How long have you been using Zorin for? I've been pondering making the switch over the past 2 years. With the announcement of win 10 being abandoned around 2025 I might abandon windows all together.
I’m guessing the question was for the OP, @Magnetar83 but I can’t help but chime in as well! I’ve used Azeris off and on since around 2013 (Zorin 6 or 7 I believe). I haven’t used every version between then and now as I hop distros a lot, but I often go back to it for a while every couple of years and find it to be a fantastic experience! It often doesn’t have the newest versions of software available, focusing more on stability, but with universal Linux app formats like Flatpak, Snap and AppImage becoming more common, it’s pretty easy to get current software versions on just about any distro these days. If previous years are anything to go by, we should be seeing Zorin 17 come out sometime this summer or early autumn with significant improvements. As for the switch from Windows, it was a gradual process for me as well. I first tried Linux in 2011, and to this day, I still occasionally boot into a Windows installation for that one piece of software I’ve not been able to give up just yet (mainly one or two Windows-only games that don’t yet work under Steam Play / Proton / WINE translation). But over time, I’ve either found alternatives or Linux has gotten better at those specific things, and I’ve had to turn to Windows less and less over the years. It’s great that you’re taking the consideration of Linux seriously now while you have plenty of time to try things out and figure out what works well for you.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel A Stable and slow updates is just what I"m looking for in an OS. I don't need the most fancy features as I can wait for stable versions to come to me. It's neat that you've been able to experience changes on both ends. Between Windows and Zorin or other Linux stuff over the years. I was asking Magnetar83 but I'm glad you answered. I've been using windows ever since 3.1. It's been a fun ride but I doubt Windows 12 will make me stay with them much longer.
Yep, Windows 12 is definitely a wild card right now, and it dumbfounds me how they can plan to end support for an operating system when A LOT of people’s devices have no support or compatibility to upgrade to the next version. Sure, every new device these days supports Windows 11, but the vast majority of people cannot afford or otherwise refuse to buy a new device when the one they have from just a few years ago works perfectly other than lacking the arbitrary requirements to keep using a supported version of Windows.
Thanks for this video. I've "shopped" several distros over the last few weeks and have to agree with everything you said about Zorin. I'll be installing it later on today on my laptop.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I installed it last night and having a great time! I've already linked it with my phone and installed 2 Windows apps I've been using for 20+ years. NoteTab Pro, a text editor and Music Monkey, a video player. Among other things off course.
I'm using Zorin 16 and it's great. I currently have it installed on a Lenovo SL510. That laptop can run Win10 but I do prefer Zorin. To solve the font problem, I copied the fonts I needed directly out of Micro$oft (not a typo) Word, onto a thumb drive. I then installed the fonts on the thumb drive directly into Zorin. It works great!
Caladea appears to be available at the below link. Just download then extract the .zip file then double-clicking the font file should open up a font viewer with a button to install it. www.1001fonts.com/caladea-font.html
Feel free to post any Linux-related questions in the comments to be answered in an upcoming Q&A video. As well, with TH-cam’s recommendation algorithms now prioritizing shorter videos, let me know if you’d prefer more short-form content or longer, more involved deep-dive videos.
hi i have a problem in zorin can you help me please the software app wont install application like windows app support the installition progres bar stay in 0%
It could take a while to show progress, so do be patient. But if it really isn’t getting anywhere, there are a couple things you could try. If you try to install and it’s stuck for a while, you can open the Terminal and run “killall gnome-software” (minus the quotes) then try it again. If that doesn’t work, you could try installing it by simply downloading the desired Windows app you want (.exe file) and opening it, which should prompt to install Windows App Support. Finally, if that doesn’t work either, you could try following the first section (System-wide packages) of the below Zorin help article, but please back up any important files first, just in case something goes wrong while doing so. help.zorin.com/docs/system-software/fix-package-manager-issues/ Hope one of those can help!
How come when i use ubuntu, fedora or linux mint find and zip command i get a buffer overflow error or a zip: bad address error but when i use zorin everything works and there are no issues. What is going on?
Two years ago I was deciding between Linux Mint and Zorin OS. I decided to go with Mint and I LOVE it. I sometimes check up what is new with Zorin but have no reason to change.
I'm currently using zorin pro 16.2 I think they should give the option for color & animated icons in the quickbar, maybe even add more layouts I wouldn't mind zorin flavored deepin layout a square floating dock with rounded corners. Other than that I'm lovin it.
A good idea! They could certainly provide layouts for various desktop environments, of course with the Zorin touch. I’d love to see their implementation of a GNOME 2-style top panel with the Apps, Places and System menus. You could still press the Super key to get the Overview and search.
I can certainly understand the annoyance of having to enter it, though it is to protect the system from any action that requires super-user privileges (that is, it could modify any part of the system or other users’ data). If you truly do want to disable or limit this, the following article explains it: linuxhandbook.com/sudo-without-password/ That said, if you’re just looking to disable locking the screen (and it making you enter your password) when you wake the computer from sleep, you can disable that in Settings (I think it’s under Privacy > Screen Lock, but it might be under Power settings).
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I read on the forums that it is possible to install different desktop environments on Zorin such as Cinnamon or KDE. But then you would not have all of the Zorin features such as the panel and start menu which is the whole point in installing Zorin. To have a more older and familiar version of Gnome. in stead of the Ubuntu Gnome. So if I used Zorin I would not try to change it. I use Gnome now on Linux Mint but I do prefer to have a menu like Zorin or the Mint menu they used to have.
A video about KDE Connect would be appreciated, especially if you could cover iPhones. By the way: Thank you for your videos - I hope you will have time and fun to do many more!
I’ll definitely consider doing a video on KDE Connect (I do have an iPhone on hand). It’s unfortunate that I haven’t had much time to do videos for the past while, and my schedule is still a bit uncertain, but I’ve really missed creating content and engaging with the community, so I’m hoping to stick with it!
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Keep doing your thing and I'm sure people will. You do a better job than many of the others that just boot up a distro in a VM and only show what DE/wallpapers they have and check htop.
Zorin is a very nice looking and user friendly Linux OS but I still feel something is missing---need more customization options. I'm on MX Linux now using KDE Plasma DE and I don't see myself going to another distro anytime soon. I've changed the default kernel to Liquorix and bash to zsh plus a few more tweaks here and there and now its perfect for me! MX Linux being a Debian-based distro runs solid and have plenty of support available for it. I don't miss Windows at all! 😁
Very possibly. I like customization, but after using Linux for quite some time, I’ve pretty much figured out my ideal customized workflow, so I want all the customization options in order to create that, but then I don’t really care about the rest. 😊
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Yeah, I used to customize everything. I'd spend days experimenting with my perfect shell design via $PS1 lol. Now I don't get married to my system at all. I like just being able to backup /home and go to a new system or redo my own. It's been years now as a software engineer where I basically am agnostic to what distro I use though I am now installing Zorin on my business machines for my employees that aren't tech people. It's just so much nicer than Windows at this point. I can't stand how out of control I feel when using Windows or to a lesser extent OSX.
That makes a lot of sense. My upcoming video might not be your cup of tea then…you’ll see, it’s pretty awkward timing. Let’s just say it’s all about KDE customization. 🫤 I can definitely appreciate working with a pretty standard system, making it easier to move between installs.
About to install this for my mom on her new computer I got her, when I first booted it up I was astonished by how clean everything is. Reminded me of the first time I tried Linux as a kid. It is amazing how far it has come for personal use.
Subbed. Not only do you do a good job of explaining things, but your diction and pacing are far above most YTers. As a Linux advocate, I recommend Mint for Win10 users, and Zorin Core for Win 7 veterans, but they're both excellent for newcomers. I run both, plus MX on different machines.
It’s pretty nice in my opinion. If it’s a really sad laptop with low specs, you could always try the Zorin Lite edition, which should run better, but is missing a few of the nice features.
Keep it Up Brotha! I've been Hopping Zorin since it began. for some reason I never used it longer than a few weeks always went back to Mint: I thought it seemed Sluggish
I would love to see you offer a video explaining how to install Zorin 16.2 PRO using the manual Other option to set up partitions. I'll be installing it on a fresh new 1 TB NVME PCI 3rd gen SSD, 32 GB DDR4 using a 7th gen Intel core i7 CPU. I want to manually isolate the OS to facilitate future upgrades without having to reinstall data and application files.
When MS prevented 7th gen i7 users to install Win 11 I decided to dump MS all together. With inflation being what it is fewer people can afford the hardware upgrade spiral.
Absolutely true! The Windows 11 hardware requirements are so specific and limiting. I would be happy to do a video about Zorin OS Pro. With that said, I have already done a video explaining how to install Ibuntu (the procedure is the same for Zorin) using “Other” manual partitioning to install the Home folder separately, which separates your personal files / documents etc. from the rest of the system. You can check that out here and see if it helps: th-cam.com/video/yTmgFXmRsDo/w-d-xo.html
I just tried to log into my ZOrin OS to run upgrader, and the system was completely unusable since I've changed monitors since then. There was no taskbar at all, just a window you could right click to do Settings and Display Settings and Terminal, but when you tried any of them no window would open up at all. It's been 30 years now and still.. Linux is as dwmb as h377 as it was back in the early 1990's
I am using Linux Mint and I would love to try Zorin OS. I like that although it is Gnome they have managed to make it look like Windows or Mate with the taskbar and start menu. I am at the moment using my Linux Mint with the Gnome desktop. And it is ture that you can customise Gnome and make it look more like Windows or cinnamon but adding extensions like Dash to Panel and the Arch Menu. But it's not the same as the Zorin Menu. There is a Zorin Menu extension but it does not work on Ubuntu Focal (which my Mint is based on) or on Ubuntu Jammy( the latest version of Ubuntu which is a shame.Though it shows that you can customise Gnome and make it look like the older versions which did have the start menu. The older versions of Linux Mint used to have a Gnome edition which had the Mint menu which I used to use. Until they dropped Gnome for Cinnamon.So yes Gnome can be customised. I also use Deconf Editor to enable system events sound. This is also in Gnome but hidden in the settings. But the Zorin extensions only seem to work on Zorin. I don't know why that is.
That is a pretty interesting situation. I would honestly consider giving Zorin OS a try. They just released version 17 and it makes the Zorin menu even better by integrating the powerful GNOME search capibilities directly into it. I recently did a video covering Zorin OS 17 if you’re interested. th-cam.com/video/5j3uI1tY8cA/w-d-xo.htmlsi=G5r3sUMzk-7bE_P3
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I have tried Zorin 16 in live CD and I have used it in the past. A lot of people think Gnome cannot be customised but it can. Zorin OS is gnome with more adaptions as you can add extensions to it. So yes it can be done.
@AndreaBorman Oh yes, it most definitely can. It may not be as immediately obvious as you have to get extensions and use the Extension Manager app, but you really can do so much with it.
I have observed that Arch Distros seem to not able to handle Dual Boot while Suse Distros can. Is there as simple workaround. Eg. I installed Big Linux on a partition & followed it up with Arco then by Artix Both failed to add Big Linux to grub. When repleced with Gecko & Regata, both were able to update grup with Big Linux entry & dual boot easily.
Interesting. Some distros seem to handle Grub differently than others. Personally, I have trouble getting Fedora / Nobara to dual boot with other distros (it makes the other distro unbootable). I’ve no yet found a fix, but I’ll certainly keep looking into it.
I believe you can by doing the following: When you’re connected to internet, you can go into the Wi-Fi page in the Settings app, click the menu button at the top right, and choose Turn On Wi-Fi Hotspot. Hope this helps; let me know if it doesn’t work..
