I use popOS and am really enjoying it.
Glad to be a statistic
Don’t be so gloomy! You’re an individual number too! 😜
True that. There are many Toms, but only one newLinuxUserWindows11Vagabond_578428
Same.
Pretty sure 80% of them are just people distro hopping, we know the Linux community 😂
It’s because you can in Linux.
Maybe, but those 780k users have plenty of good reasons to choose Linux over Windows 11. It’s all about personal preference and what works best for them.
Wasn’t criticizing the switch. I’m all on Linux as well, it’s just that’s it’s probably a misleading number
I switched from Windows 10 to Mint. While there is a steep learning curve with basic things like adding an icons to the menu, I’m wishing I made the move earlier. There is a noticeable performance improvement with Stable Diffusion.
I’m just waiting till I can install SteamOS honestly. Love my steam deck, and wanted to turn my old win 10 PC into a Linux machine but has issues getting any distro loaded because I’m dumb and it’s old. Hoping that when they release SteamOS for the chumps I’ll be able to work it though probably will just be left holding an old win 10 pc lol.
Bazzite is basically that, with a foundation of Fedora Atomic instead of Arch, but otherwise it’s extremely similar, designed to be super easy. Even as a Linux nerd it was a breath of fresh air compared even to the simplicity of some other distros.
Garuda is Arch, and is also focused on being super easy, gaming focused, and performance tuned. It’s not immutable though.
You are the type thats bringing the Linux gaming forward. Support Steam because they are the pioneers, that other game developers are watching. I still am not a fan of steam heavy DRM dependency but that a me personal thing!
Haha same here! I’m holding off on upgrading too until SteamOS officially drops. My old PC has been a bit of a challenge though, hopefully it’ll be worth the wait!
Honestly, I wouldn’t wait for valve, they do things on their own time.
Bazzite is basically the exact same thing. There’s a few technical differences but they don’t really matter for a normal user
Fuh door uh!
Fuh door uh!
Fuh door uh!
Deb-Ian, Deb-Ian!
I think they broke up.
RIP Ian Murdock.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaa
Beeee Esss Dee!
uncomfortably close EYE YOOZ ARCH BEE TEE DUBS
HIGH KOOOOOOOOOOO
Gen II.
That “780,000 Windows users” number is just made up for the title as clickbait.
That number is never mentioned in the original blog post.
All they said is they have a million downloads and “over 78% of these downloads came from Windows”. At no fucking point did they imply that means 780k unique users. There’s no reason to assume that everyone who downloaded the ISO actually went on to install it.
They also want $48 for their Pro version which comes with a “professional-grade creative suite” consisting of… GIMP, Blender, Inkscape, Kdenlive, and… Audacity (?), going off the screenshots they show:
click to show
They’re shamelessly reselling free software as some sort of comprehensive package, and it’s not even their own distro. They’re just piggybacking on Ubuntu.
And their premium support only covers… installation?
click to show
But hey, they support this edition with updates until 2029!
click to show
Of course, pay no attention to the coincidence that the Ubuntu LTS version it’s based on also hits end-of-life around then:
click to show
So I’m not really sure what you’re actually getting out of this purchase besides some extra themes and some really formulaic desktop wallpapers, and a couple proprietary apps. They say they “contribute to upstream Open Source projects” but offer zero evidence; their site doesn’t even have any Github/Gitlab links.
Its rare to see someone with brain in here
Zorin pro was the main reason I never stuck with Zorin OS however while they heavily advertise that the price is for the software. I think the real cost comes with “installation support”.
For many first time users, having support help with an install is a necessity and they will pay for it. See Geek Squad as an excellent example.
Plus having a preconfigured Linux experience is good for these users.
Nice perspective. I had a wtf moment reading they charge for Gimp etc, but I imagine some casual PC users installing linux would rather pays for the convenience than troubleshoots.
I remember as a teen needing to learn basic console commands just so I could mount a flashdrive in Red Hat. The amount of troubleshooting is a real barrier for most new Linux users, getting things to work is often a multiple step process one must put together from fragments of old forum posts.
If I had a nickel for every time TomsHardware spreads misinformation, makes stuff up or did 0 research on the topic #Ryzen9700X3D I would be millionaire pretty soon.
Can we maybe ban them as a source from here?
While most users don’t even know their Windows is paid by them - as an OEM pre-install - I can see business persons being oblivious to a concept their workhorse can be just free and good. Zorin is probably targeting that market. Top managers don’t take personal responsibility to integrate some hippy socialist bullshit, they switch from one respectable enterprise solution to the other and can show checks. We can try and take a glance at this from a perspective of a complete corporate buffoon, and it starts to make sense.
I am conflicted about Zorin, they are selling something using free software… but somehow, maybe marketing a not sure… they are able to get people on Linux that never did before. So you know, seeing people ditching Windows for Linux might be the first step… maybe someone start with Zorin, get comfortable and jump to something else.
