Zorin OS 16: Windows Alternative Linux Distro

[Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers this time we're going to check out zoe os 16 which was released on the 17th of august and is a linux distro which is designed to be an effective alternative to microsoft windows so let's go and take a closer look right here we are on the website for zorin os where if we click on download we find several editions of zorin os and the first of these is zorin os 16 pro which is a paid edition it costs 39 pounds dollars or euros and we'll take a look at this towards the end of the video but i'm mainly here going to focus on zoranos 16 core which is free to download so let's click to obtain the iso there we are and here we can supply an email address and receive a newsletter if we wish but we don't have to i can just press skip to download to obtain the iso file and there we are the file has downloaded and i'm now going to use bolena etcher to write it to a bootable usb drive i've already inserted drive which needs to be at least four gigabytes in size so we just need to select our image that we just downloaded there it is like that and all we need to do now is to click on flash and to tell windows we really need to do this and i would note when you write an operating system image to a usb drive you will delete everything previously on the drive and hey presto our bootable usb drive has been written and verified so we're now ready to install zorin os on a computer and it's going to be this computer an odyssey x86 j4105 so let's insert the flash drive and boot it up and here we are booting from the usb and to do this on your computer you may need to enable usb booting as i explained in my pc bios settings video anyway once we have booted we get to this menu which includes this third option which is very handy if you have an nvidia graphics card on your system as it sorts out the relevant drivers for you however here i'm on a computer with on-board intel graphics so i'll just select the first option to try to install xorin o-s and of course i'll speed on here until something of interest happens and here we are here is that something we've now got two options we can either try zone os running from usb drive this won't make any changes to your computer but it means you can just have a look at the operating system but here i want to do an install so i'll click on install sorry os after which we just have to follow things through that nice and straightforward we'll just set our language like that and i'll take the defaults on the screen to download updates and install third-party software for graphics wi-fi etc and we now get to the critical option where it asks what we want to do here i want to erase the disk on this machine and install zorin os replacing the existing operating system and all data and programs and everything else although as you can see there is an option for doing other things but for me right now i'll just click on install now and accept everything is okay we'll accept the timeline there and i'll create an account and to keep things straightforward in this video i'm going to log in automatically and now it's just a matter of sitting back and watching zorin os go through its install process so as usual will speed forward in time and there we are installation is complete we can now restart now and here we are we'll welcome to zoranos 16 and one of the new things in zoroanus 16 is this new first boot tour i think we'll take it very briefly to show you what's actually in here it tells you about menu applications things like that allows you to change the appearance i'll skip through this for now we'll see that later more depth in the video we can connect online accounts if we really want to we can link our phone on our computer if we wish to i don't think i'm going to do that we can learn about installing software applications which include libreoffice and only office but for now that's it i think we'll close things from here and before we go any further i'm going to make a few changes to make the operating system read better on video and i'll come back to you after that greetings here i am back again with things like a much larger mouse pointer and as you might have noticed our desktop wallpaper has also changed and this isn't because i've altered it it's because the default desktop wallpaper here is dynamic so it changes across the day so in the morning it looks like this and then it goes through by the middle of the day a bit like this from an early evening like this now it's like this and then by the end of the day it'll look like this but of course if you want you can pick any desktop wallpaper you like as you can probably tell straight away looking at zoran os it's a very stylish operating system let's bring up for example the file manager i like the look and feel here it's just it's a nice system to use it's very very calm it's very reassuring operating system it's a little bit faster in use a bit smoother than the previous version that seems to happen in most operating systems as they progress we've got a new taskbar down here a bit more customizable we've got their firefox web browser here on the taskbar by default i'll run this up mainly so i can note for you that firefox is installed here with all built-in tracking and telemetry disabled which is clearly for many people a good thing oh look we're on the world's favorite website where we can see things like quantum computing all very exciting indeed let's take a look at what we have in the menu here and the menu i think the first thing you notice is this will be pretty familiar to people who are used to using current versions of windows and if you want to configure it there's lots of really good settings available not only do we have the normal linux type of settings but we have the zorin