Linux Distro QuickLook: Zorin OS 16 PRO

[Music] [Music] hey everybody welcome back to linux for everyone and welcome home jason here and uh today we're gonna do something a bit different i'm gonna take a break from the will it linux gaming series as well as the app spotlights and dive into a little bit of distro coverage it's been a minute since i've done that and it's been many minutes since i featured zorin os on the channel i think the la maybe the first and only time that i have uh touched on zorin os was january 2020 when they announced zorin grid and i covered it at forbes uh back when i was writing at forbes regularly but it has been a year and a half since i have seen zorin os and i have not seen the brand new version zorin os 16 at all all i've seen is the installer so what i wanted to do today is walk through this together kind of give some first impressions and give you a bit of a uh a video walkthrough artium zorin sent me uh two versions of zorin os 16 last night ahead of the tuesday august 17th launch the the public launch it's been in beta for a bit but uh i wanted to look at zorin os 16 pro now this is the paid version of zorin os that's going to replace zorin os ultimate so they're calling it pro now and uh it's it's not the only version of zorin os there are there are plenty there's zorin os core which still gives you a a really good solid stable and and pretty beautiful zorin os experience um that's this is all based on my my time with sauron os 15 back in i think 2019 early 2020. so i have a fresh install of zoran os 16 pro on the tuxedo pulse 15 laptop let's leave this welcome tour for just a moment and i want to actually show you the uh announcement of zorin os pro we can kind of look at this together so this is like i said it's a paid version i'm actually not sure how much it costs yet i'm gonna uh hopefully we're gonna see that here on this blog announcement somewhere so with uh zorin os pro you get these additional premium desktop layouts and one of them looks a lot like windows 11. in fact uh it's interesting in the beta which came out in april i was digging through their announcements and they said there is a windows 10x like layout coming so uh i guess the the announcement of windows 11 gave them time to freshen up that little that little tidbit but anyway so in the pro version you're gonna get eight layout switchers which just instantly allow you to kind of change the look and feel of your desktop paradigm whether uh whether you're used to maybe mac os or ubuntu or windows or kde or uh just a lot of different options here so we'll check that out as we go along in this little uh exploration of zorin os16 pro so you do get these four standard layouts with the core version the core version is free and a professional grade creative suite create with the same apps the pros use hey pros like me no i'm just kidding well i don't know let's actually see what's in here this looks this looks a lot like caden live which i use uh i don't do anything with graphics because i'm terrible so these are probably not uh they'll be installed i'm sure but uh not something i'd use but it's really interesting that they do not call out the names of the apps and this is where the zorn os marketing has always distinguished itself it's very high level it's very uh general kind of vague not exactly talking to the the experienced linux users the people who live in kind of our our little bubble you know our echo chamber so zorin os pro includes an advanced video editor photoshop compatible image editor illustration software audio workstation animation software etc there's there's no name drops of the actual software titles and i find that really really interesting and again there's no there's no real call outs you know pre-loaded with apps and tools to help you be more productive so we're gonna have to explore those on our own and find out what those apps are um this is called barrier and this lets you share your mouse and keyboard across computers so it looks like it also ships with um miracast compatible uh casting to to your tv and other desktops and you've got some other productivity apps here lots of new backgrounds and this is what i like there's a pro lite edition which uses i believe this uses xfce it looks like it uses xfce and uh zorin's implementation of xfce from zoran os 15 was quite attractive so that might be worth checking out as well if you've got an older machine with less less hardware resources at your disposal less less cpu cores less ram etc currently so this is not on sale until tuesday currently they're selling zorn os ultimate and it is 39 euros or 39 euros whoops euros euros to usd so it's about 45 now i'm not here to get into a discussion of whether it's worth the 45 dollars i will however say very emphatically that i believe uh developers have a right to be paid and all distros have a right to charge money if they want to so that they can uh you know have an income to sustain their lives and to improve the products that they're working on and i have to tell you i really appreciate the approaches that both elementary os and zorin os have elementary os they only have one edition and it's kind of