All the negative comments here have nothing of substance to say. It’s like Baader-Meinhof for pessimistic pricks.
I’m interested in seeing some impressions that aren’t “I keep hearing about it so it’s bad”
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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Marketing is everything. I bet if Fedora or Mint or shoot, even Arch spent even a sliver of what Zorin is on marketing, they'd get the downloads too.
My guess is a lot of people give Zorin a try, and find out it's both Freemium and also kinda jank, and end up with somethign else later.
I find it weird that I didn't hear about Zorin before it suddenly got big. Maybe it was advertised to normies, maybe Linux communities are just massive circlejerks that don't represent the userbase.
Just curious about how they came seemingly out of nowhere.
I installed Zorin Lite on my dad's old computer back in 2022 because W10 wouldn't run properly. They've been around for a while and advertised themselves as having a very Windows like ux.
It's a perfectly serviceable OS, he has used it all these years without ever having to touch the terminal.
Their numbers are highly sus.
But if you've got a paid tier, it just makes business sense to make it sound like the next best thing.
Yeah it's like fedora or Ubuntu. But it feels (particularly from the other reply to my comment) to be the result of guerilla marketing
When I was doing web searches for distro research just before Win 10 EOL (and before Zorin exploded), Zorin was one of the top recommendations that I repeatedly saw from users in Linux communities when people asked for distro recommendations.
Zorin was also the top recommendation given to me by distrochooser.de.
So I'm not surprised that many people leaving Windows ended up there.
I made a short list of distros to try and Zorin was very buggy for me (possibly because they just did a major release at that time) and I don't like GNOME, so I ultimately ended up on CachyOS.
Zorin sure has spent some money on press lately.
interesting I don't see Zorin in the Steam Hardware Survey
The smallest distro in their list is Linux Mint 22.1 64 bit at 1.42%
(Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit is at 7.85%)
Zorin is nothing but marketing bullshit, and ripping off OSS and branding it.
Might report as Ubuntu
I thought Mint was the familiar and accessible entry point for users leaving Windows… guess I’m out of the loop these days
Me and my tin foil hat feels like it's guerilla marketing. Given how many people in the know feel the rise to prominence is sudden I feel I should investigate at some point
The first release was 15 years ago, this isn't new, they put themselves out there as a windows alternative on day one.
Zorin is solid and easy. Would def recommend to any new users from Mac/Windows.
So are stockholders going to figure out Nadella is killing Microsoft? Or will this be another Elon situation where the company loses customers, but the stock price continues to rise?
nah they no longer care about retail. the real mullah is made in corporate and B2B.
That's the driver behind every enshittificatiom behavior.
Or will this be another Elon situation where the company loses customers, but the stock price continues to rise?
ABSOLUTELY NOT! You forgot the 18 gazillion dollar pay package for doing a bad job!