Zorin OS 10 Core - A good OS if you're coming from a heavy Windows background



Zorin OS is a GNU/Linux distribution that attempts to mimic the appearance of the Microsoft Windows operating system. I gave it a go roughly about a year and eight months ago (Zorin OS 8 Core) and my general impression was that it succeed in doing so, meaning that it was quite appealing in the eyes of a Microsoft Windows user.



However, back then I compared it to Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon edition (because they were both based on Ubuntu and looked very similar) and after considering the performance (boot-up speeds, memory usage, etc) and features of both operating systems, I still preferred Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon. But Zorin too did not lag behind by too much, it was mostly the lightweight memory usage and the boot-up speed of Linux Mint that took my attention.



In other words, features-wise, they were both good, but Linux Mint was better in terms of technical implementations, because I just had the impression that Linux Mint had taken in an Ubuntu core, stripped down all the unnecessary aspects of it, optimized it to suit their needs, and had implemented their own desktop environment on top of that.



The Zorin team however, it seemed to me, were relying on an almost fully functioning Ubuntu desktop, the only difference being that it was missing the Unity desktop shell. Zorin even had Compiz (the window manager that Unity relies on for delivering application windows based visual effects) running. To mimic the Windows desktop, they had used Avant Window Navigator (application dock) coupled with a start-menu (created by Zorin), the rest was pretty much Ubuntu. Such an approach leaves little room for optimizing for top performance. Zorin also lacked a couple of theme-based enhancements that I felt needed fixing. They were subtle, but sometimes it's the little things that matter. And that's precisely where Linux Mint shined.



Still, an average memory consumption of 370+ MiB for a desktop is still pretty lightweight. And, it had a tool called Zorin Look Changer which can instantly transfer your desktop into a Windows 7, XP or a GNOME 2 look alike as well. All in all, it was easy to use, even for a beginner who is not much familiar with Linux at all, and in that regard especially, Zorin OS 8 was still a good contender.





Zorin OS 10 -- Default desktop environment

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So, with that in mind, I skipped the previous release and decided to try the new Zorin OS 10 Core which is based on Ubuntu 15.04. I downloaded the 64-bit version which is about 1.45 GB in size. And I'll be comparing its performance (and some of the new features) with the Zorin OS 8 Core data that I have. But before I begin the actual review, below are the details of the hardware on top of which it was run: Intel Core i3-2330M CPU, Intel HD 3000 GPU, 4GB RAM (DDR3), Toshiba 7200 RPM (320GB) SATA HDD, Intel N-1030 Wireless adapter, Realtek network adapter ('RTL8168'), LED display with 1366x768 resolution (60Hz/60FPS). It's a Dell Vostro V-131 notebook. The Installer

Zorin OS 10 -- The system installer

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Zorin OS 10 Core uses the Ubuntu's installer which is excellent, and the only difference is the theme. I won't go into details, because I'm sure most users are familiar with it, and even if you're not, it's a very intuitive, step based, installer that's easy to understand and follow.



That said, one thing that's worth mentioning is that a lot of GNU/Linux distributions that I've recently reviewed failed to add an entry in the boot loader's menu for my primary OS (it used to be Fedora 21, now it's Fedora 22). When reviewing, even Fedora 22 failed to add one! Not Ubuntu's installer though, as Zorin OS 10 Core had added a nice entry for Fedora 22 as well. Excellent.



First Boot-up



The GRUB theme has received subtle changes. For instance, there used to be text labels called "Enter Boot", "Edit Selection" and "Commandline" at the bottom of the screen, but now they're replaced by icons, which in effect gives it a cleaner look. All in all it still retains the same beautiful look, though it takes about 2 seconds to load, due to the relatively heavy theme. The boot-logo is the same one that was featured in Zorin OS 8 Core.



The Desktop



As mentioned in the beginning, at a glance, the desktop looks like the familiar traditional Windows desktop and should put Windows users at ease. When compared to Zorin 8 however, except for the wallpaper (which always changes in each new release), there are two prominent changes.



