Zorin OS 16 gets a Beta with 'the largest library of apps' available on any Linux desktop

Somebody should inform them post-haste about a certain little thingy called the AUR.

(j/k, I know that this is all marketing, and marketing describes the world how you wish it to look like for your target audience, not how it really is.)

> Zorin OS definitely screams "look at me!".

Not for too long, though; or your retinas might get incinerated.

This got me thinking about how much I'd like to read an article about what's it like to try and game on some of the less popular stalwarts of Linux. I'm talking about distros such as Mageia & Open Mandriva, Mepis, PCLinuxOS,AntiX & Tiny Core, Gentoo & Knoppix, or even Elive. (I'd try it out, but my slow internet would guarantee the whole project would take way, way too long.)

As far as Zorin goes? Meh. Nothing outstandingly wrong with it, I expect, but I don't find anything very interesting or unique in it either. Obviously there're plenty of folks who dig Zorin, and that's great. Linux is about choices. I just can't get excited about the glitzy crass glitter of another Gnome derived desktop, even if it has "Jelly Mode."

Somebody should inform them post-haste about a certain little thingy called the AUR.

(j/k, I know that this is all marketing, and marketing describes the world how you wish it to look like for your target audience, not how it really is.)

Granted, AUR isn't exactly an official repository, and I wonder what percentage of them are unmaintained or duplicates. That's always been my problem with AUR, it's convenient in many ways, but at the same time you shouldn't blindly trust installing things from it (though you can argue that you shouldn't blindly install stuff anyhow...), and most of the time need to look at patches applied, and hope that the person who made the PKGBUILD will continue to support newer versions / build reqs. It can especially become messy when you always have $pkgname and $pkgname-git, I've even seen it where some still are $pkgname-svn with all three in the AUR...

This got me thinking about how much I'd like to read an article about what's it like to try and game on some of the less popular stalwarts of Linux. I'm talking about distros such as Mageia & Open Mandriva, Mepis, PCLinuxOS,AntiX & Tiny Core, Gentoo & Knoppix, or even Elive. (I'd try it out, but my slow internet would guarantee the whole project would take way, way too long.)

Not sure if it counts, but I ran Sparky Linux for about 4 years on my gaming machine. It's debian testing based.

I don't think there is much difference when the OS is based on another distro upstream. After all the upstream is mostly the same. Most of the issues I had were minor, quality of life, type issues. Presumably due to a smaller dev team, testing base, etc. Everything worked fine. But when something broke, you were a little more on your own.

Hope that helps

Somebody should inform them post-haste about a certain little thingy called the AUR.

(j/k, I know that this is all marketing, and marketing describes the world how you wish it to look like for your target audience, not how it really is.)

Granted, AUR isn't exactly an official repository, and I wonder what percentage of them are unmaintained or duplicates. That's always been my problem with AUR, it's convenient in many ways, but at the same time you shouldn't blindly trust installing things from it (though you can argue that you shouldn't blindly install stuff anyhow...), and most of the time need to look at patches applied, and hope that the person who made the PKGBUILD will continue to support newer versions / build reqs. It can especially become messy when you always have $pkgname and $pkgname-git, I've even seen it where some still are $pkgname-svn with all three in the AUR...

That's very true, I maintain a few AUR packages myself so I've been frustrated with what you describe multiple times, both as a user and as a packager. But even if you remove all the unmaintained, duplicate or just plain badly packaged packages from the AUR, it still contains tons of stuff that you can't as easily find in most other distros. And in my opinion, since the AUR itself as a repo is a creation of the Arch developers, and since it operates through Arch's own server infrastructure, and since it utilizes Arch's own package building process (the PKGBUILDs), and since there's even official guidelines on the Arch Wiki on how to properly build and package an AUR package, I'd reckon it's integrated enough to count as an official part of the distro.

Now let's see: Zorin claim they have "support for Snaps, Flatpaks with Flathub, the Ubuntu and Zorin OS APT repositories and that's on top of supporting installs from .deb and AppImage packages too". Snaps, Flatpaks and AppImages all work across practically every distro out there, Arch included, so they're nothing special. Ubuntu APT repo and .deb packages? Well, Zorin is an Ubuntu derived distro, so of course they're going to be supporting Ubuntu and Debian packages, so nothing special about that as well. Zorin APT repo? Wow, so they even have their own private repo, color me surprised!

