Zorin OS: An ACTUALLY GOOD, Open Source Windows Alternative?

I took the leap and uninstalled Windows for Zorin OS. Sure, it was nice not having Microsoft shoved in my face constantly... but it wasn't as nice when Zorin decided to hold my computer hostage when I realized it wasn't for me.
Don't get me wrong-- I love Zorin and Ubuntu. Unfortunately though, de to software incompatibility issues and driver issues, I couldn't stick with it. In this video, I describe my experience with Zorin OS-- what I like about it, and the 4 day limbo I was thrust into when I tried to leave it.
A big special thank you to all of the wonderful and incredibly helpful folks who offered solutions in the Zorin forums.
Link to my forum on Zorin:
Being stuck on Zorin: forum.zorin.co...
Driver and Framerate Issues: forum.zorin.co...
Capcut Incompatibility: forum.zorin.co...
SavvyNik's video on Zorin:
• Zorin OS Review - The ...
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Zorin OS is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu with both free and paid versions. It uses a GNOME 3 and XFCE 4 desktop environment by default, although the desktop is heavily customized for users more familiar with Windows and macOS.
Zorin OS is available in various free and paid versions including versions using XFCE instead of GNOME for use with older computers. Zorin OS follows the long-term releases of the main Ubuntu system and uses its own software repositories as well as Ubuntu's repositories. The desktop environment themes can resemble those of Microsoft Windows, macOS, or Ubuntu and allow the interface to be familiar regardless of the previous system a user has come from.
In January 2020, the developers announced plans to release Zorin Grid, which would be software for installing and maintaining Zorin OS within a network, aimed at companies and schools. As of June 2024, the software is unreleased.
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[@SoftTehCustomer]

Linux users be like "yeah it took me 7 hours to get 1/4 of the programs I use to work, and the other 3/4 doesn't work, but after I switched I'll never go back."

[@chibicat13]

While Linux has come leaps and bounds in gaming, sadly Windows is the only guaranteed way to play. Zorin isn’t the distro I would recommend for anyone who is getting into Linux for the first time. Mint is great and I while my DaVinci Resolve works for the for complex projects, KdnLive works wonders basic editing, and Photopea is an online photoshop clone. OBS works like a dream too, in fact my 4K webcam works on Mint better than on windows. I do have a dual boot for Win10. I use it for my photoshop CS4 and I got the OS isolated from Microsoft’s prying eyes… but booting into it is quite rare now. I think Zorin just happened to be the wrong distro for the laptop you had. Mint, Pop, or Ubuntu world work better I think.

[@ImStrikeTV]

I said it in a previous reply but I did take a look at pop and mint, and they do both look great although I'm aware that pop also has many problems. I don't want people to take away from this video that Zorin and my problems with it represent Linux as a whole.

[@SirFoxTopx]

I can't believe Strike didn't consider us Windows fans who like being spyed on smh

[@ImStrikeTV]

If you're coming down to comment "WHY DIDN'T YOU USE POP / MINT / ARC" you have missed the entire point of the video

[@Serge165]

I didn't know. Ubuntu games pack works for me. It's just the normal vanilla install of Ubuntu with a bunch of gamer stuff on it. Or is I like to jokingly or lovingly call it gamer BS. But we nerdy gamers like our gamer BS. I guess it boils down to your own preference in the end. However I have to counter something I just heard at 2:20: Yes there is decent editing software it's called DaVinci but I think this video is more about the areas you got with your video card so there could be that.

[@Stripes404]

1. Pop is more for those who like macOS 2. Mint looks too unappealing 3. Self-explanatory. Also, it's "Arch", not "Arc".

[@turkeyleg72]

​@@Stripes404And pop is good for keeping drivers up to date

[@realtitedog]

@@turkeyleg72 I mean Arch nvidia drivers are extremely up to date too

[@fabricio4794]

i use MInt but i Recommend Zorin.i wanna test Zorin on my other machines.

[@intoalter]

I can relate to your video, I tried Zorin OS and also Fedora 40, But as far people say it's a breeze to install this and that trust me i faced so many crashes my system just freeze and that's on a clean installation with just a sudo update upgrade. But apart from this my reasons for which i uninstalled Linux was the application support people told me to dual boot, but when you are in a creative field you can't be restarting every time to Linux and windows. Hope the application and driver supports gets better in 2025.