appearance tab if we bring that up you'll see we have different layouts available and the first layout is what they call windows like it's what we've got here we've also got windows list like which is slightly different we can see the names of programs and they go down onto the taskbar whereas they're iconified under the standard windows 1 down there we've also got a touch focus layout like that where applications come up pretty much as they do in a mac by system or maybe a ubuntu based system and then we've also got a known based layout which it looks like this gives us a dock and things like that but for now i think i'm going to stick with the windows like layout themes are also very easy to change in a very stylish fashion i'd rather like the dark theme like that i think we'll use that here the interface here has got various things we can play with it's got a jelly mode which i'll show you because it's visual look it makes things go all wobbly and if we minimize things they do that we come back they do things like that i think that's the last time i'll ever use jelly mode on the desktop we can add things in i think i'll add the home there and also without mounted volumes like that and we've got here control of all the different fonts in the user interface the same way you don't in microsoft windows let's take a look at the different programs which are pre-installed in zorin os core there are a few accessories as you would imagine there are various games including my favorite version of solitaire which i will resist the temptation to play but it's good to have that included they get lots of brownie points for that under graphics we've got a photo viewer we've got a the photoshop clone under internet we have firefox we've just seen and we have a remote desktop client and if you're wondering where's the email package it's hiding away in office with libreoffice we've got evolution email client also here installed we've got basic sound and video tools something to play videos something to play music somebody to control a webcam etc up there and then we've also got there is system tools as you would expect and finally various utilities and we'll just go into the disk usage analyzer here because i think it's interesting to see here i've got zorin os core 16 installed on a 250 gigabyte western digital black ssd with a capacity of 244.5 gigabytes in total and we've still got 235.2 gigabytes left with zorino s core installed so as you can see it isn't a storage hungry operating system right here i am back again with a new desktop background and i've changed it because there's so many wallpaper options here in zoranos i thought i should try another one out anyway this segment of the video is called applications and if you want to use your computer to browse the web access email run office programs view and edit photos and play music and video then zorino s core may well have everything you need pre-installed as we saw in the last segment of the video and this means that for some people it can be a windows alternative right out of the box however many of us need to access a wider range of software and in xorin os we've got various options for doing that for start we've got the linux software installer here which is called software or software store let's just run it up wants to run full screen for some reason but let's pull it down it's probably me running some slightly strange scaling to make things look better in video which is giving it some trouble anyway this software installer has got the application catalogues of flat hub the snapstore the ubuntu and zoenos app repositories as well as the capability to install deb and app image packages and what all of that means if you're not into linux is that here we've got the ability to install graphically loads and loads and loads of linux applications so let's just test this out i thought we'd install a video editor because we can't video edit with the default programs here so let's just go down to audio and video and if we go down here we should find caden live i could search for it let's scroll down i like scrolling down there's caden live let's click on the caden live video editor and all i've got to do is click on install and it should install caden live and there we are it's finished let's just launch the program it'll now be in the menus as well but we'll launch it from here and here we are running the caden live video editor in zorin s which proves the principle of installing linux applications from the software store but you cry what about windows applications what if you need to run something that's only available for windows and zoonos 16 is as well equipped as any linux distro to actually do this and to prove it let's first of all open up the file manager i do like the file manager here and i've got sitting in winaps here i've got the files to install adobe audition 1.5 and this is a fairly old edition of adobe edition 1.5 the audio editor from adobe but it's a version i can install without having to mess around with my online accounts and online registration so i'm going to use it here for a test and we can see over here the exe file for the setup for adobe audition and here in zorin os 16 if you right click on an exe file or an msi install file you'll find at the top it says open with install windows application and the first time you do this you'll get a message asking you to install windows app support which for me didn't work so i actually went back to the software store and did a manual install of windows app support i'm therefore not hoping when i click here it will install adobe audition do we want to run setup xc yes we do let's see what happens very exciting wine has come up so hopefully this will work and yes we're in the adobe audition installer so i'll just go through this and there we are setup