My machine was once VERY capable. It's not a top of the line gaming box but it's still capable and shows no signs of crapping out yet. Can't run windows 11 but it's not worth throwing away my computer over.
this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
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Same boat, my computer is basically the computer my wife built probably about 12 years ago before we got together, it was pretty beefy for its time. I basically stuck her old components in a new box (and also stuck a newer graphics card in it because I got a really good deal on a used 2060)
Still manages to run most games out there on acceptable (to me) settings.
Made the switch to Linux about a week ago, no major issues, some things are arguably running better now. It's not without its hiccups but so far things have gone pretty smoothly.
EDIT: went with Mint over Zorin though.
I am ashamed to say that I did use windows 11 for longer than I should have.
More!! More! Everybody get others into Linux Mint and Pop OS Cosmic as well!! I am doing my part if we want better we must grow the community
I tried Mint and it's just too buggy to use.
What video card do you have? Do you plan to use the machine for gaming?
Bruh ain't no way people are choosing Zorin OS over all the available options.
If this is a result of people searching "best windows like distro", they're profiting off of a windows theme for GNOME, not even a full DE.
You can achieve the same thing with zero effort on any distro because DEs and themes aren't tied to a distro.
You can achieve the same thing with zero effort on any distro because DEs and themes aren't tied to a distro
No, YOU can. But for the average Windows user this is far from "zero effort". Just the fact that Zorin OS will automatically run Windows executables through wine without the user having to set it up is a huge deal for people coming from Windows who want their PC to "just work" without fiddling around
Bringo. I started trying to learn how computers compute in my 40's, after using them essentially since childhood. Still a dumbfuck. There is a huge class of users who are genuinely interested in... Having a computer - they are neat. The percentage of those people who also want to not be product-fucked on the regular by unimaginably powerful companies is pretty substantial.
It's odd to look at Linux and open source communities that shame others, and diminish the possible entry point of a user hoping to escape the purgatory of Microsoft's/apple etc. whims. What's the goal? Many people are stupid; I'm pretty stupid. Help us more smarter.
What are some experiments I can do to learn grep a little? How do I internalize the file system in this OS better? How do I know I fucked something up, rather than found a loose nut in the software?
Rtfm. Hahah cheers
You’re bang on. Or at least described my exact situation. Biggest issue was having windows 11 on my new machine by default. Been thinking about making the switch for a while, but don’t want to take the time and effort to learn a whole new hobby. Between the forced AI in win 11 and the posts about Zorin today it pushed me into looking into it. I’m going to do the free one after the holiday. If it’s cool I’ll upgrade to the pro. Not that I super need it, but it’d be exciting to have all the extra software. Plus if it’s that good I’m happy to support them.
I think you vastly overestimate the amount of effort most people are willing to expend for things like this.
marketing is important. more important than a good product even.
That "780,000 Windows users" number is just made up for the title as clickbait.
That number is never mentioned in the original blog post.
All they said is they have a million downloads and "over 78% of these downloads came from Windows". At no fucking point did they imply that means 780k unique users. There's no reason to assume that everyone who downloaded the ISO actually went on to install it.
They also want $48 for their Pro version which comes with a "professional-grade creative suite" consisting of... GIMP, Blender, Inkscape, Kdenlive, and... Audacity (?), going off the screenshots they show:
click to show
They're shamelessly reselling free software as some sort of comprehensive package, and it's not even their own distro. They're just piggybacking on Ubuntu.
And their premium support only covers... installation?
click to show
But hey, they support this edition with updates until 2029!
click to show
Of course, pay no attention to the coincidence that the Ubuntu LTS version it's based on also hits end-of-life around then:
click to show
So I'm not really sure what you're actually getting out of this purchase besides some extra themes and some really formulaic desktop wallpapers, and a couple proprietary apps. They say they "contribute to upstream Open Source projects" but offer zero evidence; their site doesn't even have any Github/Gitlab links.
Its rare to see someone with brain in here
I guarantee there are PLENTY of people jumping the commercial ship to try Linux of many flavors
I'm not saying there's no people trying it, or that the actual number is negligible. I'm just saying I highly fucking doubt that 780,000 people have actually installed Zorin OS in the last month.
Love how you just completely skipped over the entire thrust of the comment and then churned out some blithe remark.
I know some who went to Linux and a few who moved to Mac. But no one is seeing Win11 and saying "oh man, I gotta get in on that".
I jumped in to the Win11 beta and really liked it, they finally got most of the control panel into the new settings architecture and I never once had to dig deep into things to adjust something small, a lot of stuff that took finagling just worked.
And now I fucking hate it. The release version is jammed so full of bullshit features and useless AI junk that it is an active hindrance to whatever I'm trying to do. And more and more stupid fucking bugs bubble up in to the desktop and never get addressed, all while I get pop up after pop up urging me to try some bullshit new feature.
I already had one foot into Linux with my desktop but kept this because it was a Surface and nice at some point, but my next buy has to be a Linux 2-in-1, I can't deal with Microsoft's horseshit any longer.
I do want to emphasize that for the moments that it was unadulterated by rent-seeking, the new Win11 actually was kinda great.
I left Windows for Linux in the early 2010s. Windows was shit then, but this is a new level of shit. I don't know how anyone does it. After discovering the freedom Linux can provide I could never go back to Microsoft.
In case you weren't aware there's an ongoing project adding Surface hardware support to Linux kernel. It's in a pretty mature state, with most of the features already implemented and working (here is a full breakdown per device). I've been using it on my SP6 for a few years with zero issues.
It might be worth a look until you get to buying new hardware.
Thank you for this. I haven't figured out what to do with my Surface yet, but this sounds promising.
Posting from a Surface Go 2 running Debian Trixie with Gnome+Phosh. Everything except the webcam just works on the stock kernel (for webcam support you need the patched Surface kernel). Vanilla Gnome is fine, too, if you use a hardware keyboard. I run Phosh because the onsceen keyboard is much better than Gnome's.
Kde is working really well on linux-surface. Had to change the OSK to maliit(?) but everything I need works. I haven't tried to install the camera driver because I never needed it. Stylus works really well ootb. Use it with Krita. Screen rotation works great and I use it as an e-reader. I choose an easy arch distro because disk encryption works with the native keyboard although it has been some time since i tried a non rolling distro and other distros could have addressed the startup keyboard issues by now. 10/10 would recommend.
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