[@Damglador]

Don't use Fedora 💀 My opinion on dual booting: you either go all Linux and make sacrifices, maybe run some things in a VM, or stick to Windows. I have Visual Studio in a VM with WinApps, not perfect, but bearable experience. Aside from responsibility it works almost like a native app. I don't see a point in dual-booting, perhaps if you have a game you want to play once in a while that has an anti-cheat that doesn't like Linux, but also would you want play a game that doesn't care about you if you're on Linux? I won't judge tho if the answer is yes. In other cases - Linux is just not for you and you should stick to Windows or Mac if you're... that guy.

[@intoalter]

@@Damglador I’m a full time audio engineer who’s mostly working with 3rd party vsts and audio gear etc and the companies don’t yet support linux so hopefully when they will give support gor linux i would probably move from windows, windows is just a memory hog.

[@Damglador]

@@intoalter yeah, that's a dead case. I hope more companies will port their software to Linux in the future

[@sydneyyourpal3403]

Been on linux for a few months now, EndeavorOS with KDE plasma, I am a PC gamer. Linux is NOT just for developers anymore, however the desktop is still in a very much so in development, getting closed to being finished but not quite there yet. It will get better with time! Me personally I only use debian based distributions on older hardware, having updates for newer hardware with bleeding edge support is very important to me. I think this is a nice vid, thanks for posting your thoughts for the broader community to hear it, surely someday linux will be a complete and viable alternative to windows! As of right now i have no issues playing games on my steam deck and on my endeavor desktop. And yeah def not gonna snitch on that roblox client, those devs need to sober up ;)

[@ImStrikeTV]

Shhh!!! They're always watching!!

[@Damglador]

It is a viable alternative to Windows even today, just not for everyone, and that's sad. I'm not even talking about any kind of struggles of configuring it, some things are just impossible to do on Linux and that's the most sad thing of all. Nice distro choice btw

[@brvndxnl]

I just finished creating a dual-boot for my laptop as well. The distro I chose was Nobara and I had the same issues you did, although to a much lesser degree. Linux is great, but setting it up as a newcomer definitely gave me a better idea on why it has such low market share.

[@XenoMagami]

I was using zorin os from 2020 through 2023. With 15 and 16. It took a bit to get it set up out of the box but ran okay, later on started locking up steam a lot and came prepackaged with pulseaudio so audio was a mess. When 17 came out i tried that and it had the same issues i was running into on 16 so i switched to nobara and haven't turned back. I should also note i do not recommend dualbooting linux. Its easy enough to set up by just disconnecting your windows drive, fresh install linux to a new one, set the linux drive to your boot drive, reconnect the windows drive, boot it, then run sudo update-grub and itll add your windows partition to the boot menu. Issue is windows likes to update its efi partition from time to time and when it does it updates over the grub partition rendering it broken.

[@that_guy1211]

oh yeah! I totally forgot, i couldn't install modrinth through the .deb install or smth, so i was forced to use the linux equivalent of a standalone .exe, i forgot the extension name, lol but it was CRAPPY and SLOW and lagging so much! So i literally spent a day looking through different minecraft launchers before settling on Prism launcher, which is basically MultiMC, but with pirate minecraft enabled, which is good!

[@ez12387]

Could you explain what distro were you using?

[@that_guy1211]

@@ez12387 zorin

[@ImStrikeTV]

The .deb install broke and I messaged Modrinth staff about it. They said they were looking into it. Several days later, the page still says "We are working on a solution." I also downloaded the AppImage, and it was slow but at least functional. Sorry to hear you're facing the same issues.

[@that_guy1211]

@@ImStrikeTV not just slow, but laggy af, i'd say it was functional, but not any good, prism launcher and multiMC scored a good, since they're one of the best launchers and can still download modpacks from curseforge and modrinth, something the modrinth launcher can't do, lol

[@fabricio4794]

@@that_guy1211 what is your hardware,Ram?

[@TacticalPower88]

At the end, All you had to do was delete the whole partition in the windows install environment, create a new partition, and then proceed to install windows.

[@ImStrikeTV]

@@TacticalPower88 I did do that. The problem was that there was no storage driver for me to be able to see my drivers installed. I did say that in the video and the thread with the solution that I displayed on screen.