One of the things that I preferred about Arch Linux over other distros is the ability to customize my toolbar with things like polybar, as well as theme my entire desktop with things like pywal. I can live without polybar, but is there an easy way for pywal integration with Zorin? (Or is there a code-able interface inside zorin for changing themes, colors, and the wallpaper?)
I believe it’s possible to install pywal so long as you get pip3 first (“sudo apt install pip3” then “sudo pip3 install pywal”). With that said, I haven’t used Pywal before and therefore can’t speak as to how well it would work on Zorin / Ubuntu-based distros. I know that Ubuntu (which Zorin is based on) uses a framework called gsettings which stores a lot of information related to specific aspects of the system. There are graphical utilities to edit gsettings values(including theme / icons) and it can be used via the terminal as well. It might be worth looking into whether that can do what you want.
I am starting out on Linux and thought zorin would be a good start, my question is do I need to learn the commands used on Linux in order to operate zorin
You'll learn them in the process of using it Many websites present manuals for specific terminal usage cases. Don't think you'll have to open it every time you need an app though - the Software app (built-in app store) is great and its library is quite hefty
Agreed with @ImNicholas . There are times it’ll be useful, and if you’re ever looking something up and are told commands to enter, it’s often the fastest way to do things-and you’ll learn to understand them over time. But you don’t usually need them for day-to-day use. As well, most help or guides designed for Ubuntu will use the same commands as Zorin, so you can follow those.
I recently saw Feren OS mentioned and was reminded of how good and interesting it is. I’ll definitely take a look and might be able to do a video on it at some point.
So I installed and started exploring Feren OS again, but realized that they’re just a couple months away from a major release with quite a lot of changes and improvements planned. So I think it makes sense to wait for it to release (2023.07) and then I’ll take a look at it. Sounds like it will be pretty nice though!
It’s really tough for me to recommend specific ones. There are dozens of decent options that’ll all vary in price and availability depending where you’re located. A decent machine for writing just needs a fairly modern CPU of at least four cores (almost everything other than the most budget systems these days). But if you want to do some video editing, then you may want something with a decent discrete graphics card.
I would really like to switch from Windows 11 to ZorinOS. This OS is appealing, full of core features I most use, lightweight on resources, user friendly... The problem is that I need to find a new PC or I could buy a new hdd to have Zorin and Windows on the same machine. This machine is pretty decent for the money I spent on it, I'd like to keep it like it is. Quick question: could I use ZorinOS from an external hdd by usb port? I'm pretty sure it would be better to install it on an internal hdd but I really wonder if it possible to use it in that way
I actually did this for a similar reason a couple of years ago. It’s very much possible, just note that the performance may not be quite as good (occasional stutters or slowdowns). If you insert and format the USB drive, you can choose it during installation (I’d recommend doing “Something else” custom partitioning, creating a 500MB EFI partition and the rest of the drive as the main (Btrfs or ext4) partition. Then if you choose to put the bootloader on that external drive as well, it’ll only load Grub (the Linux boot manager) when the drive is plugged in and you choose to boot from it (via your PC’s Boot Menu or BIOS.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Thank you for the quick answer. I'm thinking to buy a simple hdd/ssd to write ZorinOS on like a separated machine. I would not have worries and a straight forward booting, plus, I could rewrite ZorinOS with some other distros in the future. I would be able to play with Linux the more I want 😬
Indeed you could. Just be careful whenever installing a distro so you don’t accidentally format your drive with Windows on it! (Having a backup would be recommended)
Good Distro. But why does not have option to shut down PC after some time of inactivity? Or in taskbar to see CPU temp, and network speed? And the clock in taskbar can be made bigger? Yes those could be achieved with additional programs, but why not out of the box? Beginner friendly ....
Zorin has most of the same options that any distro using GNOME has. As you mentioned, a lot of this can be achieved either through additional apps or GNOME Extensions(available at extensions.gnome.org) Font settings can be adjusted in the GNOME Tweak Tool or I believe in Zorin Appearance. This may allow you to increase the clock font size.
I tried Zorin 14 and while it was super fast and nice looking I couldn't get used to navigating it as I'm used to having a "My Computer" section and actual folders. I was told this is an option somewhere but I'll have to go find it. It does seem like 16.2 is even better designed for windows users who are looking to migrate over which is nice.
The latest versions do continue to improve on that experience for users coming from Windows, as that remains their primary target audience. There is an option to add a “[My] Computer” icon to the desktop, though I’d have to double-check where (maybe in Zorin Appearance?) I’m not exactly sure what you mean by Windows using folders in contrast to Zorin / Linux. There’s your main Home folder which consists of the Documents, Downloads, Pictures, etc. folders that you’d be used to. Are you by chance referring to the Libraries used in Windows for a time? I do think 16.2 is a really solid release, and probably worth another try!
@@PlanetLinuxChannel This is super good to hear. I think I'll give this OS another try as Microsoft has gotten super predatory in recent years. It wouldn't be so bad if they made their abandoned OS open source but that will never happen with windows.
I’m not entirely sure how that works. I believe it goes into the public domain after 75 years, but I don’t know if Microsoft has to actually release the source code. I suppose people would at least be free to take it upon themselves to deconstruct it and use the code, even if Microsoft didn’t go out of their way to open-source it. Hopefully I’m not completely wrong about all of that! 😀
You mean that the second letter is capital along with the first? I’ve not personally seen this issue, though are you by chance using multiple keyboard layouts or languages? Sometimes that can cause issues.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Yes, the second letter is capital, and it's not everytime, but I saw that other poeple had the same issue, I don't know why happens that. I use multiple key board language.
There are some documented bugs similar to this in Ubuntu 20.04 (which I believe Zorin 16.2 is based on). It’s possible that Zorin 17 (likely to be based on Ubuntu 22.04) may fix this issue when it comes out.
Hope you enjoy using it! I’ve been loving it. I just released a video covering the newly-released Zorin OS 17. th-cam.com/video/5j3uI1tY8cA/w-d-xo.htmlsi=_Xo_9sPWr5rmIYB8
A bit late to this video but, I'm about to look up a KDE Plasma for Zorin OS and I'm wondering what your thoughts are for how a setup like that might function and what the setup might be like. Thanks.
It wouldn’t be too hard to set up, just installing kde-plasma-desktop (for just the base desktop) or kde-plasma-standard (which includes a few more of the typical KDE applications) however I’d advise against it unless you are really going to use KDE almost exclusively. It adds a lot of config files and tweaks that can mess with things in the standard GNOME interface (like trying to use the KDE Breeze theme in GNOME). If you DO choose to install it, it’ll likely ask which login / display manager you wish to use. I recommend selecting GDM (what it already uses) instead of SSDM as that can cause some quirks. Once installed, on the login screen when you select your user, you can click the cog at the bottom right to pick the KDE Plasma session. When you log in, it’s going to be a very vanilla experience without a lot of the Zorin OS niceties (like their theme and different layouts) but you can of course customize everything as you see fit in typical KDE fashion.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel okay, I guess KDE Plasma would have chances of intruding conflicts. Perhaps like very similar mods for a game competing for the same functions and features as one another? I'll keep the GDM selection in mind if I go the KDE route. Thanks for the very helpful tips. I guess I'll focus on learning the Vanilla Zorin OS first, so I can see how well I enjoy it as it's intended to be used. While keeping KDE Plasma in mind for a few years down the road. Thanks for the quick reply.
Yep. F you really want to get a feel for KDE Plasma without affecting your Zorin setup, you could install something like Kubuntu or KDE Neon (or even another copy of Zorin OS that you install KDE on) in a virtual machine (using Virtualbox, GNOME Boxes, or VMWare Player). It won’t have the performance of running on native hardware, but it would let you try out a similar KDE experience to get a feel for it.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel That's a really good idea actually. It's been decades since I've messed with virtual machines but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.
I believe that Zorin OS Pro uses GNOME just like the Core version. However there is a Zorin OS Pro Lite, which offers the extra apps and support of Pro, but with XFCE like the Lite edition. A bit confusing, but essentially you have Core and Pro being the standard GNOME versions, and Lite and Pro Lite being the lightweight XFCE variants.
Not sure if their site is inconsistent somewhere, but I can confirm that the Core edition (used in the video) and Pro both use GNOME while the Lite and Lite Pro editions use XFCE. The technical Info page on their site confirms such under Desktop Environment. zorin.com/os/details/
The “normal” Pro edition is the heavier interface, same that Core uses, but there is also a Pro Lite version which offers the Pro benefits, but using the lighter interface. But if you’re asking about the difference between the Lite (and Pro Lite) versus Pro (and Core), then I’d say it’s quite significant if you’re using older or lower-end hardware. On more modern machines, they all feel quite responsive, though the Lite editions might still seem slightly more responsive simply because they have fewer animations when you do things.
im interested on try a distro like this it looks pretty clean and even similar to windows in the interface...but im a windows user and im used to him...is it easy to use ? of course im gonna have to read the introduction and work arounds if im com,ing from windows but it actually looks pretty understandable even for a windows user...
I personally think it is quite easy to use. There are definitely differences with the underlying system that you’ll learn over time, and Zorin does have very good documentation and a help website. The fact that the user interface is quite familiar does make that first step much easier.
Great Video New Sub! I have a couple of questions *disclaimer * All my experience using linux is through a VM Ive tried POP OS ZORIN OS and Mint but i perfer zorin the most planning to switch to this distro from windows 1. How to setup zorin os for gaming 2.How to install wine/winetricks properly every time I try to install windows dependencies using wine or winetricks it keeps saying package is broken since 5.5 3. I do not plan to dual boot but I instead am planning to install it on a separate drive is there anything I should know b/c I heard that when u install zorin even if u choose the installation it wipes all drives and not just a specific drive any help is appreciated thanks
I’ll have to look into the specifics of setting up Wine / Winetricks, but I think I can give some insight into your last question now. Do back up any important data before trying this. Even on separate drives, two OS’s can conflict or have issues as bootloaders don’t always agree with each other. Firstly, you’ll definitely want Windows installed to one of the drives first, as installing Windows after Linux can sometimes make Linux unbootable. When you go to install Zorin, you probably shouldn’t choose to Erase Disk; I can’t remember if it asks which disk to install to or if it just erases all the drives. Instead choose Something Else (manual partitioning). On the next page you’ll presented with a table of your drives / partitions. There should already be an EFI partition that was created during your Windows install. Select this and choose Edit to verify that it is set to Use As EFI system partition, but do not format it. Then on your empty hard drive (the one that DOESN’T have your NTFS Windows partition) you will want to create a new partition using all of the unallocated space. File system can either be ext4 (default) or Btrfs (enables better system snapshots if using Timeshift). Label it whatever, like “Zorin” and select to mount at / This will install the entire Zorin system to that drive. Finally, in the box below the table, choose to install the boot loader to the root of your Linux drive (if your Linux partition is /dev/sdb1, then put GRUB on /dev/sdb (no number after it). The end result should look something like this, assuming Windows is installed to disk sda and Zorin will be installed to disk sdb (your actual disk letters may differ): /dev/sda:(or whichever disk Windows is installed to) /dev/sda1: EFI System Partition, NO Format, use As EFI) /dev/sda2: NTFS (NO format) Possibly sda3 with a Recovery or unreadable partition (part of the Windows install) /dev/sdb: (or whatever your other drive is called that you want to install Zorin to) /dev/sdb1: ext4 or Btrfs (formatted, mount at /) Install GRUB bootloader to /dev/sdb (or whatever drive Linux is going on) This method SHOULD install both systems correctly and you could pick which drive to boot from via your computer’s boot menu at startup (usually Esc, F8 or F12). Though PLEASE BACK UP and data you care about before doing this. Dual booting of any kind, even between separate disks, can be finicky as both OS’s still share an EFI partition and bootloaders don’t always play nice with one another.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Thanks for the Reply to give some more context I specifically followed this tutorial so maybe you can take a look and see where i may have made a mistake when I followed this tutorial I made sure ulimits were were more than enough so multiple processes wasn't an issue The video is th-cam.com/video/RwnDtMfhmWk/w-d-xo.html as soon as they get to winetricks and installing dependencies errors start appearing saying anything after dotnet 3.5 and d3dx10 is broken
I really wanna switch from Windows 11, but I have heard horror stories about compatability. I play a lot of games, a lot of indie games, emulated games, etc. I have several different controllers, including N64-to-USB and SNES-to-USB, 8bitdo's, Xbone, and a electronic drumkit I use for Clone Hero (A guitar hero/Rock Band esque game). Two 2k165hz g-sync monitors, 4k60hz TV, and a Valve Index. Would this really be feasible for me? I feel like I have so many niche things that I'd end up making a headache for myself anytime I want to use them.