So I maintain the position that when it comes to the amount of packages, Zorin is just like any other distro, and like most other distros it still lacks the AUR :P

Somebody should inform them post-haste about a certain little thingy called the AUR.

(j/k, I know that this is all marketing, and marketing describes the world how you wish it to look like for your target audience, not how it really is.)

Granted, AUR isn't exactly an official repository, and I wonder what percentage of them are unmaintained or duplicates. That's always been my problem with AUR, it's convenient in many ways, but at the same time you shouldn't blindly trust installing things from it (though you can argue that you shouldn't blindly install stuff anyhow...), and most of the time need to look at patches applied, and hope that the person who made the PKGBUILD will continue to support newer versions / build reqs. It can especially become messy when you always have $pkgname and $pkgname-git, I've even seen it where some still are $pkgname-svn with all three in the AUR...

That's very true, I maintain a few AUR packages myself so I've been frustrated with what you describe multiple times, both as a user and as a packager. But even if you remove all the unmaintained, duplicate or just plain badly packaged packages from the AUR, it still contains tons of stuff that you can't as easily find in most other distros. And in my opinion, since the AUR itself as a repo is a creation of the Arch developers, and since it operates through Arch's own server infrastructure, and since it utilizes Arch's own package building process (the PKGBUILDs), and since there's even official guidelines on the Arch Wiki on how to properly build and package an AUR package, I'd reckon it's integrated enough to count as an official part of the distro.

Now let's see: Zorin claim they have "support for Snaps, Flatpaks with Flathub, the Ubuntu and Zorin OS APT repositories and that's on top of supporting installs from .deb and AppImage packages too". Snaps, Flatpaks and AppImages all work across practically every distro out there, Arch included, so they're nothing special. Ubuntu APT repo and .deb packages? Well, Zorin is an Ubuntu derived distro, so of course they're going to be supporting Ubuntu and Debian packages, so nothing special about that as well. Zorin APT repo? Wow, so they even have their own private repo, color me surprised!

So I maintain the position that when it comes to the amount of packages, Zorin is just like any other distro, and like most other distros it still lacks the AUR :P

I should start a menu project for Debian where you can search through it and there are build scripts that fetch the source repo, installs the dependencies, then compiles the software. This would be basically the same as AUR for debian based systems, but would respect binary vs source compiled, as it would install by default in /usr/local/ Not a terrible idea, and would make Debian have even more stuff for it. :)

AUR is awesome, and I don't want to say it's a terrible idea, it's actually awesome and it's my second OS on my tri-boot system (which is Debian / Arch / Windows 10). But I think the idea of 'most packages' should be 'most binary packages'. But ZorinOS is wrong there anyhow, as Debian and all their forks also support Snap / Flatpak / AppImages, so not sure why they think they're special.

Arch also supports all of that as well :P Well I'm pretty sure it also supports snaps, but who would want them?

To be fair, flatpak/snapchat on the RPM side are not the only options either, we have OpenSUSEs build system which allows (almost) anyone to create packages suitable for various RPM based distros.

Fedora also provides COPR which allows people to add additional packages easily.

That and of course Snapchat/Flatpak is always available. So yup. This one may be nothing more than marketing.

I mean, I begrudgingly* switched from XFCE to Mate and had to use a COPR repo for a missing item just the other day.

*I love XFCE, but unfortunately with my AMD graphics card it causes a system crash when plugging my third monitor, mate doesn't crash so.. unfortunately switched.

Still Fedora though 👍 but missing some of the customization options of XFCE 😅


Last edited by BlackBloodRum on 17 April 2021 at 11:21 am UTC

To be fair, flatpak/snapchat on the RPM side are not the only options either, we have OpenSUSEs build system which allows (almost) anyone to create packages suitable for various RPM based distros.

OBS supports building for Debian based systems as well. That is where the lutris package was up until recently when it was uploaded to Debian Sid.

I mean, I begrudgingly* switched from XFCE to Mate

Well, I know you will be looking for ways to get back to your preferred desktop, but as a Mate user I'd like to say I hope it treats you well while you're a refugee.

Still Fedora though 👍 but missing some of the customization options of XFCE 😅

Does XFCE 4.16 make a difference? I couldn't wait for the official Fedora release, so I upgraded to the 34 beta for 4.16. No issues so far.

OBS supports building for Debian based systems as well. That is where the lutris package was up until recently when it was uploaded to Debian Sid.