[@coinbongo4694]

Laptops can be one of the most frustrating things to install anything on. And power management can be a real pain, especially setting up hybrid gpus.

[@pawxed]

6:33 i agree here, linux is just isnt beginner friendly at all even trying out every single distro won't find the solution for that, yet linux user keep wondering why nobody uses linux

[@Vales55]

There are beginner friendly versions of Linux. Linux Mint is by far and away the best of those. The problem with Linux Desktop isn't Linux Desktop. It's that nobody develops high quality software for Linux Desktop. Like the guy says, you can make a version of Photoshop for Windows or MacOS. But to make Photoshop for "Linux" You would have to compile a separate version of it for EVERY major distro that you wanted it to work for. It's not impossible. But it's definitely enough of a headache that most companies just don't do it. And who can blame them?

[@t5381]

​@@Vales55except you don't have to compile for every distro out there though? Make a snap, flatpak or appimage and basically everyone can use it.

[@hyper_lynx]

​@Vales55 Flatpak exists and solves this. Every version of linux that can install Flathub (which is all of the main distros at least) can install every flatpak

[@ant2902]

@@Vales55 i switched from windows to linux mint and it was very easy to get used to it. can recommend

[@pawxed]

@@Vales55 Yeah i know, the majority of supported apps in linux is ridiculously low, i'm planning to switch to linux but ofc dualbooting since i have alot of windows apps

[@chimichuflis]

lol yes making a bootable windows usb drive is usually a pain unles you know how to, the easy way: -ventoy: makes a bootable usb drive that supports multiple os at the same time, the kinda anoying way: - vm: make a w10 virtual machine, and from there you can make it the standard way like your video tho, i like zorin, but q4os gives a lot less issues imo

[@ImStrikeTV]

Replying to this to note that Ventoy just entirely broke the usb for some reason. Probably something I did wrong but who knows lol

[@chimichuflis]

@@ImStrikeTV LOL!

[@KaaayKaay]

Switched to linux on saturday and ever since its been so bloody cool. I recommend AT Evolve for easy customization.

[@JessicaFEREM]

yeah there's a lot of problems with Ubuntu LTS (the thing Zorin is based on) on modern hardware, especially nvidia cards.I really wish that weren't the case. and even when it is working, there's no telling if there's something that completely breaks the system. I guess the only real thing you can do is wait for the nvidia drivers to dribble out onto the LTS versions.

[@Hontman]

Zorin looks nice but you got SO many problems with it. I daily drive linuz and I don't get much problems, but I guess I might have been lucky with that...

[@OsmanSaifi-gj7rf]

@strikeTv I didn't play the games but I am a coder but I don't like window Can u tell me zorin os os perfect for me❤

[@Ryftex]

lmao you were the person in the wiki that had the same CapCut issue as me

[@TheRealTimmy1]

fun fact:i actually installed zorin os on a laptop for school

[@uwunix]

i dual booted arch linux and linux from scratch on a laptop for school lmao

[@Damglador]

​​@@uwunix

[@Lanyardpuzzlepiec]

So on linux you can install bottles it lets you install anything that works on win11

[@dumbfloppa]

Not "Anything" like UWP apps dont work nor does Adobe or Microsoft software

[@ariel_chess]

It's not stable at all

[@Rikonardo]

​@@dumbfloppa aside from maybe Minecraft Bedrock, I've never seen an UWP app that isn't a gimmicky alternative to an already existing Win32 app, just with more annoying UI and less features (though, Minecraft Bedrock at least partially also falls under that definition). Even on Windows, UWP is considered a dead platform. Microsoft Office has both OSS and freeware alternatives that would work for 99% of home users. The only unreplaceble Microsoft app I can think of is probably Teams, which used to have native Linux support up until recently, but pretty sure is still runnable under wine. The only software Linux really lacks as for now is stuff like Adobe or Autodesk

[@univera1111]

​​@@ariel_chess then what exe emulator is stable

[@ariel_chess]

@univera1111 None. I wasn't clear. Using anything wine related is not a reliable solution. And it's not a good experience for newcomers to have to troubleshoot. If you wanna use Windows programs, you'll get the best experience on Windows. The best solution is to virtualize if you really need to do it entirely on linux. I take the word from Chris Titus, "The Linux Experiment" and Gardiner Bryant

[@npcmaster3304]

ouch :concern:

[@smirkjuice]

The problem is Debian-based distros. They have out of date software, which is why most things won't work

[@user-empress_education]

Talk about video editing, Kdenlive is super underrated. Why is no one talking about it?