Many Windows games will “just work” on Linux by running through a translation layer called Proton (which is based on one called WINE). Particularly if they’re on Steam, you can go into Settings > Steam Play > Enable for all titles, which will install Proton and attempt to run Windows-only Steam games on Linux. Results are mixed with many games working, many not, and some that work with a couple tweaks. For Epic and GOG, you can try Heroic Games Launcher, and for other games, you can try Lutris or Bottles to get them running. It’s far from a perfect experience, but it’s rapidly improving. As for older and emulated games, you might have more luck here. From PCSX2 for PS2, Dolphin for GameCube / Wii, Yuzu for Switch, DOSBox for DOS, and RetroArch for a bunch of retro handhelds, among others, there’s a lot of good emulation software available on Linux. As for controller hardware, I’m not too sure. I believe 8bitdos controllers should work, but I really can’t speak to the others. The Linux kernel does support A LOT of hardware, but there are often some gaps in supported devices so it’s hard to say. Your best bet would probably be to try Zorin in a virtual machine first. You can connect your controller and tell the system to pass it to the guest (VM) and see if Zorin detects it. (Though a VM won’t work well for actually testing the games themselves). For trying some games,you could dual-boot Zorin alongside Windows 11 (it should be an option during the installation), but PLEASE have a BACKUP first because dual-booting can easily screw up and mess up your existing install. Alternatively, if you have any other machine you could install Zorin on by itself, that would give you an opportunity to try it with some of your games / hardware. Hope this helps point you in the right direction. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with.
Technically, it could probably run Core, which requires a dual-core processor of at least 1 GHz, 2+ GB of RAM, and at least 1024x768 display. But I suspect it might be pretty slow, in which case Lite might run better. It only requires a single-core CPU, 1 GB of RAM (and minimum of 800x600 screen), so there would be extra resources left over to actually be used for applications and tasks. It should meet the requirements of either, but I suspect Line would run better. Also if it has a mechanical hard drive that can be replaced, even getting a cheap SATA SSD can make a big difference for overall responsiveness (Silicon Power and TimeTec are very budget, but well-known-brands that should suffice).
Depends what kind of audio issues you tend to experience. Being that Zorin is based on Ubuntu LTS, it’s probably a similar experience to that. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS still uses the older PulseAudio as its default audio server as opposed to the newer PipeWire, which more distros are beginning to use these days (including Ubuntu since 22.10). It may depend which versions of which distros you are experiencing audio issues with and whether they use PulseAudio or PipeWire.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I learned to use Linux through Virtual Machine instead of installing it as a primary operating system. I'm using Zorin OS through Virtual Machine and I like it so far.
Glad to hear you’re liking it. Nothing wrong with using Linux in a VM; that’s actually how I exclusively used it for the first couple years before I personally decided to install it on my laptop at the time. Everyone has different uses for it and reasons for using what they do. Best of luck on your Linux journey! I hope you continue to find my new content helpful going forward.
Can it run every kind of windows application or are there still some that aren't supported? Often now big games and popular programs have support or have alternatives but when I try to accomplish less popular stuff I struggle to accomplish them. Like installing a mod to a game or smaller less popular games. This looks great but I'm afraid I'm going to run into "Oops Wine can't run this"
WINE is always getting better and the majority of programs will work in it these days, but there are still some exceptions. If it’s Windows games that you’re interested in, then using Proton (a modified WINE for games) through Steam, Heroic (Epic Games launcher) or Lutris will probably do a better job. For general Windows applications, you can try to install them through standard WINE (Windows App Support in Zorin) or use an app called Bottles which helps with installation of Windows apps in WINE. I certainly can’t guarantee a perfect experience (modern Adobe Photoshop for example still doesn’t work) but there are more Windows apps that work these days than apps that don’t. Perhaps you could install Zorin in a virtual machine on your Windows PC and try installing your Windows apps in WINE through that. It would let you test if the apps you need will work without affecting your existing Windows installation (unless it’s games; those won’t run well in a virtual machine).
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Thanks hopefully the programs mentioned will be able to install/run what I try to run. I can't install a virtual machine unfortunately because my Windows PC crashed and now can barely start up. Just trying to get the important stuff out before evacuation to this Linux distro
Ah I see. If you can boot it into a live Linux USB (Zorin would work fine) then in the file manager, you should be able to access the hard drive with your Windows files so you could copy any necessary stuff onto something else first.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I think I got the most important files safe but when I try to install it it says "error: invalid magic number error: you need to load the kernel first" Is this because my SSD might be corrupt or am I doing something wrong?
Is that error happening during the installation or once you reboot after installation? Also, are you choosing the “Erase and install” option or doing some other partitioning?
Can you do a tutorial on grub fix via windows? Like if you do dualboot win/linux then deleted the linux partition via windows because you dont want it. When restarting it still goes to the old boot animation with linux.
I’ll have to look into it. Depending what I can figure out, I might be able to either do a tutorial video or include it in the upcoming 1,000 subscriber Q&A video. I’ll see what I can find about it.
Hi, I am new linux user, and I was roami ng from distro to distro. Now I think that I found the right one. Can I install graphic card rx 570 driver for ubuntu for Zorin? Thank you so much for this great video!
Graphics drivers for AMD Radeon RX cards are typically built into the Linux kernel so any of their fairly common cards should work out-of-the-box. AMD does provide additional proprietary drivers if you need them for some reason, but in most cases, the in-built ones will work perfectly and you shouldn’t need to install an additional driver. Have you experience issues with your RX 570 on Linux? Good luck on your Linux journey and I’m glad you enjoyed the video!
I would say so. It should be at least as good, but probably a bit better as it includes utilities like WINE out-of-the-box. It’s nothing you couldn’t set up on Ubuntu, but it does have more of the things you’d need /want already installed and set up.
That would depend what you mean by better performance. It feels fairly snappy when navigating around the system, so long as you’re not trying to run it on low-end hardware (Zorin OS Lite would be better in that case). RAM usage will be a bit higher in Core (which uses GNOME) than anything using XFCE, but again, unless you’re on really old or low-end hardware, it shouldn’t be much of an issue. Are there any particular performance issues you’re having with Mint XFCE?
@@PlanetLinuxChannel thanks for reply, om using mint 21 xfce, and im searching for something which might be even faster in working, or gaming, i was testing out nebora and pop os, but on idle my amd gpu had 60 celcius degree, and on mint i do have like 45 Probably becuase of graphical fancyness I had good pc but looking for some lightweighr in any case system :) Mint sometimes have some strange slowness
Regular Zorin Core probably won’t be more lightweight, but the Zorin Lite edition might be. You could also try MX Linux or Linux Lite, which are both fairly lightweight, but have quite a few nice features.
Im using mint as well, on idle my graphics card has 28-30 degrees, before card swap i had same as you, check idle power consumption, on old card i had 10-12, on new im having 5-6W I was testing out nobars, regata, pop, nothing is faster for gaming than mint xfce, but if you are looking for system to install and play right after it will be garuda gaming, will be testing out still but it has very nice performance in games, even better than mint
Does it have a functional support team if necessary? I tried to get support for the distribution i have now "Nobara project" and it was actually just a bunch of guys that had no idea of what was going on. Everyone says how amazing it is but in my experience it's the worst linux distro so far. It doesn't even support AppImage files which causes it to not be compatible with many linux programs.
You’d have a few options for support. Firstly, their help website is pretty comprehensive with nice guides for a lot of common setup and issues. Near the bottom of that page is a link to their community help forum which would mainly be other Zorin users answering questions, though Zorin team members do sometimes provide answers as well. Finally if you purchase Zorin Pro, it comes with complimentary installation support from the Zorin team. Not sure if they’d also be able to provide other additional support in that case. help.zorin.com/
I absolutely agree! And Zorin OS 17 just released with even more improvements! I just uploaded a video covering it if you’re interested. th-cam.com/video/5j3uI1tY8cA/w-d-xo.htmlsi=fwu7PBi9m5_GExC7
Very attractive o/s but one thing made me drop it pretty much straight away. It wouldn't connect to the net. Bit disappointing of course. I tried just about everything to fix it but alas, no go. I changed back to Ubuntu and it connected right away of course. Something weird was going on - I couldn't find it so maybe some clever computer whiz kid might have seen this in Zorin and be able to have a solution.
I actually just watched a legitimately professional webinar yesterday (some big name investor guy that was doing presentations for us everyday folk to try and make big bucks) and all of his slides were in Comic Sans. From that point onward, I just couldn’t take him seriously! 😀
So, who is behind Zorin ? It is easy to find who's involved in other distros, the good ones and the questionable ones, but is Zorin really trustworthy ? ( at least more trustworthy than google / microsoft ? )
Zorin was made by a company under the same name. It is completely open source with optional closed source parts like many distros. Take a look at the source code yourself if you’re so suspicious, Linux is so transparent it lets you do that unlike Google and Microsoft.
As @protocetid mentioned, the source code is openly available for anyone to audit. And many people have. It’s generally considered to be privacy-respecting and has no required telemetry or data collection (there is one toggle during installation that lets you choose whether or not to share anonymous information about the hardware you’re running Zorin on).
i m using linux mint for the first time... man! multimedia sucks! there... i had it dual boot .. when i had to programming, i switched to linux & when i hav to watch tutorial, i had to switch windows.... is there any way to improve linux multimedia (watching video's...) experience? ready to change current distro...
@@PlanetLinuxChannel uh... you know, how is potPlayer..! the UI, performance, settings... after using it on windows, i cant seems to find any closest media player for linux, which is quite good as potPlayer
@@PlanetLinuxChannel its not like, video doesnt play... (tho, if i remember correctly, i get lag while playing some videos...) ... its just linux media player is sooo dumb looking & not as smooth from potPlayer -windows
@@PlanetLinuxChannel i just want to know, one more thing 😁 plz help me to know, if u know anything about it ... at first, used windows (more precisely, used cracked & modified windows version). then i kept hearing linux is way much better than windows especially for programming... so, i installed linux with my eye closed... after passing some days with using linux, i cant seems to get any benefits from it... especially while programming... so, i online it.. some thing like "why linux is best for programmer?" --never got any ans. none could satisfy that question... while using linux, im just questioning myself, why am i using linux anyway?😂 sorry for long story & subbed your lovely channel
Yeah, potPlayer is a pretty nice looking piece of software. I don’t know of anything on Linux that looks as good. Perhaps you could check out SMPlayer, though it admittedly doesn’t look quite as nice. The GNOME Videos app looks okay, but isn’t the most feature-dense.
Haha, perhaps! But that’s exactly the kind of experience that Linux needs to be able to provide if it’s ever going to see large-scale desktop adoption. Some people like the nitty gritty of the terminal and the power that it has, but a lot of users that are just looking for a Windows alternative that’s privacy-respecting or more resource efficient, or insert-reason-here, just want a system that is easy to use and works day in and day out. Fortunately, Linux provides opportunities for both!