Are they getting people onto Linux, or are they absorbing people that would be switching anyway and taking advantage of those users by charging them for something they may not need? Hard to say which it is
You’re forgetting what “regular” people are like. /S
Thanks for clearing up the misinfo
I guarantee there are PLENTY of people jumping the commercial ship to try Linux of many flavors
I’m not saying there’s no people trying it, or that the actual number is negligible. I’m just saying I highly fucking doubt that 780,000 people have actually installed Zorin OS in the last month.
Love how you just completely skipped over the entire thrust of the comment and then churned out some blithe remark.
Eli5 zorin…
Zorin OS is a Linux distro. Linux distros are different Linux-based operating systems. Kinda comparable to how Samsung-Android looks and feels different than Pixel-Android or Amazon-Android (aka FireOS). All of these are distributions of the same operating system.
The same exists with Desktop Linux, but the distros differ more than the Android distros differ.
With that out of the way: Zorin OS is a Linux Distro that is focussed on people migrating from Windows. The user interface looks a lot like Windows, it’s setup with Wine (a tool that lets you run most Windows programs on Linux) out-of-the-box.
It’s a quite decent starting point for someone migrating from Windows to Linux and it’s a commonly recommended “beginners’ distro”.
I’ve never had much luck with Wine running Windows programs, unless the programs were ancient. Maybe I’m just unlucky?
At this point, any programs that won’t work in Wine either have a component that cannot be run in Linux (kernel level anti-cheat for example) or has a DRM/execution stack that enforces Windows use (ie Abobe.) Most of my Windows emulation is gaming, and I’ve managed to get Fitgirl installers and even cracks/updates to run through Wine and Proton. My opinion only: At this point any program that won’t run on Linux is intentional, either by design, or by neglect.
This is pretty accurate. Wine (and really Proton) have gotten very good recently. Most software that isn’t actively hostile to Linux users will work.
Yes, exactly. My issues are with the Adobe suite, Affinity and Microsoft Office.
Yup, Adobe and Microsoft def a no-go. Especially Outlook.
For MS, the o365 web apps work as fine as they do on windows. Outlook is nearly at parity with the windows app. (I think they’re slowly making the windows apps web under the hood)
Adobe has to be pre creativecloud
You can run a windows VM, then use remote-desktop but it completely defeats the purpose unless you’re just trying to edge into privacy.
Not Onenote, that is horrible online vs the 365 suite on the PC. The rest are fine though.
If you’re still dual booting, check out Winboat. It’s the uno reverse of WSL on MS. TBH Hearing good things about it. They are working on GPS passthroughs as well. Still in beta but it’s watch everyone is watching right now.
It really depends a lot on what programs you are running, what exact version of Wine/Proton/… you are running and how it’s configured.
Wine is finnicky, but it can totally also just be bad luck, depending on what you try to run. Wine on x86 works quite well for me. x64 has issues more frequently, and combining it with Box86 to run it on ARM is more miss than hit.
Also, Wine is advancing pretty fast, so stuff that didn’t work a while ago might work now.
There’s other options like wine-staging and wine-devel for newer programs, and also there’s paid options like CrossOver which can even be simpler to use than Wine.
If you want the latest Microsoft and Adobe software, you’re likely going to be out of luck, but, if you want the latest Microsoft software you’d probably stay on Windows anyway.
Can’t wait for the “FOSS enables the bad guys to download 2 marijuanas” headlines from MSM.
I’m far more bothered by them making Brave the built-in default browser, than I am by them charging for themes & tech support.
Zorin would t be my first choice. But happy to see those numbers.
I know some who went to Linux and a few who moved to Mac. But no one is seeing Win11 and saying “oh man, I gotta get in on that”.
I jumped in to the Win11 beta and really liked it, they finally got most of the control panel into the new settings architecture and I never once had to dig deep into things to adjust something small, a lot of stuff that took finagling just worked.
And now I fucking hate it. The release version is jammed so full of bullshit features and useless AI junk that it is an active hindrance to whatever I’m trying to do. And more and more stupid fucking bugs bubble up in to the desktop and never get addressed, all while I get pop up after pop up urging me to try some bullshit new feature.
I already had one foot into Linux with my desktop but kept this because it was a Surface and nice at some point, but my next buy has to be a Linux 2-in-1, I can’t deal with Microsoft’s horseshit any longer.
I do want to emphasize that for the moments that it was unadulterated by rent-seeking, the new Win11 actually was kinda great.
In case you weren’t aware there’s an ongoing project adding Surface hardware support to Linux kernel. It’s in a pretty mature state, with most of the features already implemented and working (here is a full breakdown per device). I’ve been using it on my SP6 for a few years with zero issues.
