Zorin OS as replacement for XP

Discussion in 'all things UNIX' started by Windows_Security, Oct 10, 2014.

  1. I recently had a family member with a modest AMD 5400 dual core. Their XP wasborked up. Put an Zorin-OS and it took some three hours to configure it back complete (exporting-importing emails from outlook express, saving and putting back data). few comments

    1. Good to be carefull
    It did not see options to use the C-partition and leave the data on the D-partition. It used the entire disk. so good I had taken precautions by saving data first

    2. Wine of Zorin-OS
    Zorin-OS comes with Wine. It is better than play-on-linux. Just right click Wine and open executable. Espacially with old games (retired family member), the graphics/GUI looks a lot better

    3. When customizing the desktop
    It looks like XP or Win7, and it has simular customization options. It walks like Windows, talks like Windows, but is not windows, so I was looking at the wrong places (e.g. pinning programs in the taskbar).

    4. Some minor things
    Clicking Video's on the windows start menu look-a-like does not work, it is a bug. Evolution outlook replacement has a stupid dark windows background with grey letters, you need to dive into config files to get a white message text background.

    5. Speed
    Two observations: when comparing it on usage level (program start, boot time) it is not impressive at all compared to XP. When you realize what eye-candy you get in the user interface it is an improvement.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 10, 2014
  2. Gullible Jones

    Gullible Jones Registered Member

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    Disclaimer: I don't know anything about Zorin. I tend to use big-name distros, as I've seen a few small ones vanish or stagnate over the years. Zorin looks like... umm... Kubuntu with more pretty, basically?

    3 hours is an awfully long time to configure a Linux system, FWIW.

    Not sure how familiar you are with the Linux device node/mount point system? Zorin should use the same installer as Ubuntu, no?

    Wine is good for old games, not for much else in my experience. Thankfully I'm not tied to MS Office, but I've yet to find a satisfactory solution for it and other Windows only apps. Newer versions of Windows are slow under Virtualbox, and KVM needs hardware support, etc.

    Maybe the new cloud-based Office, or Google Docs... feh.

    (Wine is also slow BTW. I think that its being cross-platform has a cost in context switches, since it's using library calls to glibc or whatever rather than direct system calls. Lots and lots of overhead there I'll bet.)

    It's KDE, so you have to unlock the taskbar and put it in customize mode first. This is one of the clumsier parts of KDE.

    Videos -> video player -> probably needs gstreamer codecs or something that don't ship by default.

    Evolution -> Gnome/GTK3 "dark" color theme. Not sure why it would use that, or why they wouldn't use Claws or Seamonkey or some other client.

    Some suggestions...

    Disable blur plugin.
    Enable resize plugin.
    Set effects speed to "Fast."
    If all else fails, disable desktop effects completely.
    Also, use a lighter window decoration. KWin still has serious efficiency problems with the heavier decorations. Tabstrip, B II, Win9x, and Laptop are all pretty light. Oxygen is heavy, Plastique is *very* heavy.
     
  3. 1. same disclaimer I knew nothing of linux and Zorin-OS
    2. data backup was with a portable USB 2.0 disk with 14-15 MB write speed and 22-24 MB read speed
    3. fine tuning easily takes an hour (looking for games on Ubuntu, falling back to windows versions)
     
  4. Gullible Jones

    Gullible Jones Registered Member

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    Ah okay, I was thinking there might be some driver issue messing with I/O speeds.
     
  5. Palancar

    Palancar Registered Member

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    I played with Zorin for awhile. It was nice especially for any fresh windows "transplant" user. It was configured to keep items such as closing the screen on the right side upper corner, etc.... all windows familiar. Its 12.04 under the hood though. Flat out ran smooth out of the box driver-wise. I dare say that my laptop ran better on Zorin than the original windows OS ever did (7 Pro).

    Zorin was too limited for me though since I use LUKS WDE, and I wanted to make a full Linux transition. I figured that I may as well get used to where linux puts stuff and even things simple like closing screens on the upper left corner. Now when I get on a windows machine I keep having to pause and think about where stuff is. Its amazing how fast you transition because I was on windows for decades before using Linux.
     
  6. Yep, but I had to explain to 74 year old aunt either Windows 7 or Zorin-OS (her XP home died and I don't have install cd anymore), so this was the easiest way (giving access to default folders and programs).
     
  7. Palancar

    Palancar Registered Member

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    Just about perfect for what you needed. Zorin even comes with an XP "skin". Plus beyond that, since its linux 12.04 you don't have to worry about "cooties" from your Aunt's surfing around. I probably would have enabled UFW in default mode only and called it a day!!
     
  8. Thx, I enabled the firewal to block inbound (default off?).
     
  9. inka

    inka Registered Member

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    Oct 21, 2009
    Posts:
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    Zorin LOOKS like XP, but it sure doesn't match XP desktop functionality and flexibility.
    Many XP users will expect to be able to drag/drop rearrange startMenu entries, F2 to rename them, ability to create new submenus (categories) on-the-fly...

    For a relative who only boots to desktop, launches browser and checks Yahoo! Mail... sure, Zorin is a fine replacement.
     
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