I think this is my first Linux Distro (mini) review ever. But after watching a Zorin 16 review on the Youtube channel, ‘Explaining Computers’, which handed out a solid ‘RECOMMENDED!!!’, and seeing the ‘Distrowatch’ internet site giving it a 8.5 out of 10 rating, I felt compelled to post, if only to blow off steam.
Zorin is actually a commercial package, the developer asking £39 Sterling for the 'Professional' version. The 'Core' version I'm commenting on is available free-of-charge, and according to the Explaining Computers review, is essentially the same as the Pro version, minus some installed (though freely available for download) software packages and User-support from Zorin. So, yes, I’ve installed Zorin, mainly out of curiosity, based on the overly positive review by ‘Explaining Computers’. In fact, I'm typing this from Zorin, using the excellent Libre Office that’s provided. I remember, back in the 90’s, paying for my first introduction to Linux – Suse Linux, at around £30 – and feeling slightly embarrassed for the community at the word-processing package that was supplied. It worked ok, it was just that the user-interface was well below par when compared to the M$ Word offering at the time. But that was the past, Libre Office is a well-polished piece of software that is a pleasure to use.
And apart from that one positive point, it’s going to be all down-hill from here! Wait, I’ll make it two – I was really impressed at how fast Zorin ‘can’ close down the computer – I emphasise ‘can’ for a reason - 1st time it switched off the computer really rapidly, next shutting-down, the system just hung and I had to hit the ‘Reset’ button, so there’s that...
Anyway, after first backing up my prized Deepin 20 installation using Terabyte, I installed Zorin over it, on the partition where it resides. I did this ‘cos I had initially tried installing it on my old laptop – Dell M1210, 2006 vintage, ‘only’ 4GB (3.2 usable) of RAM etc. - but that ended in failure, for the same reason I’m sure I’ve commented on here previously. You see, a ‘regression’ (sic) introduced into the Linux kernel years ago (shortly after Mint 17.3’s debut) which has never been rectified, results in kernels newer than 2.6.32.74 (Mint 17.3) failing to even detect the SSD in use. Long story...
The Zorin installation is on a AMD 5350-based computer, so definitely not what you’d call a powerhouse – yet it’s the best I’ve got! It’s one plus is that it has 8GB RAM (7.2 usable), so no memory issues, which is just as well.
So after just a couple hours using Zorin (though ‘enduring’ seems more apt), it's time to cite its shortcomings.
1: It’s got possibly the worst boot-screen I’ve ever seen – all black & white, with an overly-large font – looks like something you’d have seen running on a ‘286 in the 80’s.
2: Out of the gate, it uses at least 900MB of RAM, with a ‘new-to-me’ 600MB+ of ‘Cache’ memory also in use. Why not just say it needs 1.5GB just to boot and be done with it!
3: Although it seems to recognise my hardware, it fails to set the max screen resolution – the max it provides is 1024 x 768, my old monitor is capable of 1360 x 768. Deepin sets it properly, Zorin should too!
4: It doesn’t detect the integrated Bluetooth of my 7260AC wireless card. In fairness neither does Deepin. It’s a disgrace that cards of this popularity, which work (BT included) fine on EOL platforms such as Mint 17.3, no longer do on so-called ‘improved’ Linux kernels.
5: Even an external ‘universal’ Bluetooth dongle doesn’t work! It detects it, will with difficulty 'pair' with my BT headset, but that’s as far as I can get. The installed BT s/w, that’s part of Gnome 3.xx is abysmal, and always has been. Deepin’s heavily based on Gnome 3.xx so suffers similarly. That’s the reason my first act whenever I’m confronted with Gnome 3.xx is to install Blueman. Works well with Deepin, can’t get it to work at all with Zorin – a first! Installs fine. With BT disabled, Blueman’s icon is visible. Click it, select ‘Enable BT’ and the icon disappears from the taskbar! Try getting it to show itself by running it from the programs Menu also fails, periodically throwing up a pop-up, explaining that the connection to Bluez failed, and therefore it cannot continue! Bloody infuriating!!!
6: The Software manager UI sucks. It’s got the same spartan appearance you see at boot-time – all B&W, depressing as hell.
And the above is just after 2 hours of (ab)use. I’m afraid of what I’d discover with extended use. Believe it or not, I’m not even having a go at Zorin here. The underlying problems are caused by crap like Gnome 3.xx. I recall the (justified) backlash to it when it first came out, also the Developers wildly optimistic ‘Roadmap’ – they were supposed to have version 4 up & running 2014-2016 if memory serves. Yet here we are, 2022 on the horizon, still 3.xx and it still sucks! The fact that these clowns can’t provide an even usable BT solution this far down the line really baffles me though! One of the biggest complaints way back when was their insistence in ‘dumbing-down’ the UI. Well, 10+ years later, nothing has changed. The BT configurability that's provided is almost non-existent, and providing an unusable BT experience, for me anyway.
The fact that Gnome 3.xx is the future of Linux doesn’t bode well for Linux. But we're stuck with it, it seems. On the upside, Deepin Linux is in fact based on Gnome 3.xx though heavily modified – thank the Lord – but as they say, a pig with lipstick is still a pig. And despite the almost apologetic tone from reviewers for daring to say something favourable about a Chinese Linux distro, Deepin is thee most polished Linux OS out there, for quite a while - if not, since forever - the pig it's built on of course, not withstanding!
