Zorin has laudable aims but it's delivered in a flawed way. It's essentially Gnome with extensions to make it look and feel like other GUIs. Problem is, Gnome is not a good base for this type of approach - it is fundamentally not flexible and not designed for this. So Zorin is basically deliberating breaking Gnome to make it into something it's just not meant to be under the hood.

Zorin looks very nice graphically and seems good at at first but then niggles come along. Minor but constantly present.

I think it's probably OK for a Linux newbie but not ideal long term and doesn't have the user base to make it as easy to get support as Mint for example.

If you do want to mimick other GUIs then really don't start with Gnome. You can achieve much better results using KDE on any distro; KDE by design is flexible and it doesnt require breaking fundamental design decisions made for Gnome to mimick something else. Only downside to do-it-yourself with KDE is if you do want to perfectly mimick another GUI then it is a manual process of finding themes and skins that match the aesthetic you want.

That's becuase Linux is it's own thing and not focused on trying to mimick other DEs (even if some GUis have superifical similarities to Windows or MacOS).

I get what Zorin is trying to do, but I think using Gnome is a mistake but also for me the basic idea of "familiar to ease you in" doesn't really work. Better for people to learn how Linux is different - there is a choice in design philosophies but all of them are shaped around what Linux is and how it works rather than what Windows or MacOS are.

The fact that they default to Brave Browser already makes me wary. I have plenty of issues with Mozilla myself, especially their recent trend of integrating AI into the browser but I would rather use a fork or even vanilla Chromium rather than Brave. I know it's just the default and you can switch easily but the fact they landed on THAT out of all available options doesn't give me confidence, I would go with Mint instead.

Its a good lazy out of box distro which is why I use it. I don't have to tweak or install much to get work done once installed. Most additions I have made are for some nice quality of life or just a niche thing (sending text to a network port for a virtual machine. oh and the virtual machine software). I complained that they should use kde and finally installed it myself but again I don't have to configure or add anything after installation to be using it for most things I do so I can hit the ground running. Again. Lazy.

Try KDE Connect for connecting to your phone. Works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Also available on both Android and iOS.

No idea what the other commenter is on about, I used Zorin ~2 years ago. It's a great distro for people new to Linux, and IMO has the cleanest aesthetic of any distro I've used. It was also super stable and reliable.

My issue with it (and ultimately the reason why I moved) is that it aims to be very stable which means its packages can get very outdated. I think the Nvidia drivers they used at the time I was on it were two years old. It's not something most people would notice especially with how much Flatpak is used nowadays, but you'll run into annoying cases where that thing you want to update isn't available in that package manager.

Even looking at the website, Zorin 18 is out but it seems people on Zorin 17 will have to wait a few weeks for a way to upgrade.

When I used Zorin OS in the past (roughly 3 years ago), it was a pretty miserable experience, and was absolute garbage in comparison to Ubuntu and Mint back then, mainly due to a lack of polish.

That being said, it has been worked on quite a bit since then, and while I'm cautiously optimistic, I'll stick to recommending Mint for non-gaming and Bazzite for gaming users new to linux for the time being.

Started with Zorin but had a rough time. I didn't realize until actual months later that my issues were due to a hardware fault and had nothing to do with the OS. By the time I realized, however, I had settled on Mint. I've since tried a handful of distros but always come back to Mint because I'm so used to it now. I do recommend Zorin for its level of polish and apparent desire to simplify the transition for folks coming from Windows.

Loved Zorin, it was the first Distro that made me fall in love with linux. Definitely install it and try it out for yourself. It's essentially a pretty and better functioning Ubuntu without the spyware

Got me into Linux, 1.5 years ago. Tried Mint first, but that was pre some of their UI updates. I found the look quite outdated when I tried it. From there I started out by dual booting Zorin and Windows. Slowly moved everything over to linux and haven't looked back since(only work laptop run windows now).

Nothing more to say than a very solid distro. Doesn't update often, but that has the advantage of never breaking lol. Also installed it on all my parents devices and it "just works💫".

The app to connect with your phone is a straight ripoff of KDE Connect with rebranding.

I was unable to get the sound card to stop popping when on Zorin. Same for Mint. Would pop anytime sound played after more than a few minutes. No updates to the sound driver or any of the configuration fixed it. I also had GPU issues and was unable to play many games. I finally moved on to CachyOS and it's been rock solid everywhere.