a pay what you want model that that payment can be zero dollars but it's to pay what you want to model in zorno s they have three different editions i believe the core is perfectly uh perfectly capable of being your desktop daily driver your laptop daily driver but then they also offer this feature-packed uh you know icing on top edition of zoran os16 and so it gives you choice and i really like that i appreciate what they're doing here so okay let's go ahead and take the tour welcome to zoran os 16. let's start the tour open the menu to launch apps pretty basic okay choose your desktop look with soarin appearance okay wow that's live can't help it let's launch it all right so these are interesting they're not they're not labeled i expected that they would be labeled uh but the diagrams definitely tell you what you're going to get so uh i don't know let's switch it around so this is our default and we'll switch it to this which gives us kind of that kde windows 10 desktop paradigm uh oh that's that's actually very nice with the center dock and okay all right nice this is kind of classic uh oh is it gonna it's taking a minute oh wait there we go okay had to let's click that again oh i see that's clean that's really nice and clean just a lot just lots of space on your desktop to work with okay so i wonder is this the is this the windows 11 design i don't know okay that's not that's kind of attractive with the uh the curved centered dock there although i do wish it was just a little bit um not quite as tall maybe but still nice yeah still nice nice flute animations too okay ah this this is the windows 11 clearly the windows 11 inspired look with the the centered uh super key menu key here yeah okay i i still like guys everything is subjective about a desktop and how you want to use it and what what's attractive to you but i just don't like i i don't like it i don't like this kind of off-center menu here and i'm not going to like that at windows 11 either but choice choice is great okay this all right and this one so what is the difference between ah that's just a a more minimized and kind of streamlined menu app menu okay i kind of like that actually so we'll go back to the way that it ships out of the box here and let's see what themes we have all right okay so you can schedule uh kind of a dynamic light dark theme let's see how our dark theme looks ah that's nice that has a nice pop to it let's see yeah okay huh yeah i like the uh i like kind of that i guess a charcoal like dark charcoal gray that they're using here yeah that's nice and of course we can change the accent colors i am just going to stay with the defaults i really like this title bar buttons left or right enable animations absolutely here's a new feature that uh i think you pro linux veterans might uh remember this one wobbly windows except they call it jelly mode this is back from what the comp is days i think and then it just kind of like sucks it back in yes let's see that let's i love it okay and what else do we have desktop options icon sizes so let's let's just put the home folder on the desktop and change our icon sizes all right see these are these are such user friendly options and it's not overwhelming you know i personally love kde but you have to admit that there is such an abundance of options and you can just drill down and get so deep into the weeds with customizing but sometimes it's you can mess something up and it's pretty easy to uh to just get so sidetracked by all of those all of those choices but this is nice um basic simple easy to find and execute appearance options and then we've got some fonts as well okay next on the tour connect your online accounts let's see what options we have yeah pretty much the okay standard stuff i love that next cloud is here and i like that microsoft is here okay link your phone and computer with zorin connect so i i think that zorin connect is based on the is it is it g connect i'm not sure what the gnome implementation of kde connect is called but uh this is based on that and i used it with zoranos 15. works well okay let's launch the software store oh that's okay all right so very reminiscent of gnome the ubuntu users will feel right at home let's go shopping now one thing i wanted to tell you guys about the software store on zoran os is they take kind of a hybrid approach so they are pulling in the flat hub repository so you've got flat pack support and they are pulling in a canonical's snap store as well and all of the app repositories from ubuntu and zorin os so there is a lot to choose from here office suite for work this is i like the way this looks it's very clean and it at a glance you can you can definitely see what's installed and what your additional option would be if you want uh more i guess direct office microsoft office compatibility now if we click install here on only office what is going to happen whoa okay so it's just going to install the flat pack okay wow all right great i like that this is included in the tour because you know a lot of people need various office uh productivity apps yeah nice okay that's it we hope that you enjoy zorin os and close okay so we have made it through