It might be worth a look until you get to buying new hardware.
Thank you for this. I haven’t figured out what to do with my Surface yet, but this sounds promising.
Kde is working really well on linux-surface. Had to change the OSK to maliit(?) but everything I need works. I haven’t tried to install the camera driver because I never needed it. Stylus works really well ootb. Use it with Krita. Screen rotation works great and I use it as an e-reader. I choose an easy arch distro because disk encryption works with the native keyboard although it has been some time since i tried a non rolling distro and other distros could have addressed the startup keyboard issues by now. 10/10 would recommend.
Posting from a Surface Go 2 running Debian Trixie with Gnome+Phosh. Everything except the webcam just works on the stock kernel (for webcam support you need the patched Surface kernel). Vanilla Gnome is fine, too, if you use a hardware keyboard. I run Phosh because the onsceen keyboard is much better than Gnome’s.
I finally committed to the switch last weekend. My desktop PC was the last holdout still on Windows in my fleet, because of Adobe Lightroom. I decided to just force myself to learn Darktable, and nuked the Win 11 install and replaced it with Fedora 43.
Fun side note, some of my games run way better than they did on Windows, despite not having native Linux builds. lol.
My bottles borked my battle.net install somehow so instead of tackling the issue I’ll put it off for months/years and continue dual booting
My condolences
you can just run battlenet through steam:
- add the installer as non-steam game
- set compatibility to proton experimental
- launch/install
- find the filepath for the battlenet .exe
- change the filepath for the target of the battlenet installer to the .exe instead
- never touch it again; it just works!
a tiny bit of effort, but only required once. everything afterwards just works!
This worked immediately for me. I did have to change the install path because it still thought I had a Z drive for some reason… I do want it to work not on steam but if I can play WoW on Linux in the interim I’m happy lol
everyone goes through that phase. logs often help a lot, and you will start to get a feel for what may be wrong like you did on windows. once some things become second nature you will stop needing windows altogether. meanwhile, friction means you are learning.
i usually favor lutris for gaming anyway, it’s better at keeping everything together and updated ime. bottles tends to lag behind a bit by default which is not ideal for games atm.
I tried Lutris before and it would constantly stop installing and freeze up… and when I let it set up in the default directory it will install and then when I launch bnet it doesn’t show any games at all… anddd when it inevitably decides to force quit out of bnet and I click stop on lutris I get “sequence item 0: expected str instance, int found” … also constantly slowing the fuck out of my mouse/computer… I think I fucked my install up when I initially set up mint… might just wipe and start over again…
huh. i don’t think you did anything wrong with mint.
did you try the flatpak or deb version of lutris? was it recent? old versions were hit and miss for me too.
Flatpak, I’m pretty sure that’s what the software manager installs right? I tried again today and it gave me the same shit. I do want to keep trying to get it to work though if you have any ideas!
I left Windows for Linux in the early 2010s. Windows was shit then, but this is a new level of shit. I don’t know how anyone does it. After discovering the freedom Linux can provide I could never go back to Microsoft.
did you try the ltsc version? i heard it comes without all these unnecessary “features” and feature updates.
I know some people who shoot and hunt their own venison. Some people moved over to butcher shops. But no one is finding roadkill and saying “oh man, I gotta get in on that”
I can think of one…
Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel?
Close. RFK Jr.
When I was a kid I visited my cousin in backwoods Missouri, and we heard on the radio that there was an uptick in leprosy because of people eating roadkill armadillo. It was a real wtf moment in my life
Shit. Is there a certain kind of roadkill that’s safer to eat?
Comparatively, carnivores are riskier, as they continuously collect parasites from the animals they eat, especially if they eat them not freshly killed.
Don’t know, and don’t care to find out. I only visited the backwoods, I certainly don’t live there
But no one is finding roadkill and saying “oh man, I gotta get in on that”
Fun fact, there was enough public outcry in '16 for the state of Washington to amend it’s laws and make it legal to harvest roadkill for food.
Of all the states, I wasn’t expecting Washington.
Alabama? Sure.
Mississippi? I can see that.
Georgia? Yeah, ok.
Washington? Of all the states, WASHINGTON??? Oh god damn…
I mean if you hit a deer with your car, why let all that venison go?
My uncle loves to tell a story from his youth about when he was driving his VW bug up in Maine back in the 70s. As he was winding through the woods on a back road, he struck and killed a rather large buck, which is honestly a fairly impressive feat for a 1970-something VW bug. As he’s standing there assessing the (thankfully minimal) damage to his car, a game warden pulls up and informs him that, in Maine, if you kill an animal while hunting, you’re legally required to haul carcass home with you under threat of jail time.
And so began his several-hour task of cramming a 6-point buck into the back seat of a 1970-something VW bug. As far as I remember, he was successful, too.
Oregon also has roadkill salvage permits available!
