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Zorin OS 16 is Released

95 points by foolswisdom 5y ago

altantiprocrast 5y ago
Yay Zorin is awesome
- bawana 5y ago
  Wasn't he a Bond villain?
  - compressedgas 5y ago
    In A View to a Kill.
arpa 5y ago
jelly mode made me long for beryl again
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  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.
  - smspillaz 5y ago
    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.
    - chrismorgan 5y ago
      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—)
secludedrelish 5y ago
Nice to see more noob targeted Linux distros
qnsi 5y ago
The site seems to load extremely slowly for me, but the web archive version doesnt show me a lot of benefits. Can someone share why would I use it over mac? And if privacy is main seller why use it over linux?
- alpaca128 5y ago
  Zorin is a Linux distro.
- Santosh83 5y ago
  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.
  - coding123 5y ago
    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).
  - onemoresoop 5y ago
    Is Ubuntu desktop being deprecated or something? That would be sad news, I really like how Ubuntu works out of the box
    - Mikeb85 5y ago
      No, it's not. Some people are just annoyed that Ubuntu stopped trying to be MacOS and is now into enterprise and cloud things to make money.
      - 5y ago
grumpyprole 5y ago
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.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  Zorin is based on KDE, a Linux desktop environment. Typically looks like Windows but here they have put effort into making it look nicer.
  - grumpyprole 5y ago
    Do you have a reference? The screenshots look like Gnome.
    - KeyBoardG 5y ago
      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.
1MachineElf 5y ago
>Easily join an Active Directory domain from the system installer I'm keen to try this. Edit: On the flip side, I learned today that Windows can still integrate with a non-AD domain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28213846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28213846
mpbeauj 5y ago
This looks awesome! Not sure I'd uninstall my current distro for it though...
cjohansson 5y ago
Looks good, great website as well. Linux has come a long way from the early nerdy days and is a competitive desktop OS
clementmas 5y ago
I'm impressed with the website design. A bit slow at the moment but it looks very good. Good job!
tomc1985 5y ago
Aside from obvious visual differences, how does this compare to Linux Mint?
- lproven 5y ago
  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.
  - KeyBoardG 5y ago
    Zorin is only paid for the Pro version which offers a few more layouts out of the box and different pre-installed apps, and support from them. The standard core version (standard and lite as you mentioned) is completely free.
soco 5y ago
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.
lolpython 5y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20210817160932/https://blog.zorin.com/2021/08/17/2021-08-17-zorin-os-16-is-released/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210817160932/https://blog.zori...
dang 5y ago
Recent and related: Zorin OS 16 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26841166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26841166 - April 2021 (76 comments)
dxxvi 5y ago
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?
- lproven 5y ago
  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.
- luke2m 5y ago
  yes, yes, yes, yes, no
sebast_bake 5y ago
Jelly mode is the only reason I use Linux.

95 points by foolswisdom 5y ago

altantiprocrast 5y ago

Yay Zorin is awesome

bawana 5y ago
Wasn't he a Bond villain?
- compressedgas 5y ago
  In A View to a Kill.

arpa 5y ago

jelly mode made me long for beryl again

chrismorgan 5y ago
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.
- smspillaz 5y ago
  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.
  - chrismorgan 5y ago
    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—)

secludedrelish 5y ago

Nice to see more noob targeted Linux distros

qnsi 5y ago

The site seems to load extremely slowly for me, but the web archive version doesnt show me a lot of benefits. Can someone share why would I use it over mac? And if privacy is main seller why use it over linux?

alpaca128 5y ago
Zorin is a Linux distro.
Santosh83 5y ago
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.
- coding123 5y ago
  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).
- onemoresoop 5y ago
  Is Ubuntu desktop being deprecated or something? That would be sad news, I really like how Ubuntu works out of the box
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    No, it's not. Some people are just annoyed that Ubuntu stopped trying to be MacOS and is now into enterprise and cloud things to make money.
    - 5y ago

grumpyprole 5y ago

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.

peakaboo 5y ago
Zorin is based on KDE, a Linux desktop environment. Typically looks like Windows but here they have put effort into making it look nicer.
- grumpyprole 5y ago
  Do you have a reference? The screenshots look like Gnome.
  - KeyBoardG 5y ago
    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.

1MachineElf 5y ago

>Easily join an Active Directory domain from the system installer I'm keen to try this. Edit: On the flip side, I learned today that Windows can still integrate with a non-AD domain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28213846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28213846

mpbeauj 5y ago

This looks awesome! Not sure I'd uninstall my current distro for it though...

cjohansson 5y ago

Looks good, great website as well. Linux has come a long way from the early nerdy days and is a competitive desktop OS

clementmas 5y ago

I'm impressed with the website design. A bit slow at the moment but it looks very good. Good job!

tomc1985 5y ago

Aside from obvious visual differences, how does this compare to Linux Mint?

lproven 5y ago
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.
- KeyBoardG 5y ago
  Zorin is only paid for the Pro version which offers a few more layouts out of the box and different pre-installed apps, and support from them. The standard core version (standard and lite as you mentioned) is completely free.

soco 5y ago

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.

lolpython 5y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20210817160932/https://blog.zorin.com/2021/08/17/2021-08-17-zorin-os-16-is-released/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210817160932/https://blog.zori...

dang 5y ago

Recent and related: Zorin OS 16 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26841166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26841166 - April 2021 (76 comments)

dxxvi 5y ago

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?

lproven 5y ago
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.
luke2m 5y ago
yes, yes, yes, yes, no

sebast_bake 5y ago

Jelly mode is the only reason I use Linux.