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.
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 i am 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.
You’re forgetting what “regular” people are like. /S
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
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.
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 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
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.
Even if most of those trying it out eventually go back to Windows, this is still great for Linux!
Bruh ain’t no way people are choosing Zorin OS over all the available options.
If this is a result of people searching “best windows like distro”, they’re profiting off of a windows theme for GNOME, not even a full DE.
You can achieve the same thing with zero effort on any distro because DEs and themes aren’t tied to a distro.
You can achieve the same thing with zero effort on any distro because DEs and themes aren’t tied to a distro
No, YOU can. But for the average Windows user this is far from “zero effort”. Just the fact that Zorin OS will automatically run Windows executables through wine without the user having to set it up is a huge deal for people coming from Windows who want their PC to “just work” without fiddling around
Bringo. I started trying to learn how computers compute in my 40’s, after using them essentially since childhood. Still a dumbfuck. There is a huge class of users who are genuinely interested in… Having a computer - they are neat. The percentage of those people who also want to not be product-fucked on the regular by unimaginably powerful companies is pretty substantial.
It’s odd to look at Linux and open source communities that shame others, and diminish the possible entry point of a user hoping to escape the purgatory of Microsoft’s/apple etc. whims. What’s the goal? Many people are stupid; I’m pretty stupid. Help us more smarter.
What are some experiments I can do to learn grep a little? How do I internalize the file system in this OS better? How do I know I fucked something up, rather than found a loose nut in the software?
Rtfm. Hahah cheers
Same. I am one of those recent Zorin OS 18 users, and even this entry level distro meant stuff like changing BIOS settings, finding and figuring out how to get a Nvidia driver working etc.
Anyway, as for your question what you can do to increase understanding: I am now using www.Labex.io linux tutorial to get familiar with terminal commands.
Maybe further down the road this will lead me to a different distro, this one got me started and saved a perfectly fine running PC from the scrapyard :-)
You’re bang on. Or at least described my exact situation. Biggest issue was having windows 11 on my new machine by default. Been thinking about making the switch for a while, but don’t want to take the time and effort to learn a whole new hobby. Between the forced AI in win 11 and the posts about Zorin today it pushed me into looking into it. I’m going to do the free one after the holiday. If it’s cool I’ll upgrade to the pro. Not that I super need it, but it’d be exciting to have all the extra software. Plus if it’s that good I’m happy to support them.
From another comment in this thread, Zorin is basically Ubuntu with a theme for the desktop environment. And the pro sells you a bunch of free software. May I recommend something like Fedora instead? It’s also easy to use (or is supposed to be - I only use it on my laptop for school), and is more widely known and accepted by the open source community from what I can tell. Every time I hear about Zorin it’s bad (or at most neutral) haha
You know, all I really want is to have a basic windows interface that I can play games (Steam) and maybe email? The programs look fun, but I probably wouldn’t really use them anyway. One day it’d be neat to know more and tweak, just too busy now. If I’m understanding correctly I can just load these up and dual boot to test them out? And most are free? So I guess it’s just test and see.
You can read about the filesystem here https://linuxlap.com/linux-tips/linux-file-system-structure/. At home, I rarely go outside my home directory. Outside the usual folders in /home/user (~) like Documents, Downloads, etc., I mostly find myself in ~/.config and ~/.local/share looking for files that desktop programs store. Or for whacky programs like the email client Evolution, you can find the entirety of your IMAP emails in ~/.cache and have to redownload all your emails with a new PC because who backs up their cache folder? (Or angrily switch back to Thunderbird and never use Evolution again.)
At work with proprietary software to support, it’s at /opt.
You can check where programs are installed with which, ex. “which firefox”. Flatpaks are stored in different directories and ‘which’ won’t find them. Better to manage those with warehouse and flatseal than mess with the files directly.
Yeah except I have never seen anyone actually suggest Zorin OS for this purpose due to its controversial pro edition.
There are other distros that achieve the same thing. My point is that Zorin is making money off of something I could do with zero effort, which implies its not even worth making a pay to use distro when one of the inherent benefits of linux is that its free.
I could understand if Zorin provided some groundbreaking software like Crossover, which for a long time had some serious advantages over wine and proton (yes I know irony that all are based on wine). But as other people have pointed out, most of this OS is just a reskin + preinstalled app combo. Might as well just use Nobara, which GE made in his spare time with some lazy scripts for Fedora.
marketing is important. more important than a good product even.
