Yes and no

Yes

Because it was my first distro when I started using Linux 3 years ago.

It still looks very modern and beautiful out of the box, which was something barely any distro provided at that time.

It will give you a fine introduction to the new OS and act as a starting point in your journey.

For example, it clearly shows you the software center and other essential steps for a smooth everyday use.

No

It hasn’t really changed in the last years. Not in that sense other “stable” distros, like Debian, do, but more in the sense “We have no ressources to keep up with all new versions and changes”.

There were many many significant improvements in the past, including performance and usability, which Zorin just never got. For me, it looks like a distro on life-support.

The Wine-implementation (Windows-compatibility layer) is executed badly. It recommends new users to just install everything with it, instead of looking for native alternatives. Wine should only act as last resort and not as great way to run all your software like you used to.

(Edit: there’s a prompt now to search for alternatives)

Also, it uses the uncontainered version of it. If you execute Windows-malware, it can attack your host OS. Nowadays, we use “Bottles”, which creates a fake-drive and is isolated from the host, making it safer.

Some people also dislike their Pro-version-approach, where they sell you customization features (templates) that you can get for free, but have to pay on Zorin.

I personally just see that as donation system and don’t have a problem with it. It doesn’t affect the usability at all. I personally would prefer it to be activatable by “hacking” too, since you have to reinstall the whole OS if you decided to purchase the pro version.

(Edit: it can be activated by enabling repos manually)

What to do?

I would recommend Linux Mint instead. It is also more on the conservative side, but extremely well maintained and super super user friendly with a huge community.
Not without reason it is the number one recommended distro out there, especially for newcomers.

That doesn’t mean Zorin is bad, not at all. It’s just not as great as others. If you want to use Zorin, do that! And if you like the UI or UX of it, you can always just replicate it on any other (“better”) distro like Fedora.

Remember, there’s infinite choice and pretty much no “bad” one.

Just pick something simple for the start and see, how your journey will continue! 😊

(Please don’t take this the wrong way lol).

My grandma would destroy laptops with malware and junkware within two weeks of me cleaning it. It was a never-ending battle.

Since she mostly used it for FB and email, I wiped Windows and installed Zorin OS since it had the Windows look and feel she was familiar with. Problem solved.

Other than that, it’s as good as any other Debian/Ubuntu derivative.

I recommend Linux mint cinnamon.

The biggest tip I can give to you is to stop considering all kinds of things when you have no actual experience using Linux and don’t really know what do you want. Just try it. Go ahead and launch Zorin OS from a Live USB and see for yourself if it is any good, doing this as soon as possible will save you a lot of time askin questions on forums, watching videos and reading articles

I don’t particularly like it because they monetize features they did not develop. They charge extra for some UI customizations that are available for free in many other distros because they are part of GNOME/Xfce.

Other than their available visual customizations (giving you a Windows-like interface out of the box for example) it is simply the last Ubuntu LTS release. If you purchase the Pro version you need to re-purchase it for every version upgrade (so every two years).

I would say just go with Ubuntu if you’re considering Zorin.

Thank you for the good advice everyone!

I just switched from ZorinOS to Fedora due to constantly running into software that is too new for the Ubuntu 20.04 base that ZorinOS 16 runs on. It is a great beginner distro and I even installed it on a friends computer and another friends grandmas computer and they both loved it. But if you require the latest software you may want to wait until ZorinOS 17 releases later this year.

Some of the software incompatibility issues can be solved just by using the Flatpak verison of it but if there is no Flatpak then you are really screwed. I couldn’t run GPT4All, JellyfinRPC, ani-cli, or use the workaround to use audio in your screenshare on Discord. (until someone bundled that workaround into a Flatpak Discord client). These are all pretty niche things and for the average user you’ll probably be fine though.

My main wants in a system is one that installs easily and has a windows like interface I’ve heard from most people Linux mint is a good starter

Zorin was my first venture into Linux over a decade ago, alongside Mandriva (which I think no longer exists now), and then later Ubuntu.

Go ahead and give it a try 👌