny 16px icon in the status bar.
And sometimes the dark themes available in Mint make the buttons the same dark colors as the dark backgrounds ;u; (cinnamon user here)
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