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I agree. I've been turned off by Linux before from other distros, mostly because I don't want to put in the work to learn a bunch of terminal commands. Zorin seems like it'd be very easy to get into as a lazy user. Perfect for me. Thank you for having a look at it.
Glad you found the video helpful! Linux Mint as another distro known for its ease of use and rarely needing the terminal. Not sure that it completely lives up to that reputation, and I personally don’t think it looks as nice as Zorin (though 21.1 did receive theme improvements), but it’s another option worth throwing out there just in case you ever decide Zorin isn’t quite the right fit.
My only gripe with ZorinOS is the updates. TOOOOOOO many updates, almost every day it tells me of more updates even though I tell it to only tell me every 2 weeks. Then if I choose NOT to stop what I am doing and install them it will literally lock me up and make all of the icons on my desktop disappear and from the taskbar. Forbid I have any important items open when that happens. Its just as bad as Windows 10 and 11 in that respect.
Windows 10 and 11 only release updates once a month, or twice if you opt to receive the preview patches. The only other updates you get are Windows Defender updates which is standard for any AV platform.
I’ve not personally experienced that with Zorin, but it has been quite a while since I’ve used it for any extended period of time. Are you doing updates through the Software Updater app? (As opposed to the Software app centre)
I believe this guide for Ubuntu will apply to Zorin OS as well; though of course make sure you have any important data backed up before trying it, just in case something doesn’t work right. linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-kde-plasma-desktop-on-ubuntu-20-04-focal-fossa-linux
Yep, it really needs a new release! Zorin 16.2 is still based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, which is likely where the old kernel comes from. It’s also still GNOME 3 (.38 I believe). Zorin 17 (whenever it comes out) should bump a lot of this forward, but honestly it might be pretty outdated by the time that happens. We’ll just have to wait and see. Maybe not the best choice if you’re rocking really recent hardware.
I just installed KDE Plasma... it was horrible. And I've had past KDE experience... a lot of it. Still useless for anything but Firefox browsing. After a few hours of just totally screwing things up, I went back to my rock solid predictable Windows 7 desktop.. which just works. Downloading Zorin to try it next, but yeah considering Linux history of the past 20 years, no high hopes. I don't think Linux developers totally underestimate just how good Windows 7 is... (hint it ain't great, but your OS is horrid by comparison) you find out really fast when you try to use WIndows 10 or 11 (completely unusable).
I’d definitely give Zorin a try. It doesn’t exactly have the latest versions of software, but I have found it to be pretty stable, and it is a pretty nice user interface.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel How I evaluate a product: 1. Does it enable a Dark Theme by default? 2. Can it be switched to a Dark Theme? 3. Are the Text/Icons/Pointers large and readable? 4. Can the Text / Icons / Mouse Pointer be changed to a very large size? 5. Does it maintain the Dark theme and large text/icons/mouse pointer througout all applications? Zorin Score: 0 out of 5
Sorry to hear that it didn’t work well for you. As someone with a visual impairment myself, I can definitely relate regarding the excruciatingly bright theme. I did reply to the other comment of yours with some hopefully-helpful tips for setting some of those settings in Zorin. Best of luck!
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I loathe Windows 10, but I just bought a copy 10 minutes ago ($50)... because I know even though I can't stand it, it at least can do a dark theme and you can in fact make the mouse pointer the size of a quarter... heck, you can even make it the size of a pack of cigarretes moving around on screen if you want. With Mouse Trails, But gawd, I so loathe Windows 10. I'm going to keep on trying to install Windows 7... and work my way through a few other linux distros nonetheless. A whole lot of software fails in the Dark Themable department... it's not just OS's. WIndows installers, poorly written apps, RAMdrive software, old software. I opened VIrtualBox on KDE plasma earlier today and bam was greated by a blazing white window with a penguin in the corner, even though I was running a Dark Theme. That's the problem with Linux... it's all written by a thousand amateur prorammers one of whome have an overall goal or look they are aiming for. There is no.. top down design. People try, and then they start stiching together distros with their favorite best apps from all over the places, none of which were designed to look and feel and work seemlessly together... La... what you going to do.
It certainly is a frustrating situation. Zorin, and pretty much any distro that uses the GNOME desktop these days, does have a dark theme option (Super / Windows key then type Appearance and press Enter to go to the corresponding settings page). There is a fairly new framework called LibAdwaita that modern Linux apps can take advantage of which unifies theming and appearance of apps (especially those written for GNOME / in GTK), but as you mentioned, it’s a matter of getting all sorts of developers to jump on board and actually use it. That said, I’m not so sure Linux distros are really that much worse than Windows. Windows 7 didn’t have an in-built dark theme, and even in Windows 10 / 11 where you can enable one, it only applies for specific built-in apps and a few third-party ones that choose to use the modern Windows frameworks. Anything else (including many of the apps built into Windows) still don’t respect the modern theming, much like the issue is on Linux. Still, despite any justification I might try to give, I truly get that it’s straight up infuriating in either case. Work on this, and accessibility considerations in general, needs to be better! Speaking of accessibility features, do you consider trying inverted colour features in cases where there may not be a consistent dark theming? Both Windows and Linux have it, though I suppose it could mess with how images look.
OMG this was awful. Visually impaired people can not read black text on a white background... for us, it would be like you trying to read black sharpie marker writing on a lit florescent lightbulb. It's like staring at the sun. I painfully barely made my way through all the installation screens searching for one word ont eh screen and holding my fingers into a slit shape with mye eys 1 inch from the screen, and was able to install it by chosing mostly defaults and searchign around for the Continue button. DARK THEME by default people! After I installed and rebooted, I was then greeted by a blazing white theme by default. I then tried to find Settings in the faux START menu, which I pulled up... and trying to change the background to solid black, theme to Black, and mouse pointer to large with mouse trails on. So far, no success. The control panel is laid out different from KDE.
My verdict: VISUALLY IMPAIREED PERSON HOSTILE, UNUSABLE I could not find Appearance tab in the control panel. There was no solid black background choice either. If it's like KDE, no way to turn on mouse pointer trails or make mouse pointerbigger. In the end, I could not find the Shutdown button or even pull up a console to type "sudo shutdown -h now" to shutdown the system properly, and had to power it off to do the next distro install installation. I'm probably going to have to buy Windows 10 and just suffer with it, because I can't get Windows to run on my new Ryzen 7950x. Final Zorin OS verdict score: TOTAL FAIL, with caveat: It could be fixed if they would default to a Dark Theme throughout by default.
Sorry to hear about the experience! As a visually impaired person myself, I can certainly agree that the light theme is so bright! I believe you can change the theme in the Zorin Appearance app. When you’re logged in, you can press the Super key (Windows key) to get a search box (along with any open windows). So once you press the Super key, you can just type “Zorin Appearance” and press Enter to open the app, then you should be able to see the dark theme tile option in that window. To make the text size larger, you can again press the Super key then type “Accessibility” and press Enter. This will open the Accessibility settings panel which has an option for Large Text. Hopefully toggling this on will at least make it large enough to navigate around easier and adjust settings further. As well, the shortcut for the terminal is usually Control-Alt-T (can’t remember if it’s actually set in Zorin or not). Hope that might be helpful. If I may ask, how would Windows be any better? Other than being familiar with where the options are, aren’t the Windows 10 windows also very bright by default? (I suppose the start menu itself is dark by default.)
The de facto standard for live streaming (and recording) video / screen on Linux is definitely OBS Studio. It might look slightly intimidating when you first open it, but you only have to use a few of the options and it’s actually quite quick and easy to set up. It’s also available on Windows and macOS if you’re running either of those before trying Linux. I’ve also heard of an app called Restreamer for live streaming, but I’ve not used it and don’t know how good it is. The video editing on Linux is slightly trickier. The most widely used one is definitely Kdenlive. It’s really capable with quite a lot of features and is a great choice, but it has a bit of a steep learning curve at first (though it’s probably worth it). Also, as it doesn’t currently support GPU acceleration, you’d want to enable proxy clips (lower-resolution previews) so that moving through the timeline and previewing playback is smooth. Alternatively you could try DaVinci Resolve. I find it considerably easier to use and it has pretty much all the features you could need, even as a free version. Its main issue is that the Linux version is often quite unstable. There are ways of working around this, so don’t get too discouraged if the program gives you issues at first. There are other more basic Linux video editors like ShotCut, Olive, OpenShot and Pitivi. These all cover the basics and one or multiple of them may suit your needs, though their stability can sometimes be inconsistent. Hope this helps point you in the right direction!
@@PlanetLinuxChannel thanks u went into depths with that I appreciate I only do live content so everything's would just stay the same with obs studio that's good to know
Zorin OS 17 is now released and I’ve done a video covering it. Consider checking it out! th-cam.com/video/5j3uI1tY8cA/w-d-xo.htmlsi=fwu7PBi9m5_GExC7
I started with Zorin Core a year ago. Tried a bunch of others but have never been tempted to hop. Best looking distro and very easy to use.
It really is a great distro. Perfect combination of looks, features and ease of use.
im considering using this. just got a new machine
Hope you enjoy it!
I just love Zorin! It's what finally got me over to Linux after being on Windows since 1999.
Glad to hear it. It’s a great distro!
How long have you been using Zorin for? I've been pondering making the switch over the past 2 years.
With the announcement of win 10 being abandoned around 2025 I might abandon windows all together.
I’m guessing the question was for the OP, @Magnetar83 but I can’t help but chime in as well!
I’ve used Azeris off and on since around 2013 (Zorin 6 or 7 I believe). I haven’t used every version between then and now as I hop distros a lot, but I often go back to it for a while every couple of years and find it to be a fantastic experience!
It often doesn’t have the newest versions of software available, focusing more on stability, but with universal Linux app formats like Flatpak, Snap and AppImage becoming more common, it’s pretty easy to get current software versions on just about any distro these days.
If previous years are anything to go by, we should be seeing Zorin 17 come out sometime this summer or early autumn with significant improvements.
As for the switch from Windows, it was a gradual process for me as well. I first tried Linux in 2011, and to this day, I still occasionally boot into a Windows installation for that one piece of software I’ve not been able to give up just yet (mainly one or two Windows-only games that don’t yet work under Steam Play / Proton / WINE translation). But over time, I’ve either found alternatives or Linux has gotten better at those specific things, and I’ve had to turn to Windows less and less over the years. It’s great that you’re taking the consideration of Linux seriously now while you have plenty of time to try things out and figure out what works well for you.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel A Stable and slow updates is just what I"m looking for in an OS. I don't need the most fancy features as I can wait for stable versions to come to me.
It's neat that you've been able to experience changes on both ends. Between Windows and Zorin or other Linux stuff over the years.
I was asking Magnetar83 but I'm glad you answered.
I've been using windows ever since 3.1. It's been a fun ride but I doubt Windows 12 will make me stay with them much longer.
Yep, Windows 12 is definitely a wild card right now, and it dumbfounds me how they can plan to end support for an operating system when A LOT of people’s devices have no support or compatibility to upgrade to the next version.
Sure, every new device these days supports Windows 11, but the vast majority of people cannot afford or otherwise refuse to buy a new device when the one they have from just a few years ago works perfectly other than lacking the arbitrary requirements to keep using a supported version of Windows.
You did an excellent job in this review - I wouldn't shorten it in any way.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it, and I’ll keep that in mind when considering the length of future content.
Thanks for this video. I've "shopped" several distros over the last few weeks and have to agree with everything you said about Zorin. I'll be installing it later on today on my laptop.
Hope you enjoy using it; it really is one of the best in my opinion. Glad you enjoyed the video!
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I installed it last night and having a great time! I've already linked it with my phone and installed 2 Windows apps I've been using for 20+ years. NoteTab Pro, a text editor and Music Monkey, a video player. Among other things off course.