Summing up. I’m sick & tired of superficial ‘reviews’ such as are being supplied by the likes of ‘Explaining Computers’ and Distrowatch. They are little more than a Bells & Whistles summation, with little or no real-world review of the OS’s provided features being done. Distrowatch I get, has to remain positive about the state of Linux, come what may, it’s their bread & butter after all. Then there’s the kernel developers. Bugs are introduced that will more likely than not, EVER be fixed. The affected user is left with little choice but to suck it up. Despite this, the number of ‘new’ Linux distros being released doesn’t seem to be abating, despite 90% of them offering nothing on what’s already available. Cynical old me is beginning to conclude most are doing it for the money – in the form of donations – that successful distros tend to bring in.
In conclusion, I'm not impressed with Zorin and it definitely doesn't warrant paying £39 for it, and that's excluding VAT as well! By all means, install it and check it out, or alternatively, try it out online here - I wish I had!!! I may play with the installed version a bit more, given the effort I've already put into getting it up & running, but its days are numbered.
Addendum.
True to my word, or NOT, as in this instance, I still have Zorin installed, on not one, but two computers. Not an endorsement by any means either! I had spent so much time trying to get it working properly on my 'good' machine (AMD 5350) that I figured, what was there to lose trying it on my mini-itx Intel Atom quad-core pc - only more time, as it turned out!
The Intel pc also has just 2Gig of memory, so I expected that Zorin would refuse to install, not, as it happens. Neither does it boot successfully - the current Linux kernel just doesn't like the integrated Nvidia graphics that it finds, refusing to start Xorg. After a huge amount of time, I discovered that if I booted in recovery-mode, dropped to the root-terminal and tried starting X manually, it still threw up the same 'refresh-rate' error, but would eventually start X-server. Once up, I then found that I could switch over to Wayland, with which, the problem disappeared.
Despite this 'success', Zorin proved effectively unusable with 2Gig of ram. Not a shocker given that the Gnome 3.xx garbage still grabs most of the memory anyway - I had been curious though to see if Gnome, on seeing how little memory was available (only 1.73Gig after the Bios has had its nibble) would curtail its voracious appetite somewhat - no such luck! Load an instance of Firefox, and things grind to a halt and the system locks up. So yeah, unusable.
Ever indefatigable, I then decided to see if Zorin Lite would work on the 2Gig machine. This is in effect Zorin 15. Things didn't start well - the very same Nvidia graphics bug exists with the Lite version! I also have to go through the same rigamarole to get to boot as root, sans Wayland however, so not a usable solution long-term. Once achieved, I was treated to a user-interface that is really spartan in appearance. Yet despite the 'Lite' moniker, Gnome still insists in gobbling up well over 1Gig of the available ram. The only plus was that the system didn't hang when I then ran Firefox.
Having had my fill of Zorin Lite, I wiped it from existence by restoring the Zorin 16 backup (via Terabyte) that I had made, over it, then installed Zorin 16 on my AMD 5350 machine instead - at least here Gnome 3.xx would have 8Gig to play with.
Different machine, different problems, though thankfully not graphics-related. Here my memory constraints are SSD-related, having just a puny 120Gigs to play with. I was forced to split the partition occupied by Deepin Linux, but in the knowledge that thanks to Terabyte, reverting back to how things were, wouldn't be an issue if/when Zorin proved more trouble than it was worth.
And that is pretty much where it stands. Zorin 16 runs ok on the AMD setup. Since this is the 'Core' version of a commercial offering, there are some limitations, and one of those is the number of UI setups that are available. Of those that are, none contain a 'Clear desktop' method - this is unacceptable. The other thing that really rubs me the wrong way concerns Wine. While Zorin offers "Windows support", the word "Wine" is never mentioned. So, despite the entirety of this "Windows support" being provided by the Wine Project, those good people never seem to be outwardly given any credit by the Zorin developer. This fact is exacerbated after you have manually installed Wine and tried running a M$ program - Zorin interjects, each and every time, with a pop-up, warning you that you are about to run a Windoze program (Duh!) and do you wish to continue. Again, the backbone of all of this functionality is Wine-based, yet not a mention of this, as far as Zorin is concerned. Yep, it grinds my gears.
As mentioned, Deepin 20 is also built on Gnome 3.xx. Therefore, I challenge anyone to compare & contrast the two operating systems. IMO, Deepin wins hands-down in almost every category.
One thing I will add in conclusion. Given the appalling performance issues I've experienced with Zorin on the 2gig Intel system, as well as having recently become curious at how good Cloud-based OCR'ing has become, I downloaded & installed Windows 8.1 (which 'UI-Path' lists as a pre-requisite) onto it. I had never played with Windows 8.x before, so the fact that it even installed onto such a low-spec, 2008-era machine, was a surprise. Even more so that I can also browse the i-net without issues. The fact that UI-Path (a 500Meg download) installs & runs perfectly, albeit very slowly, even with a concurrent instance of Firefox, is amazing. I have in fact, just ordered from Amazon, a 2Gig of DDR2 ram-stick for all of £6 Sterling, in the hope that whatever remains after being BIOS-SODIMM'ised may facilitate a worthwhile speed-boost! Contrast this with the fact that I can barely get Zorin to run on the same hardware...
Methinks I may have pre-judged Windows 8.x a mite harshly - a late realisation I know! But I do hate all of those stupid menu-items, as well as that awful M$ Store you need to register with to even install software. I've actually tried 3 time thus far to register, only to be told right at the end of the registration process, that it failed and to try again later - Grrrr. To my credit, I did download & install Windows 10 at one time, for a look & feel. I wasn't impressed. It appears that Windows 8.1 is quite a benign OS in comparison.