Yup, it's very useful for anyone looking for a simple multi-distro way of distributing packages

Well, I know you will be looking for ways to get back to your preferred desktop, but as a Mate user I'd like to say I hope it treats you well while you're a refugee.

Well.. so far so good. I mean it does miss a few things I really like about XFCE, for example, per-monitor wallpapers, or per-workspace wallpapers, "intelligent" panel hiding (hides when window is maximized, but shows when not), ability to edit the Stick/Min/Max/Close window button layout/settings etc all of which are out of the box supported on XFCE.

Ofc, these are a personal preference thing and ofc you can't expect all environments to be the same. It's also possible I missed a few settings.. but I did spend about 3 hours just going through settings editing things (even in dconf) and forcing it to allow me to disable gnome-keyring in favour of KeepassXC which works perfectly once done.

It's actually throwing me back some memories here though.. I switched to XFCE back before Gnome 3 was released, so I was using G2 prior to switching to XFCE. I think I switched around the 4.6 release period which dates to around 2009.

With that said, I've been able to almost get mate to mimic my previous XFCE setup, using a python script which auto changes wallpaper on workspace switch and hydrapaper for per-monitor wallpapers.

But I do feel a bit restricted, and it feels super weird going back to something I left years ago. I've only been on mate since Tuesday so.. yeah. I did try KDE because of mate restrictions for about 10 minutes before uninstalling it again.. then went back to Mate and decided to mod it a bit further. So I can happily say mate is better than KDE (for my preference)

But at the same time it's a relief to be able to turn my TV on again without my GUI crashing

It also appears to be very stable and so far not a single crash or bug encountered (that I noticed). So, I'm giving it as fair a try as I can

Does XFCE 4.16 make a difference? I couldn't wait for the official Fedora release, so I upgraded to the 34 beta for 4.16. No issues so far.

I've not tried 4.16 yet, I'm still on Fedora 33 with XFCE 4.14. I usually try to avoid beta releases best I can. My system needs to be a bit like a workhorse, sure it can play games, but I also need it for managing my business, so I prefer to wait a little bit and have something a little bit more stable

I will try it once F34 has had a few weeks of people reporting distro-breaking bugs after stable release :P

I have never understood why people use Fedora on anything that they wish to remain stable. It always seems to break mid-cycle for me, and in terribly fun ways that require a re-install.

It is the only distribution I have seen that will change kernel versions within the same version that claims to be a not rolling release. I think the longest I have been able to keep it working for on a system was a month on a tablet for me before a huge glaring bug appeared on it and I ended up installing something else.

It is a nice system out of the box when a new version is released, it just breaks as they update things. Like RHEL will generally not bump versions and will stick with the same version over the course of its life cycle with backporting patches. This is the reason RHEL is used everywhere for serious stuff.

I guess now that Centos Stream is a thing, maybe Fedora will be more stable though.

Well, for my desktop I've been using Fedora for so long it feels like forever. However, I tend to pick the best distro for the job.

These days for example I have "less important" servers running Debian stable, and more critical servers running RHEL (actual RHEL, not CentOS since the whole shakeup) meanwhile my laptop runs Arch (This one has broken a few times..).

Generally if a system is extremely critical it will be running an enterprise grade OS.

As for my personal desktop, I do prefer to have something quite a bit newer in terms of kernel and mesa, I mean if I tried running my ATI Radeon 5600 XT on Debian stable or RHEL it probably wouldn't be such a great experience, which is stable on Fedora 33 (but not 32).. except for the whole XFCE crashing thing.. which I thought was a kernel or mesa thing until I tried a different UI lol.

With that said, I've never had to reinstall my Fedora systems. Things have broken, mostly nvidia stuff, which is why I went ATI Radeon this time round. Since going ATI I've not really had anything break yet aside from the UI crashing, but it's been doing that since I built my system late last year.

This got me thinking about how much I'd like to read an article about what's it like to try and game on some of the less popular stalwarts of Linux. I'm talking about distros such as Mageia & Open Mandriva, Mepis, PCLinuxOS,AntiX & Tiny Core, Gentoo & Knoppix, or even Elive. (I'd try it out, but my slow internet would guarantee the whole project would take way, way too long.)

Not sure if it counts, but I ran Sparky Linux for about 4 years on my gaming machine. It's debian testing based.