Zorin is the best distro when you come from Windows. It works almost similarly so it’s easy to grasp for those who don’t want to tinker / learn a new DE.
My machine was once VERY capable. It’s not a top of the line gaming box but it’s still capable and shows no signs of crapping out yet. Can’t run windows 11 but it’s not worth throwing away my computer over.
Same boat, my computer is basically the computer my wife built probably about 12 years ago before we got together, it was pretty beefy for its time. I basically stuck her old components in a new box (and also stuck a newer graphics card in it because I got a really good deal on a used 2060)
Still manages to run most games out there on acceptable (to me) settings.
Made the switch to Linux about a week ago, no major issues, some things are arguably running better now. It’s not without its hiccups but so far things have gone pretty smoothly.
EDIT: went with Mint over Zorin though.
I’ve got an Intel 6900K 8-core X99 system. Also not compatible with W11, but serving me well.
The issue is even if I wanted to upgrade, that market segment is effectively dead; X299 and X399 (AMD) were the last real HEDT platforms. The only thing now is workstation tier boards, which are about $1K and processors to match
I’ve been using a PC with C2D till it died. And I’m still having thoughts of checking whether it’s solvable with a bit of soldering, perhaps replacing power.
It’s enough for music, text editing, a little bit of web browsing and old games. Old games here includes a lot of goodness, but even World of Tanks worked under Wine on it back when I used it. Slow, but playable (when you have friends and it’s a social event, alone kinda sad).
My desktop (that runs guix) is from 2009. At the time I built it for gaming. In the last couple years I upgraded the ram to 16 gig and replaced the graphics card (old one died), no other mods made. Now I use it for much more mundane stuff and it’s still completely usable.
Can’t wait for the “FOSS enables the bad guys to download 2 marijuanas” headlines from MSM.
Pff, amateurs. I can download 8 marijuanas simultaneously.
Dude, you have a serious problem, man. That’s way too much marijuanas.
I can haz a torrent of marijuanas.
My cousin downloaded Linux and died from injecting 3 Marijuana’s at once.
It was Arch btw.
I’m far more bothered by them making Brave the built-in default browser, than I am by them charging for themes & tech support.
Charging for themes and tech support seems fine to me. As long as it’s possible to do it yourself.
They need to make money, to continue the development and that seems a good compromise
The themes and tech support are totally fine to charge for (as long as they’re original themes that the zorinOS developers made or contracted someone to make).
Brave browser as default is borderline as bad as just sticking to windows if the point of you getting away from windows is to dodge the shady stuff Microsoft has started doing.
It should be zen, i’m mildly upset I didn’t start using it earlier. Randomly decided to try new browsers and goddamn, it’s all I wanted from workspaces and tabs and I didn’t even know it. I always tried to use workspaces before but hated how it worked.
I also never bothered to check for tab based extensions because some similar ones do exist.
In zen you have your tabs vertically stacked, hated it at first, but I get it now, I actually can keep track of them all, swapping workspaces is easy/quick and doesn’t suspend all tabs when you do it so you can have multiple categories open without them pausing when you swap. Like a seperate space for research, tutorials, etc. Those spaces can have folders and pinned tabs. On top of that you get essential tabs which are always visible as app icons and easily accessible so you can have youtube as an essential tab and easily hop back and forth accessing it from any workspace. My biggest gripe with workspaces before was having to reopen youtube videos when I swapped workspaces becuase they would suspend and not be accessible.
Literally everytime I use it, I’m like why didn’t I check before, I was so lost before, Id just give up and close all my tabs. Now I easily keep track of 100s, know where everything is and why they all exist because they are organized and easy to check at a glance. Really easy to load and unload tabs. Almost forgot you can split screen tabs super easily too, it’s my favorite way of using it, don’t need multiple windows.
Ooo firefox-based. I will be trying it out.
I had stopped enjoying browsing the web, but I do now once again
Just installed CachyOS. It just works.
Never going back
Use Cachy for a while. Not a single issue so far. Very good distro for people who want the OS out of the way. The perfect compatibility with Nvidia is a plus!
Yeah I waited till I had a new gpu, got amd.
But yeah, reinstalled all the arr* stuff I had on windows and other services as podman services, got steam, played a few games. Some Linux native. Some Proton.
Transfered all my stuff then formatted my ntfs disks did btrfs
Never felt like anything pushed back on what I wanted. Was silky smooth.