That’s fantastic! Happy to hear it’s working well for you.
I'm using Zorin 16 and it's great. I currently have it installed on a Lenovo SL510. That laptop can run Win10 but I do prefer Zorin. To solve the font problem, I copied the fonts I needed directly out of Micro$oft (not a typo) Word, onto a thumb drive. I then installed the fonts on the thumb drive directly into Zorin. It works great!
Glad to hear it’s working well! I hadn’t considered that with the fonts, but it makes sense!
I wonder how hard it'll be to find Caladea, it's not quite perfect but it's the best font I enjoy using.
Caladea appears to be available at the below link. Just download then extract the .zip file then double-clicking the font file should open up a font viewer with a button to install it.
www.1001fonts.com/caladea-font.html
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Very nice!! I'll be sure to save this for later.
What a smart move!
Feel free to post any Linux-related questions in the comments to be answered in an upcoming Q&A video.
As well, with TH-cam’s recommendation algorithms now prioritizing shorter videos, let me know if you’d prefer more short-form content or longer, more involved deep-dive videos.
hi i have a problem in zorin can you help me please
the software app wont install application like windows app support
the installition progres bar stay in 0%
It could take a while to show progress, so do be patient. But if it really isn’t getting anywhere, there are a couple things you could try. If you try to install and it’s stuck for a while, you can open the Terminal and run “killall gnome-software” (minus the quotes) then try it again.
If that doesn’t work, you could try installing it by simply downloading the desired Windows app you want (.exe file) and opening it, which should prompt to install Windows App Support.
Finally, if that doesn’t work either, you could try following the first section (System-wide packages) of the below Zorin help article, but please back up any important files first, just in case something goes wrong while doing so.
help.zorin.com/docs/system-software/fix-package-manager-issues/
Hope one of those can help!
@@PlanetLinuxChannel tysm it just take time like 10min
You’re welcome. The Software app is usually pretty nice, but it can be really finicky sometimes!
How come when i use ubuntu, fedora or linux mint find and zip command i get a buffer overflow error or a zip: bad address error but when i use zorin everything works and there are no issues. What is going on?
Two years ago I was deciding between Linux Mint and Zorin OS. I decided to go with Mint and I LOVE it. I sometimes check up what is new with Zorin but have no reason to change.
They’re both great choices, and the first two that I usually recommend to people interested in trying Linux.
I'm running Zorin OS 16.2 Lite on an old Asus netbook with only 2GB of RAM onboard. It's running fast as hell!
Happy to hear it! Gotta love how well modern Linux can still run on older hardware!
I'm currently using zorin pro 16.2 I think they should give the option for color & animated icons in the quickbar, maybe even add more layouts I wouldn't mind zorin flavored deepin layout a square floating dock with rounded corners. Other than that I'm lovin it.
A good idea! They could certainly provide layouts for various desktop environments, of course with the Zorin touch.
I’d love to see their implementation of a GNOME 2-style top panel with the Apps, Places and System menus. You could still press the Super key to get the Overview and search.
I can certainly understand the annoyance of having to enter it, though it is to protect the system from any action that requires super-user privileges (that is, it could modify any part of the system or other users’ data). If you truly do want to disable or limit this, the following article explains it: linuxhandbook.com/sudo-without-password/
That said, if you’re just looking to disable locking the screen (and it making you enter your password) when you wake the computer from sleep, you can disable that in Settings (I think it’s under Privacy > Screen Lock, but it might be under Power settings).
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I read on the forums that it is possible to install different desktop environments on Zorin such as Cinnamon or KDE. But then you would not have all of the Zorin features such as the panel and start menu which is the whole point in installing Zorin. To have a more older and familiar version of Gnome. in stead of the Ubuntu Gnome. So if I used Zorin I would not try to change it. I use Gnome now on Linux Mint but I do prefer to have a menu like Zorin or the Mint menu they used to have.
A video about KDE Connect would be appreciated, especially if you could cover iPhones.
By the way: Thank you for your videos - I hope you will have time and fun to do many more!
I’ll definitely consider doing a video on KDE Connect (I do have an iPhone on hand).
It’s unfortunate that I haven’t had much time to do videos for the past while, and my schedule is still a bit uncertain, but I’ve really missed creating content and engaging with the community, so I’m hoping to stick with it!
Underrated Linux channel!
Thank you! If only more people felt the same way. 😊
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Keep doing your thing and I'm sure people will. You do a better job than many of the others that just boot up a distro in a VM and only show what DE/wallpapers they have and check htop.
Thanks for the compliment. It’s great to hear what people like (and dislike) about the content. Helps me determine what to focus on in the videos.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel You're welcome!
moved to Zorin last week. after a long journey with Windows since 1997, it feels fresh.
Glad to hear you’re enjoying it so far!
Zorin is a very nice looking and user friendly Linux OS but I still feel something is missing---need more customization options. I'm on MX Linux now using KDE Plasma DE and I don't see myself going to another distro anytime soon. I've changed the default kernel to Liquorix and bash to zsh plus a few more tweaks here and there and now its perfect for me! MX Linux being a Debian-based distro runs solid and have plenty of support available for it. I don't miss Windows at all! 😁
Glad to hear you’re enjoying it. I definitely need to check out MX Linux again!
After a couple decades of experience you won't care so much about those customization options lol.
Very possibly. I like customization, but after using Linux for quite some time, I’ve pretty much figured out my ideal customized workflow, so I want all the customization options in order to create that, but then I don’t really care about the rest. 😊
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Yeah, I used to customize everything. I'd spend days experimenting with my perfect shell design via $PS1 lol. Now I don't get married to my system at all. I like just being able to backup /home and go to a new system or redo my own. It's been years now as a software engineer where I basically am agnostic to what distro I use though I am now installing Zorin on my business machines for my employees that aren't tech people. It's just so much nicer than Windows at this point. I can't stand how out of control I feel when using Windows or to a lesser extent OSX.
That makes a lot of sense. My upcoming video might not be your cup of tea then…you’ll see, it’s pretty awkward timing. Let’s just say it’s all about KDE customization. 🫤
I can definitely appreciate working with a pretty standard system, making it easier to move between installs.
I've tried a dozen distros and they all look old and frumpy compared to Zorin Core, which has the polish of a commercial OS. And usability is tops.
It really is great! Glad you like using it!
About to install this for my mom on her new computer I got her, when I first booted it up I was astonished by how clean everything is. Reminded me of the first time I tried Linux as a kid. It is amazing how far it has come for personal use.
Hope she likes it! Zorin 17.1 is out now, and makes the overall experience even better!
Subbed. Not only do you do a good job of explaining things, but your diction and pacing are far above most YTers. As a Linux advocate, I recommend Mint for Win10 users, and Zorin Core for Win 7 veterans, but they're both excellent for newcomers. I run both, plus MX on different machines.
Thank you so much for the positive feedback. Those are all great distros!
been trying several distros to revive a gimped hp laptop hadn't heard of this one so thank you!
It’s pretty nice in my opinion. If it’s a really sad laptop with low specs, you could always try the Zorin Lite edition, which should run better, but is missing a few of the nice features.
Keep it Up Brotha!
I've been Hopping Zorin since it began. for some reason I never used it longer than a few weeks
always went back to Mint: I thought it seemed Sluggish
I get that, though I thought it felt pretty good when I used it most recently.
Mint hasn't really been the same recently. I probably won't be returning, and not just for one particular reason. For many reasons.
@@cameronbosch1213 i ditched mint because of the atrocious boot up speed...taking minutes to get to a working desktop.
I think some of the slowness might be attributed to the Ubuntu base (Linux Lite 5.8 was also really slow to boot; haven’t tried 6 yet).
I would love to see you offer a video explaining how to install Zorin 16.2 PRO using the manual Other option to set up partitions. I'll be installing it on a fresh new 1 TB NVME PCI 3rd gen SSD, 32 GB DDR4 using a 7th gen Intel core i7 CPU. I want to manually isolate the OS to facilitate future upgrades without having to reinstall data and application files.
When MS prevented 7th gen i7 users to install Win 11 I decided to dump MS all together. With inflation being what it is fewer people can afford the hardware upgrade spiral.
Absolutely true! The Windows 11 hardware requirements are so specific and limiting.
I would be happy to do a video about Zorin OS Pro. With that said, I have already done a video explaining how to install Ibuntu (the procedure is the same for Zorin) using “Other” manual partitioning to install the Home folder separately, which separates your personal files / documents etc. from the rest of the system. You can check that out here and see if it helps: th-cam.com/video/yTmgFXmRsDo/w-d-xo.html
I just tried to log into my ZOrin OS to run upgrader, and the system was completely unusable since I've changed monitors since then. There was no taskbar at all, just a window you could right click to do Settings and Display Settings and Terminal, but when you tried any of them no window would open up at all. It's been 30 years now and still.. Linux is as dwmb as h377 as it was back in the early 1990's
I am using Linux Mint and I would love to try Zorin OS. I like that although it is Gnome they have managed to make it look like Windows or Mate with the taskbar and start menu. I am at the moment using my Linux Mint with the Gnome desktop. And it is ture that you can customise Gnome and make it look more like Windows or cinnamon but adding extensions like Dash to Panel and the Arch Menu. But it's not the same as the Zorin Menu. There is a Zorin Menu extension but it does not work on Ubuntu Focal (which my Mint is based on) or on Ubuntu Jammy( the latest version of Ubuntu which is a shame.Though it shows that you can customise Gnome and make it look like the older versions which did have the start menu. The older versions of Linux Mint used to have a Gnome edition which had the Mint menu which I used to use. Until they dropped Gnome for Cinnamon.So yes Gnome can be customised. I also use Deconf Editor to enable system events sound. This is also in Gnome but hidden in the settings. But the Zorin extensions only seem to work on Zorin. I don't know why that is.
That is a pretty interesting situation. I would honestly consider giving Zorin OS a try. They just released version 17 and it makes the Zorin menu even better by integrating the powerful GNOME search capibilities directly into it. I recently did a video covering Zorin OS 17 if you’re interested. th-cam.com/video/5j3uI1tY8cA/w-d-xo.htmlsi=G5r3sUMzk-7bE_P3
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I have tried Zorin 16 in live CD and I have used it in the past. A lot of people think Gnome cannot be customised but it can. Zorin OS is gnome with more adaptions as you can add extensions to it. So yes it can be done.
@AndreaBorman Oh yes, it most definitely can. It may not be as immediately obvious as you have to get extensions and use the Extension Manager app, but you really can do so much with it.
Thank you for the video.
You’re welcome. Glad to hear you enjoyed it!
I have observed that Arch Distros seem to not able to handle Dual Boot while Suse Distros can. Is there as simple workaround. Eg. I installed Big Linux on a partition & followed it up with Arco then by Artix
Both failed to add Big Linux to grub.
When repleced with Gecko & Regata, both were able to update grup with Big Linux entry & dual boot easily.
Interesting. Some distros seem to handle Grub differently than others. Personally, I have trouble getting Fedora / Nobara to dual boot with other distros (it makes the other distro unbootable).
I’ve no yet found a fix, but I’ll certainly keep looking into it.
Can you use hotspot like on windows 10 to share your wifi?
I believe you can by doing the following: When you’re connected to internet, you can go into the Wi-Fi page in the Settings app, click the menu button at the top right, and choose Turn On Wi-Fi Hotspot.
Hope this helps; let me know if it doesn’t work..
One of the things that I preferred about Arch Linux over other distros is the ability to customize my toolbar with things like polybar, as well as theme my entire desktop with things like pywal. I can live without polybar, but is there an easy way for pywal integration with Zorin? (Or is there a code-able interface inside zorin for changing themes, colors, and the wallpaper?)