It’s actually not terribly uncommon for people to take roadkill if it’s fresh and in decent shape.
In my state (PA) you’re supposed to report it to the game commission within 24 hours, and you’re supposed to surrender the hide and antlers to them unless you pay for a separate permit.
In the UK it’s illegal to claim roadkill if you’re the one who struck the animal.
If you weren’t, it’s free game (unintentional pun, nice)
At first that didn’t make sense to me, but I now realise it’s to prevent someone purposely striking an animal just to take it.
Gotta make fresh roadkill, then it’s edible sure.
I have two win 11 licensed for older Dell computers. I shudder at the thought of ever needing them.
Serious question, I’m a basic linux user (commandline and shell scripting, crontab, python…) what would I see/feel as different if I switched to Zorin OS?
Edit from mint
Imo, the fact you know what crontab is indicates your a bit more than a ‘basic’ user. You can give yourself more credit than that ;).
Anyway, like the other commenter said, depends where your switching from but Zorin is pretty much making Linux as easy to use as possible. They even have a wrapper for bottles that makes installing windows apps with wine easier. I quite like it and would be what I’d suggest to someone who wants a general purpose computer. It’s not great for gaming though as they don’t use super up-to-date packages so performance is lacking. That being said, it looks great and makes things as easy as possible for noobies
If you feel comfortable in Mint, there’s not a lot of reason to switch to Zorin. Under the hood they are quite similar. Similar tools, both based on Ubuntu, all quite similar.
The main benefit of Zorin is that it looks and feels a lot like Windows, so it’s easier for someone switching from Windows. If you aren’t switching from Windows, no need to use Zorin.
Funny when I was a noob, I DEF stayed away from Distro’s that were like Window. I left MS for a reason & one of them was a ridged thene design. The Linux “noob” distros, are a FAD & are setting people up for failure. It’s not Windows and that’s the beauty of it. It’s something we deserve as a highly evolved technologically advanced society. Anything else is stagnant and holding us back as a species.
Not everyone is the same. You might have left Windows because you want to theme and style your desktop. That’s totally valid.
But there are other people who left for other reasons (hardware support, spying, cost, AI being forced onto them, Win11 design being too different, …). And for those people using a system that looks, feels and works similar to what they are used to can be very beneficial.
Not everyone is the same and what works for one person might not work for another and vice versa.
That’s not my only Reason. I’m a power user, gaming, p2p automated server. I use AI for coding, also BTW I use arch 💯 I just think coming to Linux, to have windows pc, is defeating the purpose of leaving. ALSO i love customizing too. but that the least!
This sounds similar to the debate surrounding meat substitutes. Most people don’t give up meat because they don’t like the taste of it, but because of animal suffering or the environmental impact. The same is likely true here. The problem isn’t the Windows UI, but Microsoft’s behavior as a company. For most people, the purpose of switching is likely to be things like greater freedom, privacy, independence, or a general rejection of proprietary software and big tech. Plus, there’s the large group of people that Microsoft is trying to force into throwing away their perfectly functional PCs. In very few cases are these users likely to think that they dislike Windows itself. If Zorin’s look and feel helps them achieve the switch, then that’s great.
This is it.
Same as a lot of people would be very happy with a perfect meat-free replica of a wagyu steak, a lot of people would be happy with an open-source, privacy-respecting Windows that runs on old hardware.
No
theyre fairly similar as far as i can tell. they both use gnome-terminal so you wouldnt notice any difference there.
mint seems more like a windows 7 style desktop, as in its more compact and meant to be used with a keyboard and mouse. zorin is more like windows 11 where there is more space around everything, which is ideal if you are also using a touchscreen some of the time
im definitely more of a zorin fan anyway. i have it installed on 2 computers, and i have mint on an old computer that i never use, just cos
Thanks!
As an old XP-liker I’ll probably stay on Mint then 😁
Edit from mint
Not much,
From what OS, and for which activities?
Generally, I would advise vibe checking with a Ventoy USB and a live .iso. See if you find your marks, and can do basic stuff. Ventoy will allow you to try different distros in relatively quick succession
I’m an idiot, from Mint.
I am a macOS user for work and had windows mostly for games on my personal computer, when I got a new laptop last year it came with win 11… it was so annoying to need to skip literally ads for Microsoft services… that even being my “leisure” computer… I spent the time getting Linux Mint, deal with Nvidia drivers on Linux just to have steam there
The games I am playing recently are working great on Linux and my computer feels faster now.
This particular laptop had a problem with WiFi drivers and Nvidia drivers, but getting past this first setup, I must say Linux Destop is easier and fast to use.
Is that 780k only to Zorin, or to all of Linux?
Only to Zorin
This can only be good for Zorin OS.
780k should be enough for everyone.
Correcting the myth: Zorin never actually said that