the welcome tour and that was a that was a pretty pleasant experience actually that would get me it it you know if i was a brand new user to linux or even just to zoran os i i would feel a little bit more acclimated to what what makes this linux distribution um unique i guess or or just how i get around and how i customize and where i can install new software so overall a job well done on the the zoranos 16 welcome package but now let's take a little bit of a deeper look into what makes this pro version of zorin os pro so before we dig into all the software that is available in the pro version of zorno s 16 let's go ahead and get kind of our basic um our basic system stats and for that we're gonna just go to the about app is it is it there about hello about huh huh weird okay what if i do what what if i do it this way about that's interesting interesting so how come i can see it there in the global search but not here well okay all right so this is the pulse 15 gen 1 amd ryzen 7 4800h with radeon graphics it's a beast i mean you don't need this you don't need this much power yes you do um here we go zorin os 16 x11 window so there's not like this is the thing i don't love about the about page there's not a lot of details for most people that's probably okay but i want to dig a little bit deeper so what i like to do is let's make this just a bit a bit larger so you guys can see it i like to head to the terminal and do sudo apt install neofetch [Music] and neofetch so now wait let me do this clear neofetch okay now zorin os 16 is based on ubuntu 20.04 lts and it's using the 5.11 kernel which means we've got the hardware enablement stack activated to support newer hardware now let's okay let's go into zorin appearance which is pinned right here and let's just uh i really don't like the default size of this of this window and i can't why why can't i why can't i adjust the size of this window huh yeah you just you just can't [Music] well okay i don't know i'm just like that i like to see the whole yeah i can't snap it either wow okay um i want to change to let's see here yeah sure no let's see this is already too much choice for me i'm getting overwhelmed overwhelmed with the choice ah sure i just wanted to take a look at the app grid here so are these yeah this is everything okay so let's try and pick out what is what kind of what's the convenience factor what have they pre-installed for us for you know for creative professionals for content producers for photographers video editors etc so we have ardour which is a digital audio workstation and i've i have not used this much in the past but uh i do know some linux musicians who really dig this oh i like this gui and font scaling option right up front this is this is nice all right well okay we're not going to dig in we're not going to look at that too much we've got audacity pre-installed we have blankets which i've never heard of what is blanket huh oh it's a white noise app this is awesome i have never heard of this before okay i use a white noise app every single night look at that wow this is cool okay let's add a little oh a little drama to our rainstorm no wind how about some waves sitting out on the beach a rainy beach you know what let's let's okay it's sunny now sunny waves at the beach stream all right let's add a little bit of get some birds here this is great this is great i don't know why i've never heard of this but i could sit here and play with this for half the afternoon all right let's kill all of this and ah okay how about a boat [Music] wow man this is cool this is really cool what's custom no add your own audio very nice so i could add for example um i took some uh audio recordings of the sea when i was over in preventura croatia this summer and i could just add that because i've got about a like 10 to 15 minute loop so i could add this and then and then sprinkle in my own uh hell let's have a fire let's have a fire at studio b oh man very nice okay i'm sorry i won't play with this too much that is that's that's a nice app to have on here this is great okay um and i just discovered something new today maybe i'll do an app spotlight on blanket that's that's that's pretty neat we've got blender okay dark table feeds this is going to be an rss reader yep and nothing else oh free cat don't know much about that i know it's for working with cad files but it's nice to have included caden live which i use all the time kuha i don't know what kuhai is this is a screen capture utility okay so we can a selection or full screen all right well let's just yeah start recording okay okay okay so this and that and this and let's stop screencast recorded saved in videos okay so let's see what that looks like well excellent that's decent quality just for defaults i mean does it's not going to be as good as my uh my video capture settings with obs but that's that's great okay so nice to see that included as well all right what other nice goodies do we have libric had so another foss cad software libreoffice of course uh is this google maps no this is open street map okay nice nice krita network displays now this is what this was kind of the screen casting available video