I believe it’s possible to install pywal so long as you get pip3 first (“sudo apt install pip3” then “sudo pip3 install pywal”). With that said, I haven’t used Pywal before and therefore can’t speak as to how well it would work on Zorin / Ubuntu-based distros.
I know that Ubuntu (which Zorin is based on) uses a framework called gsettings which stores a lot of information related to specific aspects of the system. There are graphical utilities to edit gsettings values(including theme / icons) and it can be used via the terminal as well. It might be worth looking into whether that can do what you want.
I am starting out on Linux and thought zorin would be a good start, my question is do I need to learn the commands used on Linux in order to operate zorin
You'll learn them in the process of using it
Many websites present manuals for specific terminal usage cases. Don't think you'll have to open it every time you need an app though - the Software app (built-in app store) is great and its library is quite hefty
Agreed with @ImNicholas . There are times it’ll be useful, and if you’re ever looking something up and are told commands to enter, it’s often the fastest way to do things-and you’ll learn to understand them over time. But you don’t usually need them for day-to-day use.
As well, most help or guides designed for Ubuntu will use the same commands as Zorin, so you can follow those.
Please make a video on Feren OS, It is a similar concept, but on Plasma, and a different execution
I recently saw Feren OS mentioned and was reminded of how good and interesting it is. I’ll definitely take a look and might be able to do a video on it at some point.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel :D
So I installed and started exploring Feren OS again, but realized that they’re just a couple months away from a major release with quite a lot of changes and improvements planned. So I think it makes sense to wait for it to release (2023.07) and then I’ll take a look at it. Sounds like it will be pretty nice though!
@@PlanetLinuxChannel can't wait for it :)
What is the best economical lab top. For writing, making videos, audio and good screen quality, storage, battery life and keyboard
It’s really tough for me to recommend specific ones. There are dozens of decent options that’ll all vary in price and availability depending where you’re located. A decent machine for writing just needs a fairly modern CPU of at least four cores (almost everything other than the most budget systems these days). But if you want to do some video editing, then you may want something with a decent discrete graphics card.
I would really like to switch from Windows 11 to ZorinOS. This OS is appealing, full of core features I most use, lightweight on resources, user friendly... The problem is that I need to find a new PC or I could buy a new hdd to have Zorin and Windows on the same machine. This machine is pretty decent for the money I spent on it, I'd like to keep it like it is.
Quick question: could I use ZorinOS from an external hdd by usb port? I'm pretty sure it would be better to install it on an internal hdd but I really wonder if it possible to use it in that way
I actually did this for a similar reason a couple of years ago. It’s very much possible, just note that the performance may not be quite as good (occasional stutters or slowdowns). If you insert and format the USB drive, you can choose it during installation (I’d recommend doing “Something else” custom partitioning, creating a 500MB EFI partition and the rest of the drive as the main (Btrfs or ext4) partition. Then if you choose to put the bootloader on that external drive as well, it’ll only load Grub (the Linux boot manager) when the drive is plugged in and you choose to boot from it (via your PC’s Boot Menu or BIOS.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Thank you for the quick answer. I'm thinking to buy a simple hdd/ssd to write ZorinOS on like a separated machine. I would not have worries and a straight forward booting, plus, I could rewrite ZorinOS with some other distros in the future. I would be able to play with Linux the more I want 😬
Indeed you could. Just be careful whenever installing a distro so you don’t accidentally format your drive with Windows on it! (Having a backup would be recommended)
Good Distro. But why does not have option to shut down PC after some time of inactivity? Or in taskbar to see CPU temp, and network speed? And the clock in taskbar can be made bigger? Yes those could be achieved with additional programs, but why not out of the box? Beginner friendly ....
Zorin has most of the same options that any distro using GNOME has. As you mentioned, a lot of this can be achieved either through additional apps or GNOME Extensions(available at extensions.gnome.org)
Font settings can be adjusted in the GNOME Tweak Tool or I believe in Zorin Appearance. This may allow you to increase the clock font size.
I tried Zorin 14 and while it was super fast and nice looking I couldn't get used to navigating it as I'm used to having a "My Computer" section and actual folders. I was told this is an option somewhere but I'll have to go find it.
It does seem like 16.2 is even better designed for windows users who are looking to migrate over which is nice.
The latest versions do continue to improve on that experience for users coming from Windows, as that remains their primary target audience. There is an option to add a “[My] Computer” icon to the desktop, though I’d have to double-check where (maybe in Zorin Appearance?)
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by Windows using folders in contrast to Zorin / Linux. There’s your main Home folder which consists of the Documents, Downloads, Pictures, etc. folders that you’d be used to. Are you by chance referring to the Libraries used in Windows for a time?
I do think 16.2 is a really solid release, and probably worth another try!
@@PlanetLinuxChannel This is super good to hear. I think I'll give this OS another try as Microsoft has gotten super predatory in recent years.
It wouldn't be so bad if they made their abandoned OS open source but that will never happen with windows.
Indeed, it probably won’t, at least until like 2050 or something when they finally make bits of Windows 95 open-source.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Wait, Does software code fall under copyright laws and thus become open source after what 75 years?
I’m not entirely sure how that works. I believe it goes into the public domain after 75 years, but I don’t know if Microsoft has to actually release the source code. I suppose people would at least be free to take it upon themselves to deconstruct it and use the code, even if Microsoft didn’t go out of their way to open-source it.
Hopefully I’m not completely wrong about all of that! 😀
How to solve issue with second capital letter? When I type it appears so oft two capital letters, it's really annoying
You mean that the second letter is capital along with the first? I’ve not personally seen this issue, though are you by chance using multiple keyboard layouts or languages? Sometimes that can cause issues.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Yes, the second letter is capital, and it's not everytime, but I saw that other poeple had the same issue, I don't know why happens that. I use multiple key board language.
There are some documented bugs similar to this in Ubuntu 20.04 (which I believe Zorin 16.2 is based on). It’s possible that Zorin 17 (likely to be based on Ubuntu 22.04) may fix this issue when it comes out.
Zorin OS is really good, I'm about to go back to it from another distro.
Hope you enjoy using it! I’ve been loving it. I just released a video covering the newly-released Zorin OS 17. th-cam.com/video/5j3uI1tY8cA/w-d-xo.htmlsi=_Xo_9sPWr5rmIYB8
A bit late to this video but, I'm about to look up a KDE Plasma for Zorin OS and I'm wondering what your thoughts are for how a setup like that might function and what the setup might be like.
Thanks.
It wouldn’t be too hard to set up, just installing kde-plasma-desktop (for just the base desktop) or kde-plasma-standard (which includes a few more of the typical KDE applications) however I’d advise against it unless you are really going to use KDE almost exclusively. It adds a lot of config files and tweaks that can mess with things in the standard GNOME interface (like trying to use the KDE Breeze theme in GNOME).
If you DO choose to install it, it’ll likely ask which login / display manager you wish to use. I recommend selecting GDM (what it already uses) instead of SSDM as that can cause some quirks.
Once installed, on the login screen when you select your user, you can click the cog at the bottom right to pick the KDE Plasma session. When you log in, it’s going to be a very vanilla experience without a lot of the Zorin OS niceties (like their theme and different layouts) but you can of course customize everything as you see fit in typical KDE fashion.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel okay, I guess KDE Plasma would have chances of intruding conflicts. Perhaps like very similar mods for a game competing for the same functions and features as one another?
I'll keep the GDM selection in mind if I go the KDE route.
Thanks for the very helpful tips. I guess I'll focus on learning the Vanilla Zorin OS first, so I can see how well I enjoy it as it's intended to be used.
While keeping KDE Plasma in mind for a few years down the road.
Thanks for the quick reply.
Yep. F you really want to get a feel for KDE Plasma without affecting your Zorin setup, you could install something like Kubuntu or KDE Neon (or even another copy of Zorin OS that you install KDE on) in a virtual machine (using Virtualbox, GNOME Boxes, or VMWare Player). It won’t have the performance of running on native hardware, but it would let you try out a similar KDE experience to get a feel for it.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel That's a really good idea actually.
It's been decades since I've messed with virtual machines but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.
Nice review! Subscribed
Thanks!
Don't you think the odd thing about this is the pro version of the core version is more like The light version because it uses XFCE
I believe that Zorin OS Pro uses GNOME just like the Core version. However there is a Zorin OS Pro Lite, which offers the extra apps and support of Pro, but with XFCE like the Lite edition. A bit confusing, but essentially you have Core and Pro being the standard GNOME versions, and Lite and Pro Lite being the lightweight XFCE variants.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel not going by that on the site
Not sure if their site is inconsistent somewhere, but I can confirm that the Core edition (used in the video) and Pro both use GNOME while the Lite and Lite Pro editions use XFCE. The technical Info page on their site confirms such under Desktop Environment. zorin.com/os/details/
Whats the difference in responsiveness between Zorin OS Liet and Zorin OS Pro ??
The “normal” Pro edition is the heavier interface, same that Core uses, but there is also a Pro Lite version which offers the Pro benefits, but using the lighter interface. But if you’re asking about the difference between the Lite (and Pro Lite) versus Pro (and Core), then I’d say it’s quite significant if you’re using older or lower-end hardware. On more modern machines, they all feel quite responsive, though the Lite editions might still seem slightly more responsive simply because they have fewer animations when you do things.
im interested on try a distro like this it looks pretty clean and even similar to windows in the interface...but im a windows user and im used to him...is it easy to use ? of course im gonna have to read the introduction and work arounds if im com,ing from windows but it actually looks pretty understandable even for a windows user...
I personally think it is quite easy to use. There are definitely differences with the underlying system that you’ll learn over time, and Zorin does have very good documentation and a help website. The fact that the user interface is quite familiar does make that first step much easier.
Great Video New Sub!
I have a couple of questions
*disclaimer * All my experience using linux is through a VM Ive tried POP OS ZORIN OS and Mint but i perfer zorin the most planning to switch to this distro from windows
1. How to setup zorin os for gaming
2.How to install wine/winetricks properly every time I try to install windows dependencies using wine or winetricks it keeps saying package is broken since 5.5
3. I do not plan to dual boot but I instead am planning to install it on a separate drive is there anything I should know b/c I heard that when u install zorin even if u choose the installation it wipes all drives and not just a specific drive any help is appreciated thanks
I’ll have to look into the specifics of setting up Wine / Winetricks, but I think I can give some insight into your last question now.
Do back up any important data before trying this. Even on separate drives, two OS’s can conflict or have issues as bootloaders don’t always agree with each other.
Firstly, you’ll definitely want Windows installed to one of the drives first, as installing Windows after Linux can sometimes make Linux unbootable. When you go to install Zorin, you probably shouldn’t choose to Erase Disk; I can’t remember if it asks which disk to install to or if it just erases all the drives. Instead choose Something Else (manual partitioning).
On the next page you’ll presented with a table of your drives / partitions. There should already be an EFI partition that was created during your Windows install. Select this and choose Edit to verify that it is set to Use As EFI system partition, but do not format it. Then on your empty hard drive (the one that DOESN’T have your NTFS Windows partition) you will want to create a new partition using all of the unallocated space. File system can either be ext4 (default) or Btrfs (enables better system snapshots if using Timeshift). Label it whatever, like “Zorin” and select to mount at /
This will install the entire Zorin system to that drive.
Finally, in the box below the table, choose to install the boot loader to the root of your Linux drive (if your Linux partition is /dev/sdb1, then put GRUB on /dev/sdb (no number after it).
