More than other distros, Zorin markets (and has marketed) itself as Windows-like, which probably elevates it in search rankings and LLM queries for people looking for a distro that more closely mirrors what they’re familiar with.
People really, really want a “Windows, but just the good parts” with as little deviation and required learning as possible in terms of desktop experience. A distro with a DE that nearly perfectly replicates “greatest hits” Windows versions (2K/XP/7/10) would probably be doing serious numbers right now if it existed.
Kinda. Lindows didn't resemble Windows as closely as its name might suggest and played with fire with its naming. Ideally this new distro would have a custom built DE made to be as close as possible visually and functionally, yet legally distinct (which a skilled designer can easily pull off) and would not tie the branding to Microsoft or Windows in any way.
> A distro with a DE that nearly perfectly replicates “greatest hits” Windows versions (2K/XP/7/10) would probably be doing serious numbers right now if it existed.
"Zorin Look Changer" used to "let you select from Windows 7, XP, Vista, Ubuntu Unity, Mac OS X or GNOME 2" themes, whilst newer versions want you to pay nearly $50 for the privilege (although they have significantly reduced their offerings, with their "Windows Classic" theme just being their "Windows-list like" theme with a slightly different start menu).
I have never used Zorin or its theme changer, but I strongly doubt it's much better than what can be accomplished by installing a third party theme, which are never that good and only resemble the mimicked operating systems in the broadest of strokes.
Shrug? Our experiences have been totally different then.
I bought an older version of Zorin, probably 15 or 16, to review for a blog, and I was totally impressed with the consistency of the theming.
To each their own, but Zorin is a cheap on-ramp for people coming from older Windows/Mac and looking for a somewhat apples-to-apples experience of Windows or Mac, with actual updates and not a bunch of ads or telemetry.
The consistency of the theming isn’t the issue, it’s that it’s just theming (unless I’m just misunderstanding). KDE or GNOME with an XP theme applied settings toggled still acts like KDE or GNOME rather than acting like XP. The resemblance is skin-deep.
Good theming is great to have, but what’s more important is that the user’s prior experience and muscle memory still applies, e.g. the task manager can be summoned in the same ways, settings panels are structured similarly (and aren’t either overflowing or too stripped down like KDE and GNOME, respectively), key shortcuts are the same with no caveats, etc.
Probably like MX Linux, which has, for some reason, topped the Distrowatch popularity list for years in front of Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Debian. Strangely enough, CachyOS seems to have adopted the same strategy and it's now first place on that site.
I've been using Linux since 2001, and I honestly I find it funny how these niche flashy distros are popular with the new generations. Probably because newbies follow the screenshots and /r/unixporn posts, instead of caring about support, mind share and governance. Except Arch, because it's both a really good distro and a symbol for cool h4x0r edgelords, so it's where everybody seems to land after playing with the niche distros like Zorin until they inevitably become unsupported.
Rock-solid distros like Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora don't have that "cool" factor so noobs don't even consider them, even though under the hood it's all the same, and on day 2 you just want something that works, rather than something that looks good on a Reddit post.
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You know Linux has gone mainstream when baby's first distro Zorin has a privacy policy and terms of service page, as it's published by a for-profit company.
I'm going to have to tap the sign for distrowatch not being a measure of popularity: https://blog.popey.com/2021/01/distrowatch-is-not-a-measure-... A very small number of linux users have ever even heard of distrowatch, much less ever visited it, it's totally irrelevant for anything other than news about distros, which again only a tiny portion of people care about.
But it is amusing when I hear about distros that are "doing numbers" and it's the first I've heard of them. I don't really care about how many downloads, though, what's more interesting is weekly or monthly active users based on unique IP hits to update servers. (Some distros track and publish this.) Recently Bazzite, a distro targeting gamers, hit 31.6k weekly active users, not bad for something only a couple years old. (Over 2 years ago, Ubuntu Desktop was at 6 million monthly active users.)