First is the blueish colored bottom-panel. In Zorin 8, it used to be much darker, but I very much prefer the new blue color, when surrounded by the two white colored areas, it looks beautiful and pleasing to the eye.



Zorin 8 used to come with two themes, a lighter (default) one and its darker variant. This version however, includes four color pallets, Blue (default), Green, Orange and Red. And each can be further customized with three background colors (light, dark and black) which changes bottom-panel and application windows colors.





Zorin OS 10 -- New icon theme

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The other change is the new icon theme. These icons are actually from the Elementary OS, and they too look very pretty compared to the old ones.



There are other subtle changes in the theme as well. For instance, previously, the Minimize, Maximize and Close buttons used to be blue. But now their background is set to white and the borders of the buttons are colored in gray.



Not everything is fixed though



In my previous review, I pointed out that when you move the cursor over the start-menu icon, or click on it, a tool-tip message appears displaying "Zorin menu", and if you start searching for an application without bothering to move the cursor (which is what most users usually do, I suppose), the tool-tip message ("Zorin menu") does not fade away as it should, and it covers the search box perfectly, and one can't really see what's being typed in.



This was how it was in Zorin 8 and sadly, it's still here in Zorin OS 10 as well. Very annoying.



Other than that, I very much liked the start-menu, all its features and how menus are arranged. It almost feels like the native start-menu that used to come with Windows 7. You can even right-click on an application icon and select "Open as Administrator" too!



If you prefer a traditional GNOME 2 desktop layout or Windows XP look alike, then you can use the Zorin Look Changer. With just push of a button, it'll transform your desktop.





Zorin OS 10 -- The look changer

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Also, unlike in many other distributions, you can right-click on the desktop and create an empty image file (GIMP), text file or a LibreOffice document easily as well.



Small but neat features like these definitely improve one's confidence, specially if you're coming from a heavy Windows background.



Other Applications



Zorin OS 10 Core ships with the 3.19.0 Linux kernel and X server 1.17.1. Firefox 39.0 is the default web browser and Zorin includes playback support for proprietary multimedia codecs, though inevitably, includes the outdated Adobe Flash Player for Firefox (since Adobe abandoned its development). But it comes with another native Zorin tool called Zorin Web Browser Manager which lets you install Google Chrome, Web (GNOME 3's web browser) and Midori, again, all with a push of a button.





Zorin OS 10 -- The web browser manager

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Firefox played Flash video content smoothly, but I installed Google Chrome due to the security concerns of the outdated Flash Player plugin for Firefox.



Zorin also includes Play On Linux 4.2.8 (it's actually a frond-end for WINE for WINE is the underlying engine). If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a utility that basically lets you run applications that are designed to run in a Microsoft Windows environment, though there's no guarantee that they'll be run properly, or run at all, and not every application is supported either. Still, this too is another encouragement for the Windows users nonetheless (just for the record, I've run a couple of popular Windows applications using Play On Linux in the past quite successfully).





Zorin OS 10 -- Play On Linux

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The default multimedia player is Parole (developed by the Xfce desktop developers). Whenever I paused a video, the video screen got set to blank. I was able to fix it by simply changing the video output to OpenGL through the Preferences window. Other than that, it's a good media player.





Zorin OS 10 -- Changing video output in Parole

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Zorin doesn't create video thumbnails by default either. But that can be quickly fixed by simply installing the ffmpegthumbnailer utility. For that simply use the below commands: sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ffmpegthumbnailer



Zorin 10 OS -- Fixing thumbnail generation

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That should do the trick.



Other applications include: Rhythmbox 3.2.1, OpenShot 1.4.3, Geary Mail 0.10.0 (the default mail client developed for and by the Elementary OS developers), GIMP 2.8.14, Empathy 3.12.9, LibreOffice 4.4.2.2 and few other GNOME 3 applications.