The end result should look something like this, assuming Windows is installed to disk sda and Zorin will be installed to disk sdb (your actual disk letters may differ):
/dev/sda:(or whichever disk Windows is installed to)
/dev/sda1: EFI System Partition, NO Format, use As EFI)
/dev/sda2: NTFS (NO format)
Possibly sda3 with a Recovery or unreadable partition (part of the Windows install)
/dev/sdb: (or whatever your other drive is called that you want to install Zorin to)
/dev/sdb1: ext4 or Btrfs (formatted, mount at /)
Install GRUB bootloader to /dev/sdb (or whatever drive Linux is going on)
This method SHOULD install both systems correctly and you could pick which drive to boot from via your computer’s boot menu at startup (usually Esc, F8 or F12). Though PLEASE BACK UP and data you care about before doing this. Dual booting of any kind, even between separate disks, can be finicky as both OS’s still share an EFI partition and bootloaders don’t always play nice with one another.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Thanks for the Reply to give some more context I specifically followed this tutorial so maybe you can take a look and see where i may have made a mistake when I followed this tutorial I made sure ulimits were were more than enough so multiple processes wasn't an issue The video is th-cam.com/video/RwnDtMfhmWk/w-d-xo.html as soon as they get to winetricks and installing dependencies errors start appearing saying anything after dotnet 3.5 and d3dx10 is broken
Thanks for the info. I’ll take a look.
I really wanna switch from Windows 11, but I have heard horror stories about compatability.
I play a lot of games, a lot of indie games, emulated games, etc.
I have several different controllers, including N64-to-USB and SNES-to-USB, 8bitdo's, Xbone, and a electronic drumkit I use for Clone Hero (A guitar hero/Rock Band esque game).
Two 2k165hz g-sync monitors, 4k60hz TV, and a Valve Index.
Would this really be feasible for me? I feel like I have so many niche things that I'd end up making a headache for myself anytime I want to use them.
Many Windows games will “just work” on Linux by running through a translation layer called Proton (which is based on one called WINE). Particularly if they’re on Steam, you can go into Settings > Steam Play > Enable for all titles, which will install Proton and attempt to run Windows-only Steam games on Linux. Results are mixed with many games working, many not, and some that work with a couple tweaks. For Epic and GOG, you can try Heroic Games Launcher, and for other games, you can try Lutris or Bottles to get them running. It’s far from a perfect experience, but it’s rapidly improving.
As for older and emulated games, you might have more luck here. From PCSX2 for PS2, Dolphin for GameCube / Wii, Yuzu for Switch, DOSBox for DOS, and RetroArch for a bunch of retro handhelds, among others, there’s a lot of good emulation software available on Linux.
As for controller hardware, I’m not too sure. I believe 8bitdos controllers should work, but I really can’t speak to the others. The Linux kernel does support A LOT of hardware, but there are often some gaps in supported devices so it’s hard to say. Your best bet would probably be to try Zorin in a virtual machine first. You can connect your controller and tell the system to pass it to the guest (VM) and see if Zorin detects it. (Though a VM won’t work well for actually testing the games themselves). For trying some games,you could dual-boot Zorin alongside Windows 11 (it should be an option during the installation), but PLEASE have a BACKUP first because dual-booting can easily screw up and mess up your existing install. Alternatively, if you have any other machine you could install Zorin on by itself, that would give you an opportunity to try it with some of your games / hardware.
Hope this helps point you in the right direction. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with.
Can you please tell me minimal reqiremants for zorin core and lite version?
I have 2012 hp notebook with amd e1200 processor and 4 gb ram
Big thanks
Technically, it could probably run Core, which requires a dual-core processor of at least 1 GHz, 2+ GB of RAM, and at least 1024x768 display. But I suspect it might be pretty slow, in which case Lite might run better. It only requires a single-core CPU, 1 GB of RAM (and minimum of 800x600 screen), so there would be extra resources left over to actually be used for applications and tasks.
It should meet the requirements of either, but I suspect Line would run better.
Also if it has a mechanical hard drive that can be replaced, even getting a cheap SATA SSD can make a big difference for overall responsiveness (Silicon Power and TimeTec are very budget, but well-known-brands that should suffice).
Does Zorin OS have audio Issues like other Linux Distros?
Depends what kind of audio issues you tend to experience. Being that Zorin is based on Ubuntu LTS, it’s probably a similar experience to that. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS still uses the older PulseAudio as its default audio server as opposed to the newer PipeWire, which more distros are beginning to use these days (including Ubuntu since 22.10). It may depend which versions of which distros you are experiencing audio issues with and whether they use PulseAudio or PipeWire.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I learned to use Linux through Virtual Machine instead of installing it as a primary operating system. I'm using Zorin OS through Virtual Machine and I like it so far.
Glad to hear you’re liking it. Nothing wrong with using Linux in a VM; that’s actually how I exclusively used it for the first couple years before I personally decided to install it on my laptop at the time. Everyone has different uses for it and reasons for using what they do.
Best of luck on your Linux journey! I hope you continue to find my new content helpful going forward.
Can it run every kind of windows application or are there still some that aren't supported? Often now big games and popular programs have support or have alternatives but when I try to accomplish less popular stuff I struggle to accomplish them. Like installing a mod to a game or smaller less popular games. This looks great but I'm afraid I'm going to run into "Oops Wine can't run this"
WINE is always getting better and the majority of programs will work in it these days, but there are still some exceptions. If it’s Windows games that you’re interested in, then using Proton (a modified WINE for games) through Steam, Heroic (Epic Games launcher) or Lutris will probably do a better job.
For general Windows applications, you can try to install them through standard WINE (Windows App Support in Zorin) or use an app called Bottles which helps with installation of Windows apps in WINE.
I certainly can’t guarantee a perfect experience (modern Adobe Photoshop for example still doesn’t work) but there are more Windows apps that work these days than apps that don’t.
Perhaps you could install Zorin in a virtual machine on your Windows PC and try installing your Windows apps in WINE through that. It would let you test if the apps you need will work without affecting your existing Windows installation (unless it’s games; those won’t run well in a virtual machine).
@@PlanetLinuxChannel Thanks hopefully the programs mentioned will be able to install/run what I try to run. I can't install a virtual machine unfortunately because my Windows PC crashed and now can barely start up. Just trying to get the important stuff out before evacuation to this Linux distro
Ah I see. If you can boot it into a live Linux USB (Zorin would work fine) then in the file manager, you should be able to access the hard drive with your Windows files so you could copy any necessary stuff onto something else first.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I think I got the most important files safe but when I try to install it it says
"error: invalid magic number
error: you need to load the kernel first"
Is this because my SSD might be corrupt or am I doing something wrong?
Is that error happening during the installation or once you reboot after installation? Also, are you choosing the “Erase and install” option or doing some other partitioning?
Can you do a tutorial on grub fix via windows? Like if you do dualboot win/linux then deleted the linux partition via windows because you dont want it. When restarting it still goes to the old boot animation with linux.
I’ll have to look into it. Depending what I can figure out, I might be able to either do a tutorial video or include it in the upcoming 1,000 subscriber Q&A video. I’ll see what I can find about it.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel will look forward into it man.
I had this problem yesterday and found this tutorial helpful: th-cam.com/video/zjZ0DhZhdMM/w-d-xo.html
Hi, I am new linux user, and I was roami ng from distro to distro. Now I think that I found the right one.
Can I install graphic card rx 570 driver for ubuntu for Zorin?
Thank you so much for this great video!
Graphics drivers for AMD Radeon RX cards are typically built into the Linux kernel so any of their fairly common cards should work out-of-the-box. AMD does provide additional proprietary drivers if you need them for some reason, but in most cases, the in-built ones will work perfectly and you shouldn’t need to install an additional driver. Have you experience issues with your RX 570 on Linux?
Good luck on your Linux journey and I’m glad you enjoyed the video!
That's great! I am happy if I don't need to install graphic driver. I hadn't any issues.
Thanks a lot for your help and fast response!
You’re welcome. Hope you enjoy Linux / Zorin OS!
Is this linux distro good for steam gaming compared to Ubuntu?
I would say so. It should be at least as good, but probably a bit better as it includes utilities like WINE out-of-the-box. It’s nothing you couldn’t set up on Ubuntu, but it does have more of the things you’d need /want already installed and set up.
Hi, does zorin os 16.2 core has better performance than mint 21.1 xfce?
That would depend what you mean by better performance. It feels fairly snappy when navigating around the system, so long as you’re not trying to run it on low-end hardware (Zorin OS Lite would be better in that case). RAM usage will be a bit higher in Core (which uses GNOME) than anything using XFCE, but again, unless you’re on really old or low-end hardware, it shouldn’t be much of an issue.
Are there any particular performance issues you’re having with Mint XFCE?
@@PlanetLinuxChannel thanks for reply, om using mint 21 xfce, and im searching for something which might be even faster in working, or gaming, i was testing out nebora and pop os, but on idle my amd gpu had 60 celcius degree, and on mint i do have like 45
Probably becuase of graphical fancyness
I had good pc but looking for some lightweighr in any case system :)
Mint sometimes have some strange slowness
Regular Zorin Core probably won’t be more lightweight, but the Zorin Lite edition might be. You could also try MX Linux or Linux Lite, which are both fairly lightweight, but have quite a few nice features.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel thank you, ill take a look
Im using mint as well, on idle my graphics card has 28-30 degrees, before card swap i had same as you, check idle power consumption, on old card i had 10-12, on new im having 5-6W
I was testing out nobars, regata, pop, nothing is faster for gaming than mint xfce, but if you are looking for system to install and play right after it will be garuda gaming, will be testing out still but it has very nice performance in games, even better than mint
Does it have a functional support team if necessary? I tried to get support for the distribution i have now "Nobara project" and it was actually just a bunch of guys that had no idea of what was going on. Everyone says how amazing it is but in my experience it's the worst linux distro so far. It doesn't even support AppImage files which causes it to not be compatible with many linux programs.
You’d have a few options for support. Firstly, their help website is pretty comprehensive with nice guides for a lot of common setup and issues. Near the bottom of that page is a link to their community help forum which would mainly be other Zorin users answering questions, though Zorin team members do sometimes provide answers as well. Finally if you purchase Zorin Pro, it comes with complimentary installation support from the Zorin team. Not sure if they’d also be able to provide other additional support in that case.
help.zorin.com/
Zorin is brilliant.. better than any OS that is free... Zorin is so much like Mac OS and Windows... this is totally amazing..
I absolutely agree! And Zorin OS 17 just released with even more improvements! I just uploaded a video covering it if you’re interested. th-cam.com/video/5j3uI1tY8cA/w-d-xo.htmlsi=fwu7PBi9m5_GExC7
Very attractive o/s but one thing made me drop it pretty much straight away. It wouldn't connect to the net. Bit disappointing of course. I tried just about everything to fix it but alas, no go. I changed back to Ubuntu and it connected right away of course. Something weird was going on - I couldn't find it so maybe some clever computer whiz kid might have seen this in Zorin and be able to have a solution.
great video! and ah yes, comic sans. everyone's favorite. :')
I actually just watched a legitimately professional webinar yesterday (some big name investor guy that was doing presentations for us everyday folk to try and make big bucks) and all of his slides were in Comic Sans. From that point onward, I just couldn’t take him seriously! 😀
@@PlanetLinuxChannel 😂haha, no wayyy! the poor soul will lose more prospects if he keeps that up XD
So, who is behind Zorin ? It is easy to find who's involved in other distros, the good ones and the questionable ones, but is Zorin really trustworthy ?
( at least more trustworthy than google / microsoft ? )
Zorin was made by a company under the same name. It is completely open source with optional closed source parts like many distros. Take a look at the source code yourself if you’re so suspicious, Linux is so transparent it lets you do that unlike Google and Microsoft.