Smaller distros have more incentive to boost their perceived popularity -- as a Gentoo user I don't really care so much about popularity (and I'm happy to see more Linux adoption in general regardless of distro) but about longevity. But I guess props to Zorin, they've apparently been around as an Ubuntu derivative since 2009 despite this being the first I've heard of them. Yet only two years ago did they get the ability to dist-upgrade, so I wonder wtf they were doing for the prior years: https://blog.zorin.com/2023/07/27/zorin-os-16.3-is-released/
I don't trust Distrowatch's popularity list. I have thought for years it was probably gamed.
There are constantly distros in that top ten list that aren't in other top ten lists like mentions of reddit, mention on Twitter, Google searches for "linux distro", etc.
Distros like Debian and Ubuntu also suffer from issues with compatibility with newer hardware due to their older kernels. This is part of why distros based on Fedora and Fedora Atomic (such as Nobara and Bazzite, respectively) have seen popularity.
I have tried Debian, but I found that the software on the main version was out-of-date, and the testing version eventually broke during an update (which is when I abandoned it.) It's not something I'd recommend to a new Linux user.
The question is, do you really need the newer versions? If so, maybe check availability via backports or extrepo.
From my perspective a solid OS that stays out of my way most of the time outweighs the slight disadvantage of working with older software versions. YMMV.
Also, gamers at least want the latest drivers. Not the ones from three weeks ago. The latest ones. That's why everyone is recommending Arch-based distros for that purpose. I'm currently on Pop, and waiting months for Mesa updates is no fun.
I find Fedora hits a nice sweet spot between compatibility/updates and random breakage, especially since they backport KDE versions along with kernels.
Stable with back ports works well for me. I have not upgraded to Trixie yet and have 6.12, which handles dev work, Steam, and llama.cpp (ROCm) without issue.
The distrowatch rankings are based on page views to the distros section on the site. So the distros that lead the rankings tend to be moderately popular distros that link to that page on their site.
The problem is Gnome have really committed themselves to screwing up UI paradigms.
I'd be much less happy with Linux if Cinnamon DE didn't exist because that's essentially a Windows like experience without the BS.
Conversely the default Gnome desktop is awful IMO.
Taskbar, start button and menus all have decades of proven effectiveness, no one needed to mess with them just get the details right (e.g. fonts and interactions).
You know what is proven effective? Not needing to reach for a mouse to interact with taskbar, start button and menus. GNOME is extremely effective as long as you aren't a clicker. If you want to stick to a 30 year old desktop metaphor that's on you but the rest of us have moved on.
I often see people praising gnome for it's keyboard efficiency but they are not even 10% as good as macos.
If they cared so much, they would have keyboard shortcut for everything, in every app, with the top bar displaying menu and every shortcut attributed to it, just like macos.
Instead you can use the keyboard to switch an app, close it and so on but once you are working inside, you immediately need to take your mouse. What's the point ? It saves 1 second and confuse lot of beginners.
I'm not sure what you mean - pretty much every modern GNOME application has keyboard shortcuts. In fact they use a consistent keyboard shortcut to bring up the screen that shows all the keyboard shortcuts: ctrl+?
I like the gnome paradigm. The gnome implementation is bad though. I was promised that xwayland would be the bridge to a glorious future yet stuff like pointer confinement just doesn’t work and their implementation of refresh rate doesn’t play nicely with vscode. So, the reality is I still use KDE even if it’s not quite as visionary.
I’ll echo the other commenters who are praising Gnome. It is pretty keyboard-centric. Once you’re used to it, it’s quite nice. I’ve moved on to Niri, and can’t imagine going back to a floating window manager, but between Windows, macOS, and Gnome, I prefer Gnome hands down.
The marketing of it as "looks and feels like Windows 11!" is probably the biggest hook, if one can assume the majority of the 780k are non-powerusers who are wary about the end of Windows 10's support, and getting pwned on the Internet...
I have to do tech support for grandma. Every few years, her Windows laptop gets so slow that we get her a new one. This time I will test out a switch to Linux instead of buying a new computer. Zorin is the most attractive option because it's the least strange.
Because usually it works, the out of the box deb + snap + flatpak, polished experience cozy look with some presets to minimice friction, + ubuntu LTS its a nice pack.
I wonder how much of a bump other distros have seen in the same period.