I don't think there is much difference when the OS is based on another distro upstream. After all the upstream is mostly the same. Most of the issues I had were minor, quality of life, type issues. Presumably due to a smaller dev team, testing base, etc. Everything worked fine. But when something broke, you were a little more on your own.

Hope that helps

It's certainly the kind of thing I'd like to hear more about. I think we all could benefit by listening to each other's tales of woe and wonder gaming on obscure or niche distros such as Sparky. For example, I just hopped over to distrowatch.com to read up on Sparky. The review I found did not make Sparky sound good, but then you gamed on it for 4 years, so clearly there was something about it that kept you using it.

Thanks for your comment. I might reach out in the future if I decide to write such an article.

Peace :)

Well, for my desktop I've been using Fedora for so long it feels like forever. However, I tend to pick the best distro for the job.

These days for example I have "less important" servers running Debian stable, and more critical servers running RHEL (actual RHEL, not CentOS since the whole shakeup) meanwhile my laptop runs Arch (This one has broken a few times..).

Generally if a system is extremely critical it will be running an enterprise grade OS.

As for my personal desktop, I do prefer to have something quite a bit newer in terms of kernel and mesa, I mean if I tried running my ATI Radeon 5600 XT on Debian stable or RHEL it probably wouldn't be such a great experience, which is stable on Fedora 33 (but not 32).. except for the whole XFCE crashing thing.. which I thought was a kernel or mesa thing until I tried a different UI lol.

With that said, I've never had to reinstall my Fedora systems. Things have broken, mostly nvidia stuff, which is why I went ATI Radeon this time round. Since going ATI I've not really had anything break yet aside from the UI crashing, but it's been doing that since I built my system late last year.

Debian Stable would be fine, you'd most likely just need to install the newer kernel through the backports repo. Debian has gotten a lot better in that respect the last release or two.

This got me thinking about how much I'd like to read an article about what's it like to try and game on some of the less popular stalwarts of Linux. I'm talking about distros such as Mageia & Open Mandriva, Mepis, PCLinuxOS,AntiX & Tiny Core, Gentoo & Knoppix, or even Elive. (I'd try it out, but my slow internet would guarantee the whole project would take way, way too long.)

Not sure if it counts, but I ran Sparky Linux for about 4 years on my gaming machine. It's debian testing based.

I don't think there is much difference when the OS is based on another distro upstream. After all the upstream is mostly the same. Most of the issues I had were minor, quality of life, type issues. Presumably due to a smaller dev team, testing base, etc. Everything worked fine. But when something broke, you were a little more on your own.

Hope that helps

It's certainly the kind of thing I'd like to hear more about. I think we all could benefit by listening to each other's tales of woe and wonder gaming on obscure or niche distros such as Sparky. For example, I just hopped over to distrowatch.com to read up on Sparky. The review I found did not make Sparky sound good, but then you gamed on it for 4 years, so clearly there was something about it that kept you using it.

Thanks for your comment. I might reach out in the future if I decide to write such an article.

Peace :)

Thank you for the kind comment. I'd be more than happy to help out in the future.

have never understood why people use Fedora on anything that they wish to remain stable. It always seems to break mid-cycle for me, and in terribly fun ways that require a re-install.

I've always held the impression that Fedora was rather stable. It's on my bucket list of OS's to try.

To be fair, I think every major distro runs into it's issues. I like my OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, but I've learned to never upgrade the kernel if it's first in a new series unless I want to live in the command line for a few days waiting for the graphics drivers to get a new update.

PS, I think this is literally the most polite "distro war" conversation I've ever seen. It's so nice to be here sometimes.


Last edited by denyasis on 20 April 2021 at 1:46 am UTC

I've always held the impression that Fedora was rather stable.

That's not the impression I've had. Their server OS is stable. Far as I can tell, Fedora is Red Hat's cutting edge distro where they try all the new stuff. It tends to be quite up to date, but I wouldn't figure it for stable.

Somebody should inform them post-haste about a certain little thingy called the AUR.

(j/k, I know that this is all marketing, and marketing describes the world how you wish it to look like for your target audience, not how it really is.)

Yeah well and the target audience are windows switcher who dont necesarily want the hustle with aur, i know with manjaro for example it is pretty easy to install aur stuff, but still there is many software wich does in fact not run properly on manjaro (on arch is does, but there is no support for manjaro here). I am myself running manjaro and i am really happy about it, but for my parents zorin is a perfect fit.