Zorin OS 17 isn’t going to dethrone Linux Mint any time soon. I wish they switched to following Ubuntu LTS releases instead of being on their own timeline. 22.04 package base is going to be 2 years old by the time this releases.
They obviously spent a lot of time on aesthetics and simplicity which seems to be the main appeal of the distribution.
Okay, so basically they updated Gnome, added some cool extensions and called it a day? Is there more to it than this that I am missing cuz this announcement is mainly just Gnome apps that have been updated to 43
At least it’s a bit more full-featured than Fedora 39, where they just updated to Gnome 45 and called it a day, and KDE users didn’t even get anything new at all.
I think Fedora updates are different because they are a fixed length cycle of 6 months which happens to line up with GNOME’s 6 months cycle. And also Fedora is a semi-rolling release with kernel updates being pushed relatively soon and as they come instead of via version updates
It has a really great selection of polished layouts OOTB that can make GNOME look very familiar to whatever the user is used to.
Also has some other great tweaks around WINE for beginners, and a more easily accessible Nvidia option in install media.
I don’t use it myself, but I would suggest it is ideal for someone who is a basic computer user who wants to mostly web browse and use home office tools. It really is ultra-polished.
Yes this could mostly be replicated with extensions and themes, but honestly, unless you have strong feelings about your OS, which most people don’t, it is not worth messing about with this (particularly when installing for others) when Zorin is available; it can be a headache to have to maintain such comprehensive layout changes through extensions and themes without breakage throughout upgrades. It also has the benefits of being based on the very actively developed GNOME, compared to something with a smaller team like Cinnamon, namely much better Wayland support, and in my view more polish.
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