 The beauty of the Linux desktop world is that you have everything all the way from A to Z or Z, whether it's Artinix or ZorinOS. At one end you have Artinix where you have to install everything almost from scratch and then you have ZorinOS where you get a very well packaged distribution where you can get started as soon as you install it. I must admit that I have not used ZorinOS as my primary distribution. I use Artinix and OpenSUSE, but ZorinOS is a distribution that I always keep close to my heart whenever it comes to recommending it to Linux, not Linux, but Windows or macOS users. Now, it's a totally different question, why would a macOS or a Windows user want to migrate to Linux? We'll talk about that maybe in some time later, but if you are planning to migrate then ZorinOS is a great distribution or if you are an average Linux user and you want a distribution or an operatic system which is very well polished then ZorinOS is the right distribution for you. Unlike Windows and macOS, you don't get Linux-based distributions pre-installed on the premium hardware that you can get in the market. You can not just walk into Best Buy or Target or you can order it from Amazon.com. There are companies like System76, ZorinOS, and Purism which offer Linux-based laptops, but that's one set of hardware. But if you want to go out and buy Dell, actually Dell comes with one too, but the point is that not every hardware that you're looking for comes with Linux pre-installed. So you have to go through the installation process and this is something that can be a deal maker or a deal breaker. If it is really hard to install an operating system or a machine, you will not go through the whole process and you will go to something which is simpler and easier or something which comes pre-installed and that's where ZorinOS shines because it's very easy to install. So I installed it on my system and it took me under five to six minutes to install the whole distribution. Of course it depends on your hard drive, your RAM, and the USB that you're using to install it. If you're using a very old USB 2.0 or something like that, of course the transfer speed is slow so it will take longer. If you're using an old hard drive with less than 5200 RPM, of course it will slow. I'm not only using SSD but it's PCI-Express SSD and I have 32GB of RAM on this machine and the latest processor so everything was smooth and fine. Now once the installation process is done, the second step is the first interaction with the distribution. So let's open it up and see. And here you go. Of course I changed the wallpaper and if you're spending too much time on looking at the wallpaper you're using your system for the wrong reasons. Here you go. It looks more or less like Windows 10 to be honest with you but just take a moment and look at it. It looks so beautiful. One of the issues that I have with most Linux based distributions is that they don't focus on look and feel and I think that look and feel is really important. There are certain distributions that take a lot of pain to do it right. Of course elementary OS is one of the best distributions out there that is known for being the most polished distributions. You have paid a lot of attention and thought to it. Pop OS is also good and Zorin OS that although shines there is one of the most beautiful distributions. When it comes to the main student distribution among Debian, Fedora and OpenSuzet, OpenSuzet does incredible job at integrating the whole desktop environment with the operating system itself and it looks beautiful out of the box. That's one of the most beautiful main stream distribution out there. The user experience is really important. If you go to watch a movie, you sit in a theater and you want to sit in a recliner with some popcorn and coke and soda and enjoy the movie on IMAX or what is IMAX right? A screen, like a massive screen. Just imagine the experience where there is chaos on the ticket line. You cannot buy tickets online. You have to stand in a big chaotic. There is no line. You have to just struggle with each other to just get a ticket and you may not even get tickets next to each other. Then there is no clear where to get soda or popcorn. You have once again, you have to fight to get popcorn and soda and they all only take cash. So you have to carry some cash and then you're running out of changes. Then there is no sealed environment. You have to just struggle to find the seat next to each other or you have to argue with other customers, hey, can we sit together? And then seats are all creaky and broken. The screen is not good. Movie is great. You're going to watch Infinity War, but screen is also not good. Sound is not good. So the whole user experience is bad. The movie is good. Will you enjoy it? No. Would you sit in a chair, which is not very comfortable? You just have to sit and write a story. So why should you care about the chair? But my point is that the user experience really matters. Same is the case with computers. I really care about the phone that I use to write my story. Actually, I set up the light. I set up some music and then I fired up an application with the right phone when I work on my novel. The environment, the MBS is really important for me. That's why people go to the street and relax in parks. I mean, of course, in the US, we are always rushing, so we don't take a moment to actually sit down and relax. But when I lived in Belgium, you'll see the people, they go in the park. That's the whole concept of picnic game from French. They go, sit in the park, bring a sandwich and wine. They put a sheet, open the basket, take the sandwich out, sit with their loved ones and just enjoy in the sun. They enjoy life. We never get a chance to enjoy life here in the US. Game is with most of distribution. They are chaotic like the movie theater that I told you about. But Zorin OS is like Beijing Park. You enjoy it and you can see it right in front of my eyes. Anyway, it's just a launcher, just a menu. Let's actually go inside the system and see how things look in there. So let's open settings. And as you can see, everything is neatly organized, personal hardware system. I was struggling with a lot of distribution that they come with Nome or even in some case of Plasma. I was playing with Linux Mint and it was impossible to find. Displayed was buried under general settings. Well, it's hard. We're just show it in front of me because there are certain things that we need access immediately, especially if you're using Linux based distribution on a high DPI system. The first thing you want to do is configure the scaling right. Otherwise, everything is either too small or too big. But Zorin OS, everything is skills very well. As you can see right here, everything looks neat and beautiful. I want Bluetooth. It's there display. It's there keyboards, there networks, there power settings, there theme, there everything that you want is there. I love it. And you can see, look and feel. It's very polished. It's as polished as Mac OS. Actually, Windows 10 is also starting to look good these days. So let's look at the application that I use. So the first thing that I do, it could be different. In your case, is I fire up a browser because without internet, what are you going to do on your system? Unless and until you're J.R. Martin. So you may be using, what is your word of star, I think? To write Game of Thrones? I mean, that's what I do when I'm working on a novel. I don't need a browser. I just have to sit down and write. But the first thing you do is a browser. So let's see what browsers they have. So it comes with Chromium. By default, most Linux distributions choose Chromium instead of Chrome. But the problem with the Chromium is that if you want to do things like Netflix, it doesn't come with the DRM tool, which allows you to watch any movies. So for example, I want to watch it and it throws this page. I cannot watch it. If it was Firefox, maybe I will be because Firefox on Linux offers additional option to do that. But you have to enable it on macOS and Windows. It comes by default. So yes, Chromium is good for Google Docs and everything else, but I cannot watch movies on Amazon Prime or Netflix using it. So I will need some of the browser, which will be Chrome and Firefox. But let's look at the other use case, which is text editor. And this is, I'm guessing, G-Edit. Right, it's G-Edit, version 3.18.3. And look at the implementation and theme. It looks so beautiful. It's minimalistic. Because when I'm looking at a text editor, I don't want to see all the nonsense of buttons and I just want to see plain white paper where I can start writing stories. Actually, one of the reasons I love macOS is the full screen zoom support. Because when you click on that option, everything else disappear. All you see is that user space for your application. So when I'm writing on any text editor on other than Windows, no, not Windows, Microsoft Office, everything else disappears. I use sublime text. And I also use Ulysses on Mac. The reason I use sublime text is it's cross platform. We'll talk about the later. Then everything else disappears. All you see is a white paper and your text. On Linux, I think KD does support full screen, but it's a bit of work. But here you see all you see is white screen and you can start writing. I love it. So my second use case is a text editor that's taken care of. The third thing that I do is RSS feed editor. Actually, I have moved to Feedly because Feedly makes it very easy to keep a track, tab on all the sites and Google alerts for news. On macOS, Feedly comes as an application so I can very easily install it and work on it without relying on a web browser. Another thing that I use is Twitter so that I can promote my stories on all the Twitter platforms. That's pretty much what I do on Linux machine. As I have been very transparent that I use all three platforms. I use Windows 10, I use macOS and I use Windows because I do a lot of filmmaking. Actually, I'll be editing this video also on a macOS machine because I shouldn't 4K and this is just solo camera, but other recording that I do, especially the videos, I use three cameras and there is no way on the Linux based video editing software which can handle three video footage and two microphone footage on FCPX, which is Final Code Pro X and Adobe Premiere. They both support multi-cam where I can put all the clips together and very easily edit. I'll talk about that later. Windows has its own advantages, macOS has its own advantages, and Linux has its own advantages. So what I do is I use the right tool for the right job. For my writing work and web browsing, I mostly use likes. So these are the three or four use cases that I told you and ZorinOS is able to handle them. But as I said, I need different applications. So let's see how to install Chrome on Zorin. Can I do it from the software manager? So do they have any software manager there? Software, so I think they're using Nome, software manager there, yes. And let's see what is it about? It is software, yeah, it's Nome. So let's see if they have Chrome there. And no, it's not there, no surprises. None of the Linux distribution offer Chrome. Do they have Firefox? Yes, so let's install. So they have Quantum as well as the good old Firefox. So let's install, and I have to enter my password. So I'm installing Firefox now. Let's see if they have Tweetdeck there. But there may be other clients which can handle such kind of workload. Exactly, and they are there. I need to install Chrome. Why? Because I also use Google Docs to write my story which I can share with my editors because it's make it easier. And Chrome works better with a lot of shortcuts on Google Docs, because Zorin OS is a Debian based Ubuntu based distribution. So we have to install 64-bit package there. There should be a PPA that I can easily add so that I can keep it updated all the time. So I simply downloaded Chromium just like you would do on Windows Word, double click on it, and it is going to install it now. It did not, okay, I was waiting for the password. It asked for the password, and I'm all set to install Chromium. It's installed, it's a matter of seconds. Now, while writing, I did not mention LibreOffice. Usually I do all my work in sublime text and save all my file in DocTex file. The reason is that I have been burned before where both LibreOffice and Microsoft Office corrupted my files. So I actually lost one of my shortest stories that I was writing. After that, I decided I will not save my files in any of these formats because I moved between platforms. So now I save all of my work in DocTex file. When I do need to, of course, you will be doing formatting or when I'm sending it, then I use either LibreOffice or Pages or Microsoft Word. And then I save it in DocTex format and send it. I used to use ODT, but there's a lot of interoperability issues. So I just make everything easier and use it. The reason I use LibreOffice is because it's available on all three platforms. So it doesn't really matter whether I'm on Mac or Windows or Linux, I can use it and get the work done. But sometime when I'm creating some creative work, then Pages does a good job, so I can use Pages. And then I, of course, use Google Docs for it. So let's say LibreOffice here. So you can open LibreOffice and here's a beautiful LibreOffice. They have done a very good job at team and layout and presentation. This is good. Which version of LibreOffice are they using? I'm sure they're using an old, yes, it's 5.1.62 because it's not a rolling release distribution. I'll see what kind of version I can get here. So I think Chrome is installed. Let's open Chrome and see if I can play. I'll make a default browser if I can play. A lot of people have problems with Google. I don't because here's the thing. If you're a smart user, you're safe everywhere. If you're a dumb user, even if I give you a tank, it won't protect you because you will sit in a tank and leave the doors unlocked or you will hand over the keys to everyone else. So there is nothing foolproof. If you're a fool, even Linux will not protect you. And then Linux is not meant as a distribution that is designed to protect you. It's not designed as a secure OS. It's an OS, actually Linux is just a kernel, but it's an OS that can be used in different use cases depending on who is using it. So if you want security, you can use Tails OS. But even on Tails OS, if you log into a social networking account, it's not going to work. So let's see, okay, let's try to play something on Netflix. And it's playing. That is why I tend to use Chrome because the thing is that I said earlier that, I use computer as a tool to get work done. I don't want to spend time in fixing things because my time is precious. There was a time in my life where I had a lot of free time where I can sit for hours in just fixing things. But now I have to do five or six story, I have to record videos, I have to travel. So I want, I have 10 minutes to do work on something. I'll just do it and get done. I don't have 20 minutes to fix it. So I use the tools that work. And on Linux, I can use Chrome and start doing the work. Well, it's not work, it's entertainment, but well, that's the point is that you can do whatever you want to do very easily. So that was installing Chrome and that also showed you that how easy it is to install third-party applications, which may not be available in the software center. Just one click, just like macOS and Windows. But if you want to install something which is available in the software center, then you can install it very easily as I gave you the example of Firefox. Now, how to update the system? Let's have a look at update mechanism. Software update, software and updates. Why are there two things? So what is software updater? Checking, so software updater is just a tool which checks if there are any updates available for your system. And what is software and updates? Okay, software and updates. So here's the difference. Software updater runs the tool, looks for all the updates available and offers you an option to update it. Software and update is a tool that allows you to manage repositories, how the updates are installed, what kind of updates are installed. In the developer option, you can very easily click on these pre-release updates which will install the proposed packages. And if you're thinking about, hey, this is Daniel, okay, don't get confused about a name. Zorin 12 is based on Ubuntu 16.4, which was the LTS release. The next LTS release of Ubuntu is 18.4, which is already out. And the next version of Zorin OS will be based on Ubuntu 18.4 and that version will be released in autumn. So you should be getting excited about the next version of Zorin. So here you can manage all those things. You can also add PPA if you want, though there is no mechanism to search for PPA. I wish that these Zorin might have been able to somehow find a way where users can search for the PPA from the distributor itself because it's kind of counterproductive so here I have to go search for the PPA of a particular application and then add it. That would have made life easier and that would be my suggestion to the developers. Now, the software update, as I said, you can click on it and install the packages. What kind of packages are there? Complete generative Linux and so all those LibreOffice, which version of LibreOffice is going to be installed? It will also update Zorin OS base. It's not showing me the version of LibreOffice here, but I'll just hit on the install button and see how long it takes to install everything here. I have to do the password, of course, and then it is installing everything. It's very fast. I have one gigabit speed from FIOS so things will be installed very quickly. One more which is lifeline for me is email client and calendar and contacts. Zorin comes with the Geary email client and let's log into my email and see if I can do it. I'm sure I entered my password wrong. Let's see. Okay, it's fine, it worked. So it's a beautiful, it's my personal email, but it's a beautiful email client. What I have to see is, does it work with calendar and contact? Because that is really important for me. So I opening the calendar and I clicked on the synchronize button, but it's not synchronizing. I don't know because there is no option to set the account with which I want to synchronize. Contact online account. Okay, this can be troublesome and that is why I really like macOS and Windows because on macOS, I love it because once you set up an account, whether it's a calendar, contacts, email, notes, you can sync all of it together. So I don't have to go and do it separately. In the Linux world, I really love Evolution which is GNOME's email client because it integrates all these three together. So when you set up an Evolution email client, you can work with it automatically, set up account for calendar and contacts. But there's an option of online account because it is GNOME. So let's see what happens if I set up an online account. Though Geary should have done that for me. So you have to do a lot of work manually to get things done. Though you may also say that, oh, it's one time thing. Yes, but just because one time thing doesn't mean it should be a painful process. You go and shop one time in a store. Let's say you're traveling to San Francisco and you are just going to shop for one time. Does that mean it has to be a painful process? No, it doesn't really matter whether you are there for first time or the last time. You can easily walk in there, shop and walk out. So it's talking about Evolution Data Server, grant access and I have given, please authorize the button two to access your Google account. The problem is that I don't see any authorization tab here. Okay, I have authorized it again. And now Gmail is on. Let's see if I can access contact now. Okay, now all contacts are, and here is add and see go. So contacts are there. Let's see calendar. Calendar is not populating yet. I have clicked on the sync account. My calendars are usually online account. Though there is no integrator IM account. So it integrates with the empathy. So I can start chatting. Once again, Aaron Sego is there. I can chat in using Gmail of Google Hangout. But calendar is still not working. And that is why I prefer Evolution. So we can simply go to software and install Evolution. Though I don't know if I can install right now because I'm updating that will on our test. Evolution, install, it should ask password. And here we go. And Evolution is installed. And let's next. Why do I have to give my email address again when I have already entered it in online settings? It should not ask me to do all of that again. It should just, am I doing something wrong here? Let me see the software again and to make sure that install, Evolution is installed properly. Evolution, no, it's not installed. So which evolution is that? Why is it not showing me? I don't understand why I can't install Evolution here. For some reason, I'm not able to install Evolution here. Oh, it's installed but it was not showing there. Okay, so it is installed. Evolution mail, and as usual, it is asking me to set up my account which should not be the case because as I said, I already configured my account in, so Evolution is all configured. Let's say calendar now. Okay, so the default calendar is still not working. I have to go to Evolution calendar which should work properly and it is populating good. So this is why you should use Evolution if you really rely on Calendar and Context and Mail for your system. And I don't know why other, I think KD's, Kmail is getting better at that but I don't understand all these email clients. I don't think they have any idea what actual users use, the professionals. I mean, of course, the ordinary users, they don't need a email client. They can just open the client in a web browser. People who actually need a client are the one who use it in a professional capacity and those people do need access or integration with contact book and calendars. I'm not going to remember everybody's email address. So everybody who's writing email clients, please integrate calendar contacts with your email client. Okay, but that's not the fault of ZorinOS. I wish and my advice to ZorinOS creators is please use Evolution as the default email client instead of Geary and also if possible because you are also targeting at Windows 10 users. So please offer Chrome or Firefox as the default web browser so that people can fire it up and start doing those kind of thing that you want to do and also watch Netflix. Anyway, so we looked at the installation. We looked at how to update software and we also looked at the apps that I use and I can easily install whatever app I need. One more thing that is interesting is that there is a big in support for wine. Configure wine, I have not used wine at all ever. The reason that's why I use Windows as well and the reason is simple. The applications that I use are mostly for professional work. The two or three application that I use for work is number one is Adobe Premiere Suite because I use it for film production and there I need full access to CPU, GPU, RAM, but when you're running it to wine or even in virtual machine you don't get access to the 100% hardware at all. And here in this case, you cannot run Adobe CC because it supports only Windows 7, nothing of it's Windows 8 also, but not Windows 10. And I will not run an application like that in either emulator or use wine for it because I will not be able to take advantage of my hardware. Plus, the reason I also use Windows and Mac OS is driver support. There are a lot of events for my Panasonic camera. I use a T3 app where I can plug it my camera to my laptop and I can use it to control the camera or copy paste stuff, which is not supported on Linux. I have a Samsung 360 camera. Once again, it's not supported on Linux. I have DJI drone, which once again is not supported on Linux. So that is why I moved to those platform because to me the job is more important than the struggle to get the work done. So even if I'm using wine, I will not be able to access that hardware because that is not supported at the current level. So wine is good for a lot of use cases. We are using some legacy obsolete, abslication and you need it only once a year. That may work, but for other use cases, it will not work. And no, I'm sorry, but it will not work for games also. I will talk about those topics later. But what is really good is that since wine support and I think there are other like play on Linux, which is I think for games or I have no idea what this is because I've never used it. Let's see what is it? Play on Linux, what about Play on Linux? Yeah, so you can run your Windows programs on Linux. Let's for the sake of fun, let's see if I can run this program on Linux Chrome Windows. Now, here's why can't I choose which version other platforms, okay? And let's say Windows 10, 64 bit. So I am downloading it. And let's see if I can install that using, okay, I can't do that, install non-listed program. Play on Linux, next, next. You cannot even see the whole window here. I may have to make it bigger, next, okay. Next, in a new virtual drive. So it will create a virtual drive there, Play on Linux. Is it running a virtual machine there? Well, the problem is virtual machines have their own. There is some error in wine. I cannot do that. So let's close it. Let's go to and see what happens if I right click on it. Does it offer any open weather application? Wine program loader. Let's see if I can install, it might be able to install Chrome using wine. You'll see. Anyway, while we are running, I don't want to waste your time. But the point is that if there is some kind of application, legacy application that you still want to run on Linux, then wine may help you. And which is kind of neat. Though in my case, it will not work because the application that I need are mostly subscription based, all the time updated ones and they won't run it. So we have gone through the installation process. We have had a look at how it looks and feel. We try to install the application that I need for my work. We had a look at the pre-installed applications. And honestly speaking, it looks really neat so far. Unable to connect to the internet if you use Firewall. So as I said, just because it's wine doesn't mean it's very easy to use. It can be a lot of troublesome. And I would not bother with that. That's why I move to other platforms. But that's not a deal breaker because it's extra support that you can get for some Windows application that is still rely on. And you know what? I think I will talk about, I will do a dedicated show just to talk about whether you should use Linux or not. And what are the use cases where you should move to Linux and what are the use cases where you should still stick to Windows or what are the use cases where you can still use wine or a virtual machine. But that will be a different topic. I would like to now conclude this video. And I think that ZorinOS is a really great distribution. One of the beauties of ZorinOS is that it is designed so well. When you use it, you feel good. And that is really important. In our lives, we need to be using tools that make us feel good. You want to sit in a clean, tidy room. You want to sit in a nice chair. So those things cannot be ignored or negated. I hope the focus in my face because last time the mic was confusing the autofocus on the camera anyway. And that's why the mic also matters that it should look good. So I think ZorinOS hits some points very well. And that's what I love. Number one is ease of installation. Number two is ease of use. Number three is look and feel, which is really critical. Number four is ability to run legacy Windows applications. And number five is that it's very stable, very durable distribution that is based on Ubuntu LTS release. So you don't have to worry about things breaking. And they also keep a gap between releases. So you use a very stable version without having to worry about too many things. Plus the beauty of ZorinOS is a lot of other distributions out there. They are suffering from not invented here syndrome. They try to reinvent the wheel every time. They will rewrite software manager. They will rewrite text editor. They will rewrite every single piece there and waste a lot of resources. Whereas it doesn't really change the user experience. In some cases it actually ruins it. And that waste time, it waste resources. And it also kind of ruins the image of Linux on desktop. It does work for those developers, but it doesn't work for everyone else. And that is why I'm very picky when it comes to an operating system. That's why I use our Linux, because they don't do much of their own forking. OpenSUSE, they are one of the top Linux companies and communities out there, which are actually part of upstream. So the work they do is being used by the rest of us or other distributions. I use Debian on my server. But I don't use a lot of derivatives out there because they just waste a lot of resources. But what Zorin does is, as you saw, that they are using all upstream packages with fine-tuning them. Just look at, I mean, they have used a particular theme. They have done some polishing. And that is what you're supposed to be doing. You defy the whole point of open source if you are forking everything and reinventing everything. You should take the code and add value on top of it, not rewrite the whole code. Because then you also don't help upstream of that product. So I think ZorinOS is one of the best distributions out there because it checks all the marks that I have there for a Linux-based distribution. They don't play dirty with Firefox or Google Search. They don't fork everything so that they get some kind of retribution out of it. They take Linux, Ubuntu, and they make a distribution that solves a particular problem. As you saw there, I can fire up the operating system and start doing the work without fiddling with a lot of things. And that is the whole point. You need to understand that it really doesn't matter whether you are using open source underneath or whether you respect privacy. What really matters is, are you really solving the problem of a user? Are you offering a product that helps me, that make my life easier, that helps me in using my computer better? If not, then none of it matters. And that's exactly what distribution like ZorinOS do. They make it really easy to use Linux. And that is why ZorinOS is going to be in the list of my most recommended operating systems of 2018. That was my kind of long review of ZorinOS. Please let me know what you think about it. If you use ZorinOS, why do you use it? If you don't use it, why you don't use it? What are the things that you think can be improved in it? And also tell us what are the things that you love about it? And also, just a topic for my next video. Thanks for watching and see you next time. Bye for now. And before you go, don't forget to subscribe to this channel. And as you all know that my content heavily relies on Patreon. So please, if you love this video, please consider becoming patron on Patreon. I'll put the links below. And I am planning to do at least one video per week where I focus on Linux and open source. Now, now you can go. Thanks for watching.