Performance Related Data



Keep in mind that even though these data are provided at the end of the article, I measured them first without touching the OS to keep the accuracy of the readings high. And before measuring them, I booted into the OS 5-6 times, letting things to settle down (such as letting the applications to be done with their first time configurations etc). This is what I always have done in other distributions when measuring performance.



Boot-Up Speed





Zorin OS 10 -- Boot times graph

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As mentioned in the beginning of this article, I got a bit frustrated with the boot-up delay of Zorin OS 8 Core, not with Zorin OS 10 Core though. As you can see, it was roughly 23% faster while booting, although, it's about a second behind Ubuntu 15.04 according to my data.



That said, both Zorin 10 and 8 come with a tool called preload that improves your frequently used applications' loading times (to put it into a simpler context: it does this by copying the user's most frequently used programs into the RAM, before they're demanded by the user), and it can slightly slow down the boot-up speed (yes, I've tested it in the past and have written a review) as well.



Memory Usage Upon Desktop Loading





Zorin OS 10 -- Memory usage graph

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As you can see, the new Zorin did not shine in memory usage readings. It used roughly 19.4% more memory than Zorin OS 8, and even Ubuntu 15.04 with its default Unity desktop consumed only about 378.9 MiB which is about 19.4% lighter when compared against Zorin OS 10 Core! I'm not sure about exact reasons, but this is how the numbers stand.



Power Usage at Idle



As always, when measuring power, I turned off Bluetooth, turned on wi-fi (connected to my wireless router) and set screen brightness to its maximum (with dimming disabled), and let the OS idle. The tool I use to measure power is called powerstat (originally developed by Ubuntu developer Colin King).





Zorin OS 10 -- Power usage graph

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Here too Zorin OS 10 Core was not impressive. It consumed about 14% more power than Zorin OS 8 Core, and even Ubuntu 15.04 consumed 7.6% less.



Still, these days, I'm not so much worried about such issues, because unlike in the past, there are a couple of new tools that can be used to fix them. One of my favorite such tools is called TLP (it's a power usage optimizer).



So after installing it, I remeasured the power usage and was quite satisfied with the result as it had reached even below the power usage of Zorin OS 8 Core, though Zorin OS 8 Core power consumption is without any manual tweaks or using tools such as TLP, and back then, I did not install TLP in Zorin OS 8 Core to see what it can do. And just to add, Ubuntu 15.04, after installing TLP, was still able to reduce power by around 10%, compared to Zorin OS 10 Core!



CPU Usage at Idle





Zorin OS 10 -- Measuring CPU usage at idle

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When letting the OS idle, except for the system monitor process itself that constantly kept using about 2-3% of the CPU time (it does that all the time), all the other applications and process did not interrupt the CPU, for longer periods. Excellent.



ACPI and Hardware Recognition



As usual, almost all of my hardware was recognized and configured properly by Zorin OS 10 Core which is not a surprise since it's based on Ubuntu 15.04 and Ubuntu runs well on my hardware.



Zorin was able to restore the previously set screen brightness and restore the states of the Bluetooth and wi-fi adapters as well. Suspending also worked without any issues. After manually installing the above mentioned TLP utility though, Bluetooth adapter got turned on every time I logged into the desktop. Though that can be fixed many ways, I just edited the main configuration file of TLP and got it fixed in no time. I won't go into it here, but if you experience any such issues after installing it, let me know, I'll provide you with the details.



The only hardware that didn't work was the fingerprint reader, but that's how it has always been in other distributions, except in Fedora 22 where it worked partially. But the driver is still very new (I think it's a reverse engineered one) and useless basically.



System Responsiveness



For those of you who're not familiar with my reviews, I'll provide a brief introduction to this next test. The point of this test is to try to get a sense of the responsiveness of the operating system when put under a heavy I/O (hard disk) activity. Why is it important? Well, who would love an OS that majorly jeopardizes the playback of a movie when your hard disk is busy (say a file copy is underway in the background), or just gets sluggish when trying to open multiple programs at the same time? Nobody, right?