Never once had to even think about if I had drivers for my things, logitech lightning mouse, wireless headset etc
Penguin sounds intensify
I’m gonna make it 780,001 today.
More!! More! Everybody get others into Linux Mint and Pop OS Cosmic as well!! I am doing my part if we want better we must grow the community
I tried Mint and it’s just too buggy to use.
What video card do you have? Do you plan to use the machine for gaming?
I switched to mint 3 weeks ago at the gentle age of 48 and so far it’s excellent. I had several issues which i almost all solved with googling and some AI. And I don’t know anything about programing. AND IT DOESN’T PUSH ANYTHING ON ME, IT’S UNREAL.
Isn’t it lovely? I switched like 15 years ago but I still appreciate everyday not having some new “feature” being shoved down my throat.
Geforce 3060, and yes. Sometimes my primary screen gets locked at my secondary screen’s framerate. The whole OS is especially wonky after wake from sleep, I often have to restart Firefox and Cinnamon after wake. WebGL things in Firefox are especially finicky. The panel-applet-spice things are horrendously single-threaded, some of lock the whole UI regularly.
I’m going to try some other Debian-based OS in the hopes that this is just Mint+Cinnamon and not the state-of-the-art.
I’d suggest trying a gaming focused distribution. I’m running Ubuntu on my machine. Now using Nvidia but previously with AMD and used the Nvidia for VFIO (passing through the GPU to a virtual machine). I’ve had a lot of trouble switching to Nvidia with my current install, especially Snap apps like Firefox and electron apps like VS Code. Snap apps are sandboxed and don’t get appropriate permissions for GPU acceleration. Firefox decodes video on CPU for example.
I did try several distributions when I had the AMD Radeon as primary GPU and overall had good success passing through Nvidia card to the VM. I tried Ubuntu (2023.10 I think?), Debian, Fedora, and Bazzite.
Debian doesn’t have snaps unless you want them and seemed to work Ok. Bazzite and Fedora both worked well.
The main difference it seemed was using Flatpak. You can install a flatpak GPU driver for your Nvidia card and then all the problems go away. Flatpak steam games get to run at full frame rates whereas you’d need AMD for snap.
Also it seemed like some problems were caused by Gnome, issues that are supposed to go away in the future but are nasty now. The gnome Videos/Totem app totally fails on Ubuntu 24.04/wayland/nvidia. It’s possible to get it to work but it’s so much trouble that I wouldn’t recommend it.
KDE Plasma didn’t seem to have these issues. There are things I don’t like about KDE but overall it seemed to work better. It even has dumb features like controlling the brightness of your monitor when connected via USB, a nice feature that even MacOS required a third party app to match.
Everyone has a strong opinion on the subject but if you don’t have a specific need, I’d try Bazzite next. You already know it will work with Nvidia because of the gaming focus. It has KDE so you avoid some Gnome issues. Browsers are the default app of any OS so you know the game/steam expectation means the browser should work as well.
Good luck and please update us with what you figure out!
Mint and Pop OS really aren’t usable for cutting edge GPU’s tho.
Edit: I’m probably wrong about Pop OS.
That’s simply not true for PopOS
I just figured because it’s based on Ubuntu. My mistake.
It’s based on Ubuntu LTS, that’s true. But Ubuntu backports device drivers to older (LTS) kernel versions, so the performance/hardware support is often similar/the same as using a newer kernel.
I believe they call this backporting of device drivers the “hardware enablement stack”, but I may be misremembering.
PopOS uses this, but Mint I believe is a strange one. You can get a variant of Mint that enables the hardware enablement stack, but I don’t think it’s a feature of standard Mint.
I remember when I started using Linux on my main machine I installed Mint. It was very unstable and had graphical issues even with the correct drivers installed. I switched to Manjaro and things worked great for a while. I have Mint installed on my mom’s laptop and she’s complaining about screen flickering. I’ve had it with maintaining Ubuntu based distros. I always have problems with them. I’m going to install CachyOS on her laptop. I’m the one who updates it anyway so she won’t know the difference. Maybe it’s just bad luck on my part. I never really had any problems with Debian for what it’s worth. Is there a reason why Ubuntu breaks between updates in weird ways? I don’t see this with Arch-based distros. Sorry, this is a lot. I just don’t understand Ubuntu really.
I downloaded Mint last week and started the installation but got cold feet when it came to drive formatting. I still want to keep my win10 operational in case I won’t be able to run something on Linux.
