SiriusHardware
Veteran Member
Zorin OS 6 appears to use a customised desktop with - as far as I can tell - a lot of Gnome 2 under the bonnet / hood. It's quite light on its feet as shown by the fact that I can still surf online on the single core 32-bit 1.6GHz Duron system without any problems.
I'm in a good position to make a direct comparison between Windows XP SP 3 and Zorin OS 6 since I have two identical Dell Intel Atom (1.6Ghz / 1GB) netbooks, one with XP installed, the other Zorin OS 6, so I can literally race them against each other. Zorin 6 comes out best for being much lighter on resources and generally a lot more sprightly. On the other hand there are some essential bits of software which I use which are only available for Windows.
When I started to use Zorin 6 it was, even then, an old distro (It had been in a box of Linux Magazine coverdiscs for a while before I decided to try it). Even then, and before I was aware of Zorin OS 9, there was a general Vibe about Zorin OS trying to present a UI which was as Windows-like as possible for people who loved XP but had had the XP rug yanked from underneath them by big bad MS. Of course you can still use XP offline and, with some care, online although the list of potential security risks from doing so are probably still growing daily.
'Normal' Gnome 2 (As used by standard Debian 6) is one of the Linux desktops I do like, but unfortunately even Debian went to the stripped-down Gnome 3 in Debian 7. I don't know what it was with a wide swathe of developers across different OSes conspiring to destroy what had been perfectly decent, well liked desktop user interfaces beforehand, all at about the same time. (Gnome 2 -> Gnome 3, Gnome-> Unity and Windows classic -> Windows Modern UI are three offenders which spring to mind).
I'm in a good position to make a direct comparison between Windows XP SP 3 and Zorin OS 6 since I have two identical Dell Intel Atom (1.6Ghz / 1GB) netbooks, one with XP installed, the other Zorin OS 6, so I can literally race them against each other. Zorin 6 comes out best for being much lighter on resources and generally a lot more sprightly. On the other hand there are some essential bits of software which I use which are only available for Windows.
When I started to use Zorin 6 it was, even then, an old distro (It had been in a box of Linux Magazine coverdiscs for a while before I decided to try it). Even then, and before I was aware of Zorin OS 9, there was a general Vibe about Zorin OS trying to present a UI which was as Windows-like as possible for people who loved XP but had had the XP rug yanked from underneath them by big bad MS. Of course you can still use XP offline and, with some care, online although the list of potential security risks from doing so are probably still growing daily.
'Normal' Gnome 2 (As used by standard Debian 6) is one of the Linux desktops I do like, but unfortunately even Debian went to the stripped-down Gnome 3 in Debian 7. I don't know what it was with a wide swathe of developers across different OSes conspiring to destroy what had been perfectly decent, well liked desktop user interfaces beforehand, all at about the same time. (Gnome 2 -> Gnome 3, Gnome-> Unity and Windows classic -> Windows Modern UI are three offenders which spring to mind).
Last edited: