We’re excited to announce the release of the Zorin OS 12 Lite, the biggest leap forward in our lightweight operating system for old and low-spec computers.

With Zorin OS 12 Lite, we have re-thought what the Zorin OS experience can be for low spec machines and computers as old as 14 years. We have built Zorin OS 12 Lite to be a more streamlined concentration of, not a reduction of, the original version, with the same simple user experience, running the same extraordinary apps.

New Desktop Environment

To achieve our new goals for Zorin OS 12 Lite, we chose to move away from LXDE and adopt XFCE as the base desktop environment. This allows us to create an experience that is not only more familiar and consistent with Zorin OS 12, but is also more customizable and extensible than ever before. The result is a computing experience that’s more intuitive, beautiful and versatile, while keeping resource usage light.

More editions

In addition to the Lite and Lite Education editions before, we have released Ultimate, Business, and Education editions of Zorin OS 12 Lite. This will allow users with old and low-spec machines to have access to all the best Zorin OS apps and features out-of-the-box.

Zorin Appearance

Zorin OS 12 Lite is the first version of Zorin OS Lite with Zorin Appearance pre-installed. Zorin Appearance brings together the functionality of Zorin Look Changer and Zorin Theme Changer into one app. With a click of a button, you can change the desktop layout to match that of Windows versions. The Ultimate and Business editions of Zorin OS 12 Lite also feature Gnome 2 and macOS-like layouts. Zorin Appearance is the go-to app for customizing your desktop, quickly and simply.

Many of the built-in system apps have seen extensive improvements both visually and under the hood.

Zorin OS 12 Lite is powered by Linux Kernel version 4.8, which now works with even more hardware and introduces performance enhancements and security improvements.

As Zorin OS 12 Lite is based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, it will be supported with security updates until April 2021.

If you’ve already downloaded and installed the Zorin OS 12 Lite Beta, you can update your system to the full stable release by installing the latest updates from the Software Updater, in addition to opening the Terminal (by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T) to enter the following command:

sudo apt install zorin-os-standard

We believe Zorin OS 12 Lite represents the perfect blend of power and performance for old PCs, and enables a new breed of ultra-affordable machines for the next billion computer users. We hope that you’ll enjoy using it!

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