syncs but i don't think i have anything compatible so let's just skip that ah pdv is another if i'm not mistaken another video editing app uh it's a little bit more simplified than a caden live virtual box is here um oh and you know what i forgot to mention uh i didn't have to install obs obs was already here so that was nice i i was uh i was kind of worried like oh i want to i want to go through this kind of having a uh i guess a virgin experience you know not using the distro at all until i hit record so it was nice that this was actually pre-installed i didn't have to go launch a browser or go and get into the store or do anything i just uh launched it set it up and hit record in terms of the pre-installed applications i know that that so many of you this is not a this is not a big deal to you but for the average pc user or for someone who's just in a hurry uh i'll tell you about how i feel about the pre-installed software selection as jason as the guy who is a podcaster and a video content producer if i need to do any kind of audio editing i've got audacity built in and that's great so you know after the fact if i need to maybe apply some noise reduction to the uh the audio of a recording then i'll just drag that into audacity it'll use ffmpeg to import it let's just show you let's actually show you what what i would do uh and so if i have enough all right so this is a good what you want to do to do simple noise reduction in audacity is you just get a few seconds of silence and that's kind of like the room noise so it's going to capture the room noise and then what i'm going to do is go into noise reduction and get noise profile so it's just sampling this selection of noise and that's going to tell audacity okay this is what he wants to remove from the recording and then you just go back and you apply noise reduction to the entire track just like that now if i need to do some video editing right caden live is installed and i used to be really sour on caden live uh i used it back in 2020 i was trying um that and i was trying olive and i was trying davinci resolve and light works and i had a pretty terrible experience with caden live but this year i think they got to it was it maybe 20.08 or 20.04 they had an update earlier this year and uh that's when they added the the different workspaces here for editing audio effects and color and it just got it got so much more stable really really it just it just was a complete turnaround for me now your mileage may vary but um i am very happy with it these days so okay can i edit that screencast can i add that yep of course it works oh and look uh the kuha screencast app that i showed you earlier it defaults to 1080p 60fps that's cool so yeah let's switch the profile to that and let's drag in um the app grid look that we just recorded and boom and so see my point is i've got i've got the audio editing capability i've got video editing capability if i had some uh i don't know some some product shots i've got dark table i've got obs pre-installed for doing this video for capturing this little walkthrough and you know so for someone like me guys it's actually it's very beneficial to have all of this stuff pre-installed and someone who's not who comes into linux or comes into even maybe the ubuntu ecosystem and isn't used to it uh they've got you know they've got the zorin appearance app oh i don't want to stop recording no they've got the zoran appearance app to uh give them most likely a a presentation a look and feel that they're used to that they're comfortable with and appearance wise you know i have to say i'm one of the people who i like the rounded corners i like the default um the the accents and it's just very very clean very smooth great animations responsive so basically our pretty standard gnome settings here but you know what i wanted to do i wanted to check out some of these backgrounds ah all right okay oh it's time for a micro break did you guys see that where do i get to where do i get to my notifications in uh ah there we go take a break from typing and look away for 30 seconds okay micro break i can't do that right now oh he's sad anyway point being uh i think that zorin os has a very specific audience they're targeting it's probably not um professional linux enthusiasts who love to tweak and love to rice and love to uh have full control over the appearance even this like this is nice this is nice oh hey check that out oh i wish there was a duckduckgo link though that'd be that'd be nice let's search linux for everyone on youtube huh okay i kind of like that i kind of like how it separates out those uh wikipedia google and video results hey shameless plug um that was a good video uh shameless plug check out the will it linux gaming series uh because i've been having a blast with that and i think that comes across in the videos anyway let's go back and whoops nope i want to change the background to something with a little more color it pops a little more there we go [Music] here's another little touch that they've added to the file manager uh you see this files emblem you can kind of label uh so let's label this important okay and let's label this one in progress