Zorin OS 12.4 Core review - Surprisingly good

Zorin is a Bond villain, but 'tis also a distro, and he's a good guy. So, to wit, this is a long, thorough review of Zorin 12.4, an Ubuntu-based distro with a heavily customized Gnome desktop, covering live session, installation in a multi-boot Windows and Linux setup on a laptop with UEFI, GPT and Intel graphics, and post-install usage, including look & feel, themes, fonts and contrast, accessibility, network connectivity - Wireless, Bluetooth, Samba sharing and printing, multimedia - codecs, MP3 playback and HD video, smartphone connectivity - several Android models, iPhone, Windows Phone, partitioning, package management and updates, applications, unique Zorin tools, hardware compatibility, resource utilization, performance, responsiveness, battery life, some niggles and problems, and more. Enjoy.

https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/zorin-12-4.html


Cheers,
Mrk

 

Thanks.

 

Thanks!

 

Mrk,

Thanks for the review. I installed it to a disk with 25 partitions. The partition discovery was OK but the software install seemed slow. Total install time was 13 minutes.

 

How long did the discovery take? And how many entries do you have on the efi partition?
Mrk

 

I just installed Zorin again. From the Something Else screen to the Partitions screen took 7 seconds. From booting the Zorin UFD until the completion message took 12.5 minutes.
Zorin is supposed to support Secure Boot but it doesn't.

The ESP contained entries for...
5 Windows OS
8 Linux OS

 

For me, it took 15 minutes to the partitions - 1 windows entry and 14 linux entries.
But then, I've tortured this machine a fair bit (including having it bricked and then unbricked for a while).
Mrk

 

I mentioned Zorin wouldn't boot with Secure Boot enabled. I checked the Boot File and it was...

\EFI\ubuntu.005\grubx64.efi (which is incorrect for Secure Boot enabled)

There is no shimx64.efi.

 

Overall, your review of Zorin 12.4 was pretty favourable. Are you intending to try the new OS15 release?

 

mark - brian k is a master of hard disks\partitions - i can only express admirations
brian k : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIPIOXqE4X4

 

Thanks Brian. It has to be a joke at this day and age that an OS does not support secure boot. This includes Manjaro as well.

 

I don't get the joke why do you need secure boot in Linux ?

Been using Linux since 2003 and never had secure boot, no malicious software, my unauthorized operating systems work just fine, still can login to Wilders after all these years.

 

You don't need secure boot, but every os should support the feature.
Mrk