Now, what I do is simple. I try to copy a file (that's usually about 1.5GB in size) between two folders that reside within my home folder, and while it's happening, I try to play a multimedia file first. I then try to open a couple of programs by using an application menu and try to open some by searching as well. When all that's happening, I also try to browse a folder that's filled with a reasonably large amount of files as well. When this is all happening, I mainly try to observe three things. The multimedia playback, how many applications get opened and the cursor's sensitivity.



For instance, if the multimedia playback is not majorly disrupted and if most of the applications get opened up before the file copying is finished and, in this whole time, if the mouse pointer doesn't lose its sensitivity by that much, then I consider the OS to be a responsive one.



So I carried out the test and found out that Parole took 6-7 seconds delay to open up the multimedia file and its play back only interrupted once or twice (all of which were short lived), and, though certainly not all, most of the applications that I tried to open, got opened up before the file copying was finished. Mouse pointer sensitivity got lost only for about two times (each time with a 2-3 seconds delay). Overall, it was good.



Since Ubuntu 15.04 uses the deadline I/O scheduler (a lower level utility that governs the read/write request priority) which is optimized for SSDs, I decided to change it into CFQ to see if it can further improve the responsiveness. So I ran the same test and found out that it did improve things a lot! For instance, Parole, unlike the previous 6-7 seconds delay, was able to play the file within about 2-3 seconds and although the multimedia playback got slightly interrupted 2-3 times (here too they were very short lived, nothing major as to interrupt the enjoyment), the vast majority of the programs got opened up, and the mouse pointer lost its sensitivity a couple of times, but overall, things had been improved.



So all in all, even without changing the I/O scheduler, Zorin behaved well by default. I was a happy end-user.



Just for the record, Ubuntu 15.04 did not perform that well with the deadline I/O scheduler, but I could see the same negative effects in action here (in a somewhat a smaller scale) in Zorin OS 10 Core, such as the big delay of the Parole media player for instance as something very similar happened in Ubuntu 15.04 with VLC. And after changing to CFQ, the situation changed completely in Ubuntu 15.04 as it became very responsive.



Shutdown Delay





Zorin OS 10 -- Shutdown delay

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As you can see, Zorin OS 10 Core was 64% slower while shutting down. Yes it sounds like a lot, and even Ubuntu 15.04 only took about 2.5 seconds for that, still, 4.1 seconds delay is pretty fast for shutting down an OS.



Final Words



Zorin OS 10 Core, compared to Zorin OS 8 Core, uses more memory, consumes more power and is not the fastest to shut down either. And, as mentioned in the beginning of this article, the reason is because Zorin doesn't seem to care too much about the technical implementations, and inevitably pays a certain price for it.



That being said, it now boots faster and is responsive, and I must say that it quite impressively mimics the appearance of the Microsoft Windows operating system's desktop, not just the appearance, in terms of functionality too it has made a lot of effort, and that really deserves praise. And, if you are coming from a heavy Microsoft Windows background and have never used Linux before, then yes, I would say that Zorin OS 10 Core should make you feel almost at home, plus, the inclusion of Play On Linux might even let you run your favorite native Windows app in Linux! Thus, I see no reason why one such user shouldn't try it out.



Good luck everyone and thank you for reading! * * * * * About the author: Hello everyone. My name is Gayan and I'm a bit of a technically oriented individual. I strongly believe that the only way to achieve happiness in life is to follow your passion and live your vision, no matter how small or big it is.



I've been using GNU/Linux for about 12 years now, and I'm also a Red Hat Certified Engineer. In my spare time, I review GNU/Linux distributions on my blog, with an emphasis on their technical aspects. I'm a farmer in real life. And that's me in a nutshell.



