Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Website: https://zorin.com/os/
Price: $39 USD
Blurb: “Zorin OS is the alternative to Windows and macOS designed to make your computer faster, more powerful, secure, and privacy-respecting.“
After having a really bad experience with the free version of Zorin OS 16, I thought I should give the pro version a go.
There are no “informationals” whilst installing, so the install proceeded quite quickly.
A bit worrying was that the installer did not respect my options, choosing not to install updates whilst installing, or taking part in the “census”, it still reached out to the internet and did some stuff. :( The second time, I disconnected the cable and watched it get stuck in loops as it tried to call home. This kind of behaviour is NOT on. I don’t care where it was connecting to, I made it clear not to. (Privacy respecting, my Tuchus!).
Looking around the install, I noticed that there was a system folder (/var/lib/flatpak) taking up a lot of space. This was, to my mind, the secret sauce folder. It housed Flatpaks of Gnome and KDE, also some applications for them (the largest folder in my installation).
So let us talk about the main feature of the OS, the layout chooser. All the layouts, except whatever this is… worked out of the box.
The left hand menu, be it plank or docky or whatever, is missing. Though my screen is a crappy 1366×768, I could not adjust some of the window sizes, like the appearance window seen here.
As you can see (right), choosing orange in light mode gave me orange, but choosing orange in dark mode netted me a muted salmon… and also a weird overlay like a night light, on both light and dark.
All of the “layouts” are re-skins of Gnome (not XFCE like the free version), so I’m not sure where the KDE flatpak fits in. The only reason I can see for this is there are a few KDE applications installed, like KdenLive and Krita, by default, though they are flatpaks too, meaning I’m left scratching my beard again. For all the applications installed, it did not have a decent top installed, atop, btop, htop – only plain top, nor inxi or neofetch, but things like FreeCAD and LibreCAD, both. This makes it feel less curated and more like “let’s throw things against the wall and see what sticks”; even default Firefox just comes with a modified home page, but all the crap you don’t want as a Linux user. (Clearly, the targeted demographic here is Windows ‘converts’… XD). There were some nice touches, like being able to right click-the taskbar to find the layouts application or open the system monitor.
If you have a modern computer, Zorin actually runs reasonably well, unless you plan on opening the fonts application – then… you wait. Even opening it sequentially… you wait. It may be because they have lots of spaghetti fonts installed. There were also nice fonts installed as well. I didn’t check to see if the fonts application was a Flatpak too, but the system relies heavily on Flatpaks, I saw seventy (70) out of the box.
The “Kooha” application also did not launch for me, but it was an application I was not familiar with, so it was neither here nor there.
At rest, Zorin actually used a lot less memory than expected, and when the dust settled, it used less hard drive space too. Though it settled at 19GB, I could not install it on a 30GB SSD, it would run out of space and give warnings about 107MB of space remaining before crashing and rebooting the system. Checking the website, I saw that 40GB was needed for Pro. You need to be aware of this, or your installation experience will put you off Zorin.
Snap, snap or snap?
The software application was filled to the brim with software, though with some software sources being Zorin only. (I am assuming these are deb files compiled on and by Zorin themselves.) Some were not labelled, and I assumed these to be plain .deb-files, but they were Flatpaks, so I’d say there was still a bit of work to be done. The software centre does give you the option of installing different versions of software, but sometimes there are no real choices at all. I did appreciate the choice of office during the installation process, but if you are going to do that, you need to give them all a fair chance, no?
Being spoiled by Voyager Linux, I found it mildly annoying that I could not turn off my trackpad at will, so I do not touch it whilst typing, but I saw no such option in the mouse settings. Nor did I easily see where to change the default mouse pointer. On a white (light) theme you have a black pointer, and on a black (dark) theme you have a black pointer, not ideal. This could just be a Gnome thing, but one would think that this is one of the basic things you need, especially since corner tapping the trackpad is not a thing in most Linux distributions. (Tuxedo has it).
There is a selection of backgrounds that should appeal to most people included, and not mimicking Apple is a breath of fresh air. I realise most Linux users will theme immediately, but the distro is aimed at Windows converts, who are still sheep at first.
Overall the distro behaves quite well, though there are a few annoyances that need attention. If you are a Gnome fan, you should feel right at home. It may not feel as polished as other Gnome distributions that have put a lot of effort in, but it is standard fare meant to ease Windows users, not so much on the Mac front. The Zorin developers are putting effort in, so if you are able to support them, do so please.