I never actually used Linux before… I installed it 3 times before and always quickly went back to windows due to some compatibility or driver issues, but…
<Rant mode=“venting”> I am NOT switching to win11… It’s enough that I am forced to use it at work. That system is so fuckin stupid… They took a lot of minor elements and just made each of them worse… I get that the sales department told you to shove OneDrive and Copilot everywhere, it’s stupid and annoying but I get it, it’s just plain old greed, but why can’t the Calendar show the whole month and don’t work on the second monitor?!? (Are you planning to add it as a paid subscription later?!?) </Rant>
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
You can get a cheap ssd and install linux on it. Before installing disconect existing windows drive. After install reconnect windows drive and make sure that windows boots. Then boot to bios and choose linux as default drive and after booting to mint desktop update grub to include windows. On each boot you will be able to choose which OS you want.
lol I forgot about the calendar issue
a perfect example of them making it worse for literally no reason at all
One can resize the Windows partition from Windows itself, then install Linux alongside it. But have backups and be careful.
Just add a new partition and dual boot, it is pretty easy.
Also I do not recommend Mint for Windows users, because the officially supported UX layers are more apple-esque. Use a distro that has KDE support baked in. Adding KDE to Mint is easy but may not be for people switching.
For that reason, I recommend going with distros with KDE Plasma by default. Kubuntu or KDE neon.
Why KDE? It feels like where Windows should have gone. It’s like the glory days of Windows (windows 2000, etc) in the modern age. It is a drastic upgrade from Windows with more freedom than you ever had.
Mint has the Cinnamon desktop environment which isn’t that different from Windows/KDE. You’re probably thinking of Gnome?
Cinnamon, to me, is an in-between, more like modern Windows, which moved in a more macos direction. KDE is like golden age Windows. Gnome is like macos.
When I used Mint (maybe 10 years ago now?), I had all kinds of problems with Cinnamon. KDE was like magic and I always use it now. Perhaps things have changed but we can only make recommendations based on our experiences and knowledge.
Aye, Cinnamon i’d say is pretty Windows like now (taskbar, start menu and tray) but definitely not as good as KDE. The average user would be happy with either I think.
I do not recommend Mint for Windows users, because the officially supported UX layers are more apple-esque
you can’t have a more classic desktop look and feel than using MATE, and it’s from the same people that maintains Mint
One pretty safe way is if you get a separate drive for Linux and completely swap out the Windows one. It’s not dual booting but at least you can switch back if it doesn’t work out for you.
Just make sure you have whatever you need to get the Windows drive working again if it’s encrypted.
I used disk2vhd to virtualize my laptop windows disk and put it on a USB stick and then got it running on Linux with VirtualBox. I’m gonna need it once a year for taxes.
I did run into some trouble getting secureboot working in virtualbox, but solved it after I figured out the kernel drivers were compressed.
Bruh, they moved rename file. That shit has been in the same place since 3.1. Fucking why.
You can just test Mint without installing it… run it off of USB.
It’ll be slower, but you can see if it fits your needs.If you have issues with mint, try something based on Debian or Fedora rather than Ubuntu like Mint is.
For Fedora I recommend Bazzite if you do gaming and nothing too technical. Flatpaks make it easy to find and install software without messing things up. Otherwise Fedora Kiinoite.
For Debian I recommend Debian itself really. Also runs very well on much older machinery.
The Mint team also puts out a very stable version called LMDE which is based on Deb rather than Ubuntu.
If you didn’t know, Ubuntu is based on Debian.
Yes but also no.
As in, it is based on Debian, but it’s kinda like how a zebra is a horse
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.
I would bet money the fanspeed also got much quieter.
Yes, and comparing resources it issues much less CPU while “idle”
I just bought a machine with an NVIDIA card which I am going to install Mint on. Do you have any advice?
(I had planned to get an AMD GPU, but was unable to for various reasons.)
Send it! I’ve heard it has gotten better for nvidia users. The nice thing about a live USB is that you can just remove it and reboot if you don’t like it.
Mint worked the best for me out of the other distros. 3060ti
Multiple monitor setup. One a 4k tv via HDMI others display port.
Had a helluva time getting it to not fuck the displays when one went on/off with anything other than mint.
YRMV
Do all updates first, save a snapshot of the system, than install the latest Nvidia driver.
For me, installing Nvidia drivers before the system update was the issue
Pop!_OS has a dedicated .iso just for Nvidia hardware.