[@ItsSplonk]

6:04 abra cadabra-ass move right there

[@dumbfloppa]

Sadly most of these issues are cause of NVIDIA and because of the laptop Linux is way more mature on Desktops.

[@erikferguson71]

I use Mint Cinnamon. It's not just an alternative. It's better than Windows.

[@univera1111]

Why dont you try Cahcy os, endeavour os or linux mint

[@Stripes404]

1. It's awesome, but this is for WINDOWS ALTERNATIVES 2. Once again, great, but not really a Windows alternative 3. Mint is not that good looking at first glance, which scares off some Windows users

[@CleanUsername]

Whilst I agree with some of the points in this video I really have to disagree with the distro choice. From a quick google search and a (very) quick look at the zorin OS home page it just seems to be some generic slop. Personally for someone who has never used Linux before (I.E you [or so I assume]) I would recommend Linux mint, or even Ubuntu if you dont care about proprietary software. (P.S dont take this as an attack on you personally, just some advice I suppose.)

[@ImStrikeTV]

if you're here to complain about distro choice, you've missed the point of the video. If the goal was to judge Ubuntu itself, I would have *chosen* Ubuntu or Mint, or even one of the distros "made for gaming". The point of the video is not judging Linux entirely-- primarily Zorin OS. However, it should still be noted a lot of issues I had are still rooted in Linux itself-- specifically video editing and gaming. It's just not there yet, and hopefully one day will be.

[@CleanUsername]

@@ImStrikeTV ah, fair enough then. I may have misinterpreted the video. And in that case then I do apologize.

[@fabricio4794]

Zorin is very Good, if you just want freedom and Open Source,this is a good alternatvie.

[@taumaru1876]

if you use Nixos you have an almost unbreakable distro

[@asphalt2554]

KITTTYYYYYYYYYY

[@28msLIVE]

Who’s that 28ms guy he seems pretty cool

[@GreatBlackHat]

Random fact: Zorin have preinstalled spying package. SO COOL YAY LOVE LINUX!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@ImStrikeTV]

@@GreatBlackHat they give you an immediate option to opt out of any kind of monitoring. Otherwise, do you have a source that I might be able to look at? If they do actually have spyware, I don't want to leave this video up.

[@GreatBlackHat]

@@ImStrikeTV look at the package list and see yourself, even if you disable in the settings they still collect for some reason

[@ssmorkss]

your computer is a WHAT??? jokes aside, the only commentor you need is me : )

[@dungeonrobot]

StrikTV face reveal?!?!?

[@Chuck_vs._The_Comment_Section]

No, it is not! I switched a few years ago and it was horrible!

[@Stripes404]

Explain...

[@ImStrikeTV]

That would be too much effort.

[@RakibHasan-hs1me]

Zorin OS is perfect for beginners.

[@taumaru1876]

try nobara

[@ArtemSayapov]

i use arch btw

[@SchmataB]

whenever somebody says that linux feels more secure than windows I wonder what that actually means. what are you guys doing on your computers that windows doesn't "feel" secure?

[@nelliocalypse]

Honestly it comes down to the amount of malware for windows compared to Linux.

[@Guitartube25]

0:25 hi! (⁠.⁠ ⁠❛⁠ ⁠ᴗ⁠ ⁠❛⁠.⁠)

[@glitchcade]

hai :)

[@rch5395]

Cachyos is better.

[@taumaru1876]

the problem is Zorin

[@Damglador]

Should've used Arch🗿

[@remyreki]

Hi, I appreciate your decision to join us, Im switched Windows to Linux recently too, but I strongly recomend you install Arch Linux instead of Zorin, Arch way better, lightweighter, customizable, and have more support and documentation

[@ImStrikeTV]

I took a look at it and while I understand it is probably better than zorin, it's just not my style. That's just personal preference, but I know it works great.

[@wilsonlee6384]

Zorin can probably play about 70% of the games on Steam. As long as you are not the type to buy and play games as soon as they are released, and you play 2 to 3 years old games, then it is really suitable for you.