Zorin OS 5.3 (Core and Lite)

[Jason]

Until you mentioned it, I didn't even know it was named after its makers. I guess I will have to come up with something else for my upcoming Wallwork OS now. Do you like Jason OS better? I don't mind a distro named after its founder(s) unless it's called Conservative OS. 'PC' can mean more than one thing so I allow it. O'Toole OS just doesn't roll off the tongue as doesn't Trudeau OS. But Singh OS? I think there's something there!

In any case, I just noticed they have a light edition that claims to run on a 700 MHz single-core CPU with 512 MB RAM. I wonder how they pull that off? OpenBox? The other editions say only a 1 GHz dual-core processor, and 2 GB of RAM are needed. Are they running Xfce underneath those skins, I wonder? I thought past editions used a modified-Gnome for the different looks but that seems heavy for those specs.

I've always liked the look of Zorin but the display manager used to generate annoying errors that were completely useless. They said something like, "An error has occurred" with an OK button. No other information.

Let me know how it goes if you continue using it for a week or two doing things on it.

[Jason]

Thanks for the link.

While they claim even the standard version can run with 2 GB of RAM on a 1 GHz dual-core processor, that sounds so unlikely seeing how it's based on Gnome. And since I happen to have a laptop with a 1.4 GHz dual-core processor and 4 GB RAM... why not try? So I downloaded the latest version (15.3 Core Edition), not the beta, and put it on a flash drive just to try it live as you did. I knew that even though it's running a USB 3.0 drive, it might not be a great test since that might be the limiting factor in that it might be slow on it but reasonable once installed. But if it did run well enough then it should run much better when installed.

Running it for half an hour doing some basic things with the included software, I'm left impressed. It does look good, exceptional even. And the included programs other than some heavier ones like LibreOffice and Firefox pop up fast. It uses more RAM initially (over 1 GB) than LXDE or Xfce (400-600 MB) obviously but it doesn't seem to affect performance. I don't notice a dramatic difference from the Fedora LXDE spin that I'm using right now. And remember, Zorin is running from a flash drive here while the Fedora spin is installed. I don't know they accomplish this. On this machine, normally running a modern complete desktop environment (e.g. Plasma, Gnome, Cinnamon, MATE) really slows things down but not here. I can only think that it knows I'm using an older machine (or running from a flash drive) and has turned off anything that uses processor cycles or extra RAM. I might have to install this to see what it's like.

[Jason]

After installing it, I'm not quite as happy. For a few days, it was okay when I didn't have anything else other than the browser running pretty much or any built-in apps usually provided with a desktop environment (Gnome apps in this case like the file manager, viewer and editor). But once I added SpiderOakOne, Tutanota and Todoist I started having random freezes on websites, even when I didn't have a lot of tabs opened. The system would come back after 5-30 seconds. I checked the System Monitor and it was using too much RAM as expected. I was close to 90% memory usage. Closing down Tutanota seemed to fix the freezing problem, mostly, but some sites like Facebook and a couple of others slowed down drastically when you'd enter a comment. And that's after closing down Todoist, too. I'm using the Firefox browser since that's what it comes with.

My goal here was to see if it could really run on as old a processor and as little RAM as they claim. And the answer is, no, it can't. I have 4 GB RAM and it used most of it just running Firefox with 3-5 tabs open and the apps I mentioned above. They claim it can run with 2 GB of RAM. There's no freakin' way, especially given on startup it's already using over a Gig. I suppose if you only ran the basic Gnome apps and only ran one program at a time, you'd be fine. But anything else and you'd be "let's go make coffee while I wait" time.

Btw, it comes with some attractive wallpapers. I know you can find that elsewhere but it's nice to have it right from the start. One is attached.

I'm considering trying the Lite version but I don't know if it will look as good. It will likely function a lot better since I believe it uses Xfce and claims it will run on 1 GB of RAM (I doubt it but I have 4 so I should be fine).

[Jason]

I installed the Lite version which uses Xfce but I'm still having occasional freezes when the browser is open. And I noticed this I noticed the swap was rather large. It's not usual for a distro to use a bit of swap, maybe 50 MB or so but this much too large. And I've noticed it going as high as 2 GB which is the maximum I have allocated to it.

[Jason]

I'm getting annoyed with Zorin OS 5.3 Lite. Even though it uses the same desktop environment as Linux Lite, Xfce, it's just not that light. I don't remember running into the freezing issues when I have 6 or so programs running. I don't know why it's occurring. It's a sad conclusion to me because I really like the look of it but perhaps that's the issue, the eye candy. Considering going back to Linux Lite or maybe even Lubuntu which would use even less RAM.

[Jason]

Now the bottom panel has disappeared.       Wtf! Even after a restart, it's still not there. Changing the settings doesn't bring it back. I hope this isn't a hardware issue, perhaps the SSD in it or memory. Brave stopped working correctly a week or so ago, too. But when I boot Zorin from a flash drive it works fine.