They have a very slick and professional looking webpage. Is it weird that that makes me wary? I’m used to the best distros having webpages that look like a wiki or a professor’s website.
In the past it made more sense to have a shitty webpage because open source projects don't tend to have graphic designers contributing to them, but anyone can AI a decent looking static site these days, so it wouldn't surprise me if some of those open source maintainers start choosing to use them.
More than other distros, Zorin markets (and has marketed) itself as Windows-like, which probably elevates it in search rankings and LLM queries for people looking for a distro that more closely mirrors what they’re familiar with.
People really, really want a “Windows, but just the good parts” with as little deviation and required learning as possible in terms of desktop experience. A distro with a DE that nearly perfectly replicates “greatest hits” Windows versions (2K/XP/7/10) would probably be doing serious numbers right now if it existed.
The marketing of it as "looks and feels like Windows 11!" is probably the biggest hook, if one can assume the majority of the 780k are non-powerusers who are wary about the end of Windows 10's support, and getting pwned on the Internet...
Because usually it works, the out of the box deb + snap + flatpak, polished experience cozy look with some presets to minimice friction, + ubuntu LTS its a nice pack.
They have a very slick and professional looking webpage. Is it weird that that makes me wary? I’m used to the best distros having webpages that look like a wiki or a professor’s website.
In the past it made more sense to have a shitty webpage because open source projects don't tend to have graphic designers contributing to them, but anyone can AI a decent looking static site these days, so it wouldn't surprise me if some of those open source maintainers start choosing to use them.
Why Zorin? It’s always struck me as a weird distro. I can’t put my finger on why, but it feels off.
I wonder how much of a bump other distros have seen in the same period.
[delayed]
More than other distros, Zorin markets (and has marketed) itself as Windows-like, which probably elevates it in search rankings and LLM queries for people looking for a distro that more closely mirrors what they’re familiar with.
People really, really want a “Windows, but just the good parts” with as little deviation and required learning as possible in terms of desktop experience. A distro with a DE that nearly perfectly replicates “greatest hits” Windows versions (2K/XP/7/10) would probably be doing serious numbers right now if it existed.
The marketing of it as "looks and feels like Windows 11!" is probably the biggest hook, if one can assume the majority of the 780k are non-powerusers who are wary about the end of Windows 10's support, and getting pwned on the Internet...
It looks good, plus they're good at marketing it and the website is very engaging with telling me what problems of mine it solves and how.
Because usually it works, the out of the box deb + snap + flatpak, polished experience cozy look with some presets to minimice friction, + ubuntu LTS its a nice pack.
I get a 404, this is the correct URL:
https://blog.zorin.com/2025/11/18/test-the-upgrade-from-zori...
thats probably because so many people are downloading a 5~7 GB file.
a mirror site[s] or a reputable torrent, would likely be helpful.
try these:
https://zorin.com/os/download/18/core/
https://zorin.com/os/download/18/education/
How many came from AWS, Azure and GCP IPs? ;)
Seriously though, a per-country breakdown would've been very interesting to see.
So what is it? Ubuntu with KDE?