As @protocetid mentioned, the source code is openly available for anyone to audit. And many people have. It’s generally considered to be privacy-respecting and has no required telemetry or data collection (there is one toggle during installation that lets you choose whether or not to share anonymous information about the hardware you’re running Zorin on).
i m using linux mint for the first time... man! multimedia sucks! there...
i had it dual boot .. when i had to programming, i switched to linux & when i hav to watch tutorial, i had to switch windows....
is there any way to improve linux multimedia (watching video's...) experience? ready to change current distro...
That’s interesting; Linux Mint should be able to handle most videos fine. May I ask what kind of issues you’re having with videos / media?
@@PlanetLinuxChannel uh... you know, how is potPlayer..! the UI, performance, settings...
after using it on windows, i cant seems to find any closest media player for linux, which is quite good as potPlayer
@@PlanetLinuxChannel its not like, video doesnt play... (tho, if i remember correctly, i get lag while playing some videos...) ... its just linux media player is sooo dumb looking & not as smooth from potPlayer -windows
@@PlanetLinuxChannel i just want to know, one more thing 😁 plz help me to know, if u know anything about it ...
at first, used windows (more precisely, used cracked & modified windows version). then i kept hearing linux is way much better than windows especially for programming... so, i installed linux with my eye closed...
after passing some days with using linux, i cant seems to get any benefits from it... especially while programming... so, i online it.. some thing like "why linux is best for programmer?" --never got any ans. none could satisfy that question...
while using linux, im just questioning myself, why am i using linux anyway?😂
sorry for long story & subbed your lovely channel
Yeah, potPlayer is a pretty nice looking piece of software. I don’t know of anything on Linux that looks as good. Perhaps you could check out SMPlayer, though it admittedly doesn’t look quite as nice.
The GNOME Videos app looks okay, but isn’t the most feature-dense.
ow about Modicia OS
I’ll have to look into it. Thanks for the recommendation.
This seems like the Fisher Price version of Linux for Windows refugees and I love it. I can't stand using the terminal in Linux.
Haha, perhaps! But that’s exactly the kind of experience that Linux needs to be able to provide if it’s ever going to see large-scale desktop adoption.
Some people like the nitty gritty of the terminal and the power that it has, but a lot of users that are just looking for a Windows alternative that’s privacy-respecting or more resource efficient, or insert-reason-here, just want a system that is easy to use and works day in and day out.
Fortunately, Linux provides opportunities for both!
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I agree. I've been turned off by Linux before from other distros, mostly because I don't want to put in the work to learn a bunch of terminal commands. Zorin seems like it'd be very easy to get into as a lazy user. Perfect for me. Thank you for having a look at it.
Glad you found the video helpful! Linux Mint as another distro known for its ease of use and rarely needing the terminal. Not sure that it completely lives up to that reputation, and I personally don’t think it looks as nice as Zorin (though 21.1 did receive theme improvements), but it’s another option worth throwing out there just in case you ever decide Zorin isn’t quite the right fit.
My only gripe with ZorinOS is the updates. TOOOOOOO many updates, almost every day it tells me of more updates even though I tell it to only tell me every 2 weeks. Then if I choose NOT to stop what I am doing and install them it will literally lock me up and make all of the icons on my desktop disappear and from the taskbar. Forbid I have any important items open when that happens. Its just as bad as Windows 10 and 11 in that respect.
Windows 10 and 11 only release updates once a month, or twice if you opt to receive the preview patches. The only other updates you get are Windows Defender updates which is standard for any AV platform.
I’ve not personally experienced that with Zorin, but it has been quite a while since I’ve used it for any extended period of time.
Are you doing updates through the Software Updater app? (As opposed to the Software app centre)
how can i install kde on zorin thank you
I believe this guide for Ubuntu will apply to Zorin OS as well; though of course make sure you have any important data backed up before trying it, just in case something doesn’t work right.
linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-kde-plasma-desktop-on-ubuntu-20-04-focal-fossa-linux
@@PlanetLinuxChannel thank you
Who would dislike this video?
Good question! 😀
Zorin is solid with good features and well designed but its very old kernel
Yep, it really needs a new release! Zorin 16.2 is still based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, which is likely where the old kernel comes from. It’s also still GNOME 3 (.38 I believe). Zorin 17 (whenever it comes out) should bump a lot of this forward, but honestly it might be pretty outdated by the time that happens. We’ll just have to wait and see. Maybe not the best choice if you’re rocking really recent hardware.
I just installed KDE Plasma... it was horrible.
And I've had past KDE experience... a lot of it.
Still useless for anything but Firefox browsing.
After a few hours of just totally screwing things up, I went back to my rock solid predictable Windows 7 desktop.. which just works.
Downloading Zorin to try it next, but yeah considering Linux history of the past 20 years, no high hopes.
I don't think Linux developers totally underestimate just how good Windows 7 is... (hint it ain't great, but your OS is horrid by comparison) you find out really fast when you try to use WIndows 10 or 11 (completely unusable).
I’d definitely give Zorin a try. It doesn’t exactly have the latest versions of software, but I have found it to be pretty stable, and it is a pretty nice user interface.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel How I evaluate a product:
1. Does it enable a Dark Theme by default?
2. Can it be switched to a Dark Theme?
3. Are the Text/Icons/Pointers large and readable?
4. Can the Text / Icons / Mouse Pointer be changed to a very large size?
5. Does it maintain the Dark theme and large text/icons/mouse pointer througout all applications?
Zorin Score: 0 out of 5
Sorry to hear that it didn’t work well for you. As someone with a visual impairment myself, I can definitely relate regarding the excruciatingly bright theme. I did reply to the other comment of yours with some hopefully-helpful tips for setting some of those settings in Zorin.
Best of luck!
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I loathe Windows 10, but I just bought a copy 10 minutes ago ($50)... because I know even though I can't stand it, it at least can do a dark theme and you can in fact make the mouse pointer the size of a quarter... heck, you can even make it the size of a pack of cigarretes moving around on screen if you want. With Mouse Trails,
But gawd, I so loathe Windows 10.
I'm going to keep on trying to install Windows 7... and work my way through a few other linux distros nonetheless.
A whole lot of software fails in the Dark Themable department... it's not just OS's. WIndows installers, poorly written apps, RAMdrive software, old software. I opened VIrtualBox on KDE plasma earlier today and bam was greated by a blazing white window with a penguin in the corner, even though I was running a Dark Theme.
That's the problem with Linux... it's all written by a thousand amateur prorammers one of whome have an overall goal or look they are aiming for. There is no.. top down design. People try, and then they start stiching together distros with their favorite best apps from all over the places, none of which were designed to look and feel and work seemlessly together...
La... what you going to do.
It certainly is a frustrating situation. Zorin, and pretty much any distro that uses the GNOME desktop these days, does have a dark theme option (Super / Windows key then type Appearance and press Enter to go to the corresponding settings page). There is a fairly new framework called LibAdwaita that modern Linux apps can take advantage of which unifies theming and appearance of apps (especially those written for GNOME / in GTK), but as you mentioned, it’s a matter of getting all sorts of developers to jump on board and actually use it.
That said, I’m not so sure Linux distros are really that much worse than Windows. Windows 7 didn’t have an in-built dark theme, and even in Windows 10 / 11 where you can enable one, it only applies for specific built-in apps and a few third-party ones that choose to use the modern Windows frameworks. Anything else (including many of the apps built into Windows) still don’t respect the modern theming, much like the issue is on Linux.
Still, despite any justification I might try to give, I truly get that it’s straight up infuriating in either case. Work on this, and accessibility considerations in general, needs to be better!
Speaking of accessibility features, do you consider trying inverted colour features in cases where there may not be a consistent dark theming? Both Windows and Linux have it, though I suppose it could mess with how images look.
Can you take a look at MXlinux? ...... SUBSCRIBED
I definitely will! It’s been quite a while since I’ve checked it out. Thanks for the sub!
OMG this was awful. Visually impaired people can not read black text on a white background... for us, it would be like you trying to read black sharpie marker writing on a lit florescent lightbulb. It's like staring at the sun. I painfully barely made my way through all the installation screens searching for one word ont eh screen and holding my fingers into a slit shape with mye eys 1 inch from the screen, and was able to install it by chosing mostly defaults and searchign around for the Continue button. DARK THEME by default people!
After I installed and rebooted, I was then greeted by a blazing white theme by default. I then tried to find Settings in the faux START menu, which I pulled up... and trying to change the background to solid black, theme to Black, and mouse pointer to large with mouse trails on. So far, no success. The control panel is laid out different from KDE.
My verdict: VISUALLY IMPAIREED PERSON HOSTILE, UNUSABLE
I could not find Appearance tab in the control panel. There was no solid black background choice either. If it's like KDE, no way to turn on mouse pointer trails or make mouse pointerbigger.
In the end, I could not find the Shutdown button or even pull up a console to type "sudo shutdown -h now" to shutdown the system properly, and had to power it off to do the next distro install installation. I'm probably going to have to buy Windows 10 and just suffer with it, because I can't get Windows to run on my new Ryzen 7950x.
Final Zorin OS verdict score: TOTAL FAIL, with caveat:
It could be fixed if they would default to a Dark Theme throughout by default.
Sorry to hear about the experience! As a visually impaired person myself, I can certainly agree that the light theme is so bright!
I believe you can change the theme in the Zorin Appearance app. When you’re logged in, you can press the Super key (Windows key) to get a search box (along with any open windows). So once you press the Super key, you can just type “Zorin Appearance” and press Enter to open the app, then you should be able to see the dark theme tile option in that window.
To make the text size larger, you can again press the Super key then type “Accessibility” and press Enter. This will open the Accessibility settings panel which has an option for Large Text. Hopefully toggling this on will at least make it large enough to navigate around easier and adjust settings further.
As well, the shortcut for the terminal is usually Control-Alt-T (can’t remember if it’s actually set in Zorin or not).
Hope that might be helpful. If I may ask, how would Windows be any better? Other than being familiar with where the options are, aren’t the Windows 10 windows also very bright by default? (I suppose the start menu itself is dark by default.)
Video editing and streaming on Linux distro recommendations
The de facto standard for live streaming (and recording) video / screen on Linux is definitely OBS Studio. It might look slightly intimidating when you first open it, but you only have to use a few of the options and it’s actually quite quick and easy to set up. It’s also available on Windows and macOS if you’re running either of those before trying Linux.
I’ve also heard of an app called Restreamer for live streaming, but I’ve not used it and don’t know how good it is.
The video editing on Linux is slightly trickier. The most widely used one is definitely Kdenlive. It’s really capable with quite a lot of features and is a great choice, but it has a bit of a steep learning curve at first (though it’s probably worth it). Also, as it doesn’t currently support GPU acceleration, you’d want to enable proxy clips (lower-resolution previews) so that moving through the timeline and previewing playback is smooth.
Alternatively you could try DaVinci Resolve. I find it considerably easier to use and it has pretty much all the features you could need, even as a free version. Its main issue is that the Linux version is often quite unstable. There are ways of working around this, so don’t get too discouraged if the program gives you issues at first.
There are other more basic Linux video editors like ShotCut, Olive, OpenShot and Pitivi. These all cover the basics and one or multiple of them may suit your needs, though their stability can sometimes be inconsistent.
Hope this helps point you in the right direction!
@@PlanetLinuxChannel thanks u went into depths with that I appreciate I only do live content so everything's would just stay the same with obs studio that's good to know
Yep, OBS would probably be your best bet. When you run it the first time, it should ask if you want to set defaults designed for streaming.
@@PlanetLinuxChannel I'll see if the tik tok extension works still and all my plug ins work tonight
Hope everything you need works!
For over one year I had Zorin 16.1 Pro but after updating to Zorin 16.2 computer is much slower. Why?
That’s interesting; I’m pretty sure it’s based on the same Ubuntu version. Perhaps backing up your data and doing a fresh install would help?