Greetings- I would like to get rid of Windows 11 and install a Linux based replacement- Zorin OS. Does anyone here have any experience with it? Would I delete Windows 11 or just leave it in place somewhere in the background and simply install the Zorin in its place. Difficult to do the change?
Zorin OS
- Thread starter willbur
- Start date
If it is your first time doing something like this, and you have access to the main hard drive in your machine I would start with installing a brand new drive and keeping the Windows 11 one as a backup, that way if something doesn't go as planned you have something to fall back on. Especially if it is your only machine.
If you're just playing around with a spare machine, then disregard.
If you're just playing around with a spare machine, then disregard.
I am using Zorin on my Lenovo IdeaPad 3 and it's been great.
I save all my data in the cloud, so I just wiped my Windows installation and installed Zorin from a bootable USB stick.
Probably the biggest change will be the office apps, Libre Office wants to save in .odt by default, you have to tell it to save in Microsoft compatible formats if you want it to be able to be readable by people with MS Office.
I save all my data in the cloud, so I just wiped my Windows installation and installed Zorin from a bootable USB stick.
Probably the biggest change will be the office apps, Libre Office wants to save in .odt by default, you have to tell it to save in Microsoft compatible formats if you want it to be able to be readable by people with MS Office.
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If your hard drive has enough space, you can setup a dual boot with Zorin and Win11. This way you can try it out and if needed, boot back into Windows. Once you get comfortable, you can recover the Win11 partition and run Zorin as your primary OS.
I did a dual boot setup when I first dipped my toes into the Linux world. I think Mint was my first distro? After I got comfortable I got rid of windows completely. Currently running Fedora with KDE Plasma. YouTube has hundreds of hours of videos on Linux for newbies. Great place to learn about the Linux world
A year old Lenovo PC
As mentioned above, use a USB stick to try out different distributions before you commit. I'm not familiar with Zorin, I think it's relatively new, but Linux Mint is a popular distro for newbies. I've used Linux for the past 20 years and Debian for the last 15. It's the oldest and most stable/secure Distro but I wouldn't recommend it for a new Linux convert.
I totally forgot about the live USB thing. Perfectly acceptable way to ease in to pulling the trigger on a new OS like that.
I've heard Zorin is really nice.
100% agree with creating a bootable flash drive and changing the boot order to boot from the flash drive to test it out.
If any of those words sound foreign, it's not time for Linux.
100% agree with creating a bootable flash drive and changing the boot order to boot from the flash drive to test it out.
If any of those words sound foreign, it's not time for Linux.
Dual boot got weird for me in WIN10 and I gave up after that, just didn't have the time to invest in a computer I barely used. Now if I want to use Linux I fire up Parallels.
I would very strongly suggest first running this or any other new operating system in a virtualized environment. As the post prior to this notes, VMWare Workstation, among others like VirtualBox, are no-cost ways to allow entire operating systems to run within, completely isolated from, your main OS. You can kick the tires with nothing at stake and see what's what.
As far as Zorin is concerned; it is basically Ubuntu but with a look-and-feel designed to appeal to Windows users. Being Ubuntu-based you know you'll have enterprise-grade stability, performance, security and ease-of-use.
Whatever you do, for heaven's sake back up your data. Personally I would get a second drive, remove my Windows drive for safety, and use the new one; but other than that I'd 100% back up all of my data to both an on-site convenient drive like a USB thumb or SSD as well as generate a restorable image of my actual operating system.
As far as Zorin is concerned; it is basically Ubuntu but with a look-and-feel designed to appeal to Windows users. Being Ubuntu-based you know you'll have enterprise-grade stability, performance, security and ease-of-use.
Whatever you do, for heaven's sake back up your data. Personally I would get a second drive, remove my Windows drive for safety, and use the new one; but other than that I'd 100% back up all of my data to both an on-site convenient drive like a USB thumb or SSD as well as generate a restorable image of my actual operating system.
I did it this way for a long time, and currently with my work PC except using VirtualBox and not VMWare Workstation.
However, for my relatively lower powered home PC, a bare metal installation was preferable from a performance standpoint. Windows was a dog on my Lenovo after upgrading to Windows 11. Zorin runs amazing, comparatively.
My first bare metal install on my Lenovo laptop was LinuxMint, as noted in this thread, since I have a lot of familiarity with it. https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/gave-up-on-windows-for-linuxmint.400546/
However, I decided to give Zorin a try and it's been great for a bare metal install, it's definitely more polished than Mint. I still use LinuxMint on my work machine as a VM because I like the lightweight XFCE desktop Mint to VM minimize resource usage on the host box.
If you were using XFCE as a desktop then it may have been XFCE that left you with the "lack of polish" impression. I don't use Mint myself but it should probably be judged by its flagship desktop Cinnamon.
If you're looking to spare some horsepower requirements for an older system (join the club!) then XFCE is great, along with MATE and LXQt. None of those three require any whiz-bang, fancy-pants 3D-accelerated graphics.
I was using Cinnamon desktop Mint on my bare metal install on my Lenovo. Zorin is just a bit nicer and more fluid. Battery life seems about the same, so I'm happy.
The one downsize of the free version of Zorin is that you cannot set it to grab updates using the GUI updater more than once a day. I get around that by just opening a terminal and doing a 'sudo apt upgrade' when I first boot up. Probably could set up a Cron job to do it for me, but haven't bothered so far.
You ought to be able to use a package called unattended-upgrades to automatically grab at least security updates; it's configurable for more. I would hope and presume that Zorin, like any other capable distro, automatically pulls down and installs security updates.
I think Zorin uses Ubuntu LTS and partially Debian as its sources - How many updates are we talking about here? I tend to avoid userland application updates like the plague and most distros who favour stability do, too. I am afraid I don't know enough about Zorin's release and support cadence to speak to this but if they're charging people to use this (?!) and they're offering support, I cannot imagine them offering support on userland applications **and their updates** for any appreciable length of time.
EDIT: yes, Zorin uses Ubuntu LTS as its base. Security updates ought to pull and install automatically; otherwise, updating applications is probably more of a weekly or monthly thing; if ever.
I work in Cybersecurity. I favor maximum updates over stability, I guess I'm just wired that way.
The free Zorin limitation of only being able to update once a day if you rely on the GUI tools is fine. Most average everyday users wouldn't care. Super easy to get around with the most rudimentary understanding of terminal commands. It's Linux and it's easy to get around the limitations of the free vs pro versions.
Paying for a Linux OS is crazy. Unless you need support.
My two (wife and mine) 2010 Lenovo laptops with dual core processors wizz along just fine on Debian 12 (Cinnamon).
I used to do the manual update/upgrade manually, when i remembered. With a little time and energy Debian updates itself daily (unattended-upgrades).
My two (wife and mine) 2010 Lenovo laptops with dual core processors wizz along just fine on Debian 12 (Cinnamon).
I used to do the manual update/upgrade manually, when i remembered. With a little time and energy Debian updates itself daily (unattended-upgrades).
"dog" is my reason for switching.
