Comment by LorenDB

6 days ago

Zorin is one of the best distros to recommend to noobs.

- Ubuntu based, so it has full compatibility with every .deb package that you find online

- Not actually Ubuntu, so it doesn't have that weird Canonical corporate push stuff (ads in terminal, etc.)

- Has a .exe hook preinstalled that asks you if you want to install Wine to run Windows apps

- Has a very Windows-like layout so it's instantly familiar (which is not uncommon, but Ubuntu certainly goes the other way)

9 comments

LorenDB

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biggestfan  6 days ago

And in place upgrades! It was a massive problem for years with Zorin (and still exists with other "user friendly" distros like Elementary), requiring a full system reinstall every time a new version released.

That being said, I still think this is a bit of a strange option when there's several Ubuntu flavors with more Windows-esque desktops, plus Linux Mint which offers a lot of these benefits with a much larger userbase and therefore better support (though Zorin is more "modern" looking). Not a bad option but not one I'd think to recommend often.

worthless-trash  6 days ago

I've not used ubuntu for some time, but

- Ubuntu based, so it has full compatibility with every .deb package that you find online

I don't think that .deb files are universally portable.

  • kvdveer  6 days ago

    They are not universally portable, but if your running an Ubuntu derived system, most debs can be installed jus fine. Thats not because deb is so compatible,but because virtually everything assumes Ubuntu.

  • jeroenhd  5 days ago

    You need the .deb files to match your architecture and to have the necessary dependencies available, but for programs like Google Chrome, Discord, and VSCode, those dependencies seem to come down to "any recent version of glibc and openssl" and the .debs themselves are available for multiple architectures.

    You're not going to be installing random Debian packages from the Debian FTP server, but for most proprietary software that resorts to "install this .deb", it'll work most of the time, which beats many other distributions.

    On the other hand, installing software this way is a great way for upgrades to the next major version to fail spectacularly halfway through, so I'm not so sure if it's a feature or not.