Everytime people say there is a problem with nvidia driver, what kind of problem do people have? I am running nvidia drivers on two different machines on arch linux. It was just
pacman -Syu nvidiaand thing just workOn my laptop, I was using the tool available on Mint to find ans install drivers and after I reboot I was losing the WiFi drivers
This laptop did not have an Ethernet port, so I needed to re-install the OS and try again
Zorin would t be my first choice. But happy to see those numbers.
I’m happy to see people enter as a gateway. Ubuntu has, and still does, serve that purpose as well.
I would use it if Samba sharing actually worked.
Any other recommendations for non tech savvy people coming from windows?
I install Linux Mint on friends’ a family’s.
When i switched from windows i used mint im currently on fedora and manjaro i had no real trouble with either one of those. But im mostly using my browser and some applications i need for coding. I dont know what your use cases are but you can make a bootable usb with any one of those distros and test it out befor you actually install it anywhere. If you have an old laptop ore something like this i would strongly reccomend testing on that and see what you like. Also save all the data you need/want to keep before you mess with anything
I really hope these people don’t accept that it’s normal to charge for different desktop environments.
They’re not doing anything that’s violating licenses. I’m happy there’s different options. Having paid support is pretty cool if you’re a school or never ran Linux before. Other users will choose other distros. We should be happy, not tear into each other.
My concern is more oriented toward how capitalization of consumer-facing Linux will look if it proves to be a profitable site of expansion with Windows’ decline in popularity. I don’t care about licenses or the utility of the feature, though I do question its value when there are free options. The support is the more valuable thing, but again I worry about this success given that other distros have communities that serve the same purpose for free with only a little more labour from the user. It’s a good thing this is happening at all, but we should be critical of how it happens.
You have to view this from outside your tech knowledge bubble.
I have friends that are “stuck on windows 10 because fuck windows 11”. I urge them to give Linux a try via Live USB and they’re hesitant to even do that.
The paid support path is there for people that want to try and escape and need the comfort of that safety net. They don’t feel comfortable trying to figure out even where to search for information. And if they’ve gotten that far, having various instructions for different distros can make things confusing because they probably did a generic “my issue, linux” search or just did a “my issue” search and are seeing cryptic answers, including Mac and windows. If somebody needs that paid safety net, ZorinOS for an existing machine is great, System76/PopOS for something new.
If there is something that provides value (customer support or even the OS equivalent of a hat cosmetic) to the user, I have no concerns at all with that being sold. If that optional value could easily be done yourself with effort, those of us that know how to put in that effort ,are willing to put in the effort, or not afraid of the effort when unknown, will continue to do so. Those of us who don’t match those criteria at least have an option.
You’ve assumed that I’m in a tech knowledge bubble. I use Linux for work, but I am not in the tech field even remotely. Even though I have some professional training and a hobby interest, which prepared me better, I had to use textbooks and online forums to learn how to use my Linux desktop comfortably. I regularly deal with students and am therefore very familiar with low tech-literacy, let alone others in my own life that I have helped. I know there is a skill barrier for entry into Linux.
What I am much better equipped to handle is broad social and economic developments historically, with a particular concern for capitalist erosion of community wellbeing and mutual aid. As I have said, I do not doubt there is value for consumers in this service and I do not doubt that this service appears to be reasonably priced to those consumers. My concern regards the potential attraction that such profitability could generate and that same tech-illiteracy would make users more easily coerced into capitalization. Those conditions are exactly why there is a social as well as skill barrier of entry into Linux. As you said, many consumers have been primed to accept convenience over skill-building, which in turn makes them less capable of choosing when something is not worth the price and abandoning a convenient user experience.
Again, it is good that more people try to make this switch – Microsoft’s near monopoly is undeniably a social detriment – but we do not benefit from suspending criticism of how this switch happens just because we are happy it is happening.
They are just different layouts for Gnome, but it’s annoying that they call what is essentially a donation to them a Pro edition. A donate button would likely make more as it feels philanphropic.
You do realize that includes support, right? Last time I checked, that is very much not a donation.
This is a good point, particularly in the context of value for new users. My comment is more regarding the precedent of framing desktop environments as some sort of premium feature. I do question how much value users still get out of that though, since so many Linux distros have communities that provide essentially the same service for free with a bit more labour on the user.
I personally found value in having that straight out of the box, curated and distilled down to what works and looks good.
I think it is very purposeful that Zorin has expansive marketing and frames features in terms of price value.
