ZorinOS (other Linux distros are available)

[Famous Mortimer]

I am typing this on a "demo" of ZorinOS (running it off a USB stick) and it's already working faster than Windows has been. To be fair, this is an old machine I bought from one of those places that refurbishes office PCs.

It recognises my wireless keyboard and mouse straight away, it looks nice and I reckon I'll make the full switch as soon as I've moved everything off the hard drive of this one.

Is this worth a thread? Dunno. There have been plenty of videos showing up in the last few weeks where people compare this to Mint, or Windows, and try and encourage new users. Although I've had Linux machines on and off for over a decade, I'd still consider myself a bit of a novice, so this has been a nice transition distro.

Please chime in if you use something else, or have already been messing with this, or something.

[Gurke and Hare]

I use Mint, but if the demo just picked up all the hardware and everything just worked I'd stick with it.

[Shaxberd]

I recently installed Mint on a Windows laptop that was starting to really struggle and have found it gave the machine a new lease of life, so much quicker and easier. Firefox and Discord load and run very smoothly.

However, it doesn't handle games all that well so if Zorin is better for making weird itch.io exe files go then that's a plus. If it wasn't for that I'd probably wipe Windows completely.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Used Linux/OSX/Solaris for years at work so eventually fell into using it at home as well because it was mostly easier than installing lots of drivers to use a  browser and vlc.

I found Ubuntu too bloated and ended up using Debian for years, although that means using quite old software versions. I'm still wedded to Debian-derivatives, and still use it on my work PC, but have been very impressed with popos! On my home laptop. Has very little bloat, slick ui, and piggybacks Ubuntu repos. Even does bios updates (on my thinkpad at least).

[touchingcloth]

In my first job, one of the senior engineers used to bring his fully-specced MacBook into the office, and would tell anyone who'd listen how he only liked it for the hardware because OSX was junk and he preferred running FreeBSD with no desktop environment.

"Vi or Emacs? I prefer ed."

[PlanktonSideburns]

Anyone here rolling their own kernels

[Sonny_Jim]

Used to about 10 years ago, never had a reason to do so in many years.  Closest I got to a kernel compile was compiling some wifi drivers for a new USB Wifi thing.

I'd use ZorinOS if it had a picture of Max Zorin in the corner doing his little kissy face everytime I clicked on something


Ooh you've clicked on a good one there

Linux Mint + SSD is excellent for transforming old Win 8 laptops into something marginally useful.

[All Surrogate]

Anyone here rolling their own kernels

[Sebastian Cobb]

Used to about 10 years ago, never had a reason to do so in many years.  Closest I got to a kernel compile was compiling some wifi drivers for a new USB Wifi thing.

I had an Acer netbook that required me to manually compile the drivers and the kernal, I spent hours at it, trying and failing to get the wifi to do anything and retrying several times, in the end in bored frustration I flicked the wifi soft-switch and it burst into life and started scanning. That's right, the installation defaulted it to off.

[H-O-W-L]

does it come with a blimp

[All Surrogate]

... or Grace Jones?

[Puffin Chunks]

I've used linux servers for years. Switched to Linux desktop full time a year or 2 ago. Windows 11 with its abject intrusiveness, data harvesting, ad serving nastiness was enough for me. Add in making it hard to set up without having a microsoft account and it pushed me over the edge.

Traditionally I've used Ubuntu, but I've grown to hate its bloat, upselling at me in the MOTD and its insistence of forcing Snaps down my throat. It has now gone the way of Windows. In the bin.

I now roll Fedora, and I am very happy with it, and see no need to switch in the near future.

I roll a highly customized KDE desktop.

Thanks to the work Valve have done on Proton, I actually find I get better performance from games than I used to on Windows.

Zero regrets. Would never go back.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Any music people manage to get Reaper working on Linux without it making you want to set your house on fire

[Puffin Chunks]

Any music people manage to get Reaper working on Linux without it making you want to set your house on fire

According to their website they have a Linux build
https://www.reaper.fm/download.php

___
Edit:
Ahh, I've realised that this is what you were probably referring to. I just assumed you were trying to run the Windows version through WINE.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Maybe it's, great - I SUCKED at getting it working in 2019. Admittedly was on a crap laptop. Hopefully Windows 10 will work for me a while longer

[Sebastian Cobb]

when it comes to windows tiny 10/tiny 11 are good, has all the crap and telemetry bullshit removed. Doesn't try and force you into creating a live account either.

https://archive.org/details/tiny-11-NTDEV

https://archive.org/details/tiny-10-NTDEV

I'm going to need to shove this on an old laptop to rip and process a vhs tape with avisynth