BUT, I won't defend Windows 11 and Microsoft's general direction. I feel like there has been a slow cultural shift within Microsoft, from a core of fantastic engineers surrounding by marketing/sales, to the org's direction being set by marketing/sales UX be damned.

Plus it feels like a lot of the technical expertise retired out, and left a bunch of engineers scared to touch core systems instead preferring to build on top using Web tech. It means that Windows/Office stopped improving, and have actually both regressed significantly.

I've actually found myself recommending MacOS, particularly the prior generation of Macbook Airs which are absurdly powerful with absurd battery life for a fair price. Combine that with the lack of user hostility, and UX, that MacOS brings relative to Windows 11, and it is hard to ignore.

If it was tightly integrated into the OS I could sort of understand not mentioning its name, like you don't want "Foobar Control Panel" and "FizzBuzz Start Menu". But KDE Connect is a standalone app you can install even on Windows. And this is not just hiding the name, it's replacing it!

So, why the "rebrand"[2]? It feels like an attempt at stealing credit.

[1] https://github.com/ZorinOS/zorin-connect-android and https://github.com/ZorinOS/gnome-shell-extension-zorin-conne...

[2] https://github.com/ZorinOS/zorin-connect-android/issues/19

Hopefully that will last - Microsoft has caused more than enough damage at this point in time. Quality-wise I feel the new Win-releases are progressively getting worse, less and less caring what users may want.

I wonder how much of a bump other distros have seen in the same period.

https://blog.zorin.com/2025/11/18/test-the-upgrade-from-zori...

Thanks to their cooperation, the Year of the Linux Desktop really has finally arrived.

That said her requirements are _so_ simple that Debian with Chromium would probably satisfy 100% of her requirements which are ‘download documents from gmail and print them’.

The former just keeps me going with Ubuntu, but forces to still dual-boot Windows for some creative software I use that Ubuntu lacks (a certain DAW and a CAD modeller). The latter gives me an awesome (or so it seems) OS that is much closer in spirit to Ubuntu than to Windows and supports everything I need, but leaves me vendor-locked to whatever user-hostile directions Apple might take in the future.

I'd like to ask people who had been using both Ubuntu and MacOS, what would you advise? And MacOS users in particular, are you happy with the direction it has been evolving, and with that of Apple itself?

Seriously though, a per-country breakdown would've been very interesting to see.

They are grifters.

The simple fact is that they release open source software, much of which is licensed as GPL. They modify these programs from time to time to be compatible with ZorinOS, etc.

They refuse to release any of their sources sometimes, and when they do, they put takedowns and ban people from their community because they believe their paid-for ISOs are closed-source - which is not true.

If you think I'm wrong, mistaken, lying, etc. grab any ZorinOS ISO and go put it on a ZorinOS community website, such as Reddit and sit back and watch.

It's worth mentioning I find all of the ZorinOS downloads using DHT scan. I haven't touched them in a while, but I still find the entire situation perplexing. I have to imagine part of this issue is that the Chinese community is newer to FOSS and doesn't understand these longstanding ideas.

I never used it and had to look it up, but this post reminds of it. I think they might've charged for it also.

Here's a review thread from 2002 slashdot... https://linux.slashdot.org/story/02/03/18/1916248/lycoris-de....

Good skills. It will probably manage to Secure Boot and run, say, ESET (handy for audit points in the enterprise world).

These distros focus on aesthetics choice, but underneath they are always plagued by the same things, tiny maintainer teams completely overwhelmed with the task of managing a distribution. Leading to a great first impression, but an inevitable breakdown in usability.

Every single person would be better served by Kubuntu than Zorin. Simply because Kubuntu has far superior backing behind it.

There are hundreds of these weird distros, targeting different audiences and they are all terrible, because none of them have the actual capabilities of maintaining their distro.