and let's label this one a favorite and we'll label this one finished ha okay and yep those stay if we go into list view or in icon view very cool i kind of like this i kind of prefer that to the color-coded files because the the little icon i mean it makes sense i know what the little clock represents the heart represents the check mark means it's complete this means it's important so yeah nice little touch there and you know what i take it back i actually do want to check out zorin connect let's do this right now let's check it out so for those of you not familiar zorin connect or or kde connect which i think is the um kind of the source app for this functionality uh it lets you sync your phone's notifications with your computer it lets you browse photos from your phone you can use your phone as kind of a media remote for your computer you can use it as a touchpad and a bunch of different things so let's actually get this set up okay i've got the app installed now and boom it just instantly right when i opened it from my android uh available devices yes request pairing uh let's send oh gosh let's see all right here's a here's a photo of one of the juno laptops that i just got in for review transfer successful i kind of missed where it went uh it's probably in downloads yep there it is boom that's the juno neptune 15. uh something that i'll be reviewing here on the channel very very soon okay so we can see low battery notification fully charged notification uh wow get pc notifications and vice versa um okay wow there's a lot of options and it's pretty pretty simple to navigate receive files save files too okay so we can choose to save them to any location here um what do we have in advanced wow find my phone ping experimental device jesus yeah there's a lot of nice options here okay well again i don't want to get too far into the weeds uh for all this stuff the goal here is just kind of to give you a walk through and kind of let you see what it is like to experience sorenos 16 and i i have to put this maybe in a pinned comment or something i should have mentioned this at the top not at the end of the video when you purchase zorin os 16 pro it also comes with their customer support with technical support so again for new users for people maybe who are getting a fleet of systems for a small business and they want to put zorin os on there then you know if they're all the pro packages then they're gonna have technical support they're gonna have help from zorin so that's nice and it's it's also nice for you know uh less experienced pc users who are maybe just getting into linux for the first time uh so all in all this is nice i i really like it it's it's close enough to ubuntu while while setting itself apart with some uh i think some some much appreciated tweaks on the layouts and the themes and you know little just little touches that make it stand out and uh make it a little bit simpler to use a little bit more accessible for for new users i think i think that's it i just wanted to give you guys a brief overview of this and kind of check it out together um for the first time anyway if you guys do have questions about zorin os 16 or zorin os in general or about zorin grid which has not launched yet i'm going to make sure that the zorino s team keeps an eye on these comments and so go ahead and write your questions in the comments section if you want or your your criticisms or praises or whatever you want and i'll try to make sure that artium and the team see what you have to say anyway this has been a lot of fun you guys thank you for watching and uh there's i'd love to do more of these and in fact i'd love to live stream them the problem is that i'm not i'm not in a position right now where i have uh i just couldn't i couldn't risk doing a live stream of this because i'm expecting a lot of interruptions today and we're getting ready to go on vacation so there's a lot of a lot of prep to do and a lot of just activity around the house um so i wasn't sure i could get like a solid hour or two of uninterrupted quiet time but if you do want to see a live stream of any distro please let me know in the comments i think it would be a blast i think it'd be a lot of fun to actually walk through a new distro or even an existing distro together and and take your questions and actually you know take requests and say hey do this benchmark this uh let me see this that would be that'd be something i'd like to do in the future so don't be shy let me know anyway [Music] [Music] wow that was dramatic anyway that's been a uh a brief walkthrough of zorin os 16 pro it launches on tuesday august 17th along with the other zorn os editions so check it out at zoranos.com and until the next video you all take care and take care of each other thanks again for watching really appreciate it see ya [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Linux For Everyone

Views: 40,354

Keywords: linux, linux for everyone, jason evangelho, Zorin OS, Linux distros, Zorin, Zorin OS Pro, Zorin OS 16, Zorin 16, Preview, Open Source, Beginner Linux distro

Id: qfe9yEwxJQo

Length: 37min 22sec (2242 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 12 2021