has completed and oh look software updater wants to install things let's remind ourselves later about that we've got a couple of things on the desktop one will be information one should be the file is it that one or is it this one neither of those is running up the program let's just go back to uh oh wind installed now look let's go to wine and hopefully adobe audition let's see if we can run it from there oh i'm crossing my fingers and yes this looks extremely promising yes we have adobe audition running here in zorin os and i won't press the spacebar and play this because i might get a copyright strike by adobe for the music but we proved a principle we can install at least some windows applications and i will stress some windows applications in xaron os using the facilities i've just shown you now you might also be thinking about gaming can you play games here in this linux distro and there's more support for gaming in the next these days than you might imagine and indeed if you look on the help page for zorin and look at the play games section you'll see there's various options you've got here using linux games you can install steam and you may even be able to get some windows games running but i think steam is probably the best option and i'm not a gamer but i have actually tried this to some extent because earlier on today i went to the software store and installed steam and therefore if we now look under here under games you will see oh look we could launch steam there it is and i don't have a steam account i'm not going to log in and try and show you stuff i know nothing about but i would point out there are a reasonable number of games on steam now available which support linux and specifically if we look on this website you can find out all about them there's lots and lots of stuff here all on the linux on steam page and just to give you the headline in july 2021 there were 54 380 games on steam of which 7586 officially supported linux which is about 14 so something like just under one in seven games you'll find on steam can be played on linux so finally here i'd noted if you're interested in running zorin os or another linux distro but you need access to some windows software and lots of people are in that position and it can't always be installed using wine in fact a lot of windows applications don't work using one if you're in that position you can always install a virtual machine and again i've got this here if we just look under system tools and down here i've installed virtualbox it will run up virtualbox i found this in the software store and i brought across a virtual machine from another computer windows 10 as you can see let's just run that up it's been suspended won't take it too long to come up and here we are now running windows 10 as a guest virtual machine in zorin os which would allow us to run a very wide range of windows applications and so as you can see we have a lot of software choice here in zorin os both linux software and access to at least some windows software and in fact there's yet another means we could use to access windows software here in a linux distro and that is something i'll be covering in next week's video oh look it's once again a pink time of day and i thought we'd finish off by taking a look at zorin os 16 pro the paid edition of zorin os so what do you get if you pay 39 dollars pounds or euros for zoran os 16 well it seems to me you get four things firstly you get to help out the developers who have to earn some money from somewhere secondly you get support specifically support as we can see here on the web with installation and whilst installing zoranos is not that difficult as we saw earlier in the video some people will find having support for installation very reassuring thirdly inside zorin appearance you get some additional layouts you have the four we already had in zorin os core but down here there are four more and they are first of all a mac light layout which is very mac-like as you can see down here secondly there is a windows 11 light layout which have been clearly fast on the update to get this one in and it looks like windows 11 with its centralized start menu oh joy thirdly there is an ubuntu type layout with a dock down here and finally there was a windows classic layout with a slightly different type of menu although personally i still prefer their basic windows like layout up here this is my my favorite zorin os layout although i think i'm going to just give it the dark theme again because i do like having that dark scene where is it over over there i'll just see him probably christopher there we are we'll do the dark theme and we'll also put on our desktop the homer icon finally the pro edition of zorin os contains a lot more pre-installed software all of which you could download for yourself for free and so in os core but buying zone os pro saves you the effort and if we bring up a clean edition of zorin os core on the right of the screen we can do a quick comparison there's not a lot of different in accessories few more things in the pro version games i think is the same graphics there's a lot more software blenders here for 3d modeling and compositing things like that we've got dark table for working with digital images we've got inkscape we've got critter the fantastic painting package do check out my critter video we've got libra cad we've got scribblers for the desktop publishing if we look under internet not a lot of differences there a few more things under office we have a home banking application an application for freehand drawing for taking notes under sound and video there's a lot more things the ardor digital audio recorder audacity for recording audio as well handbrake for transcoding caden live is pre-installed for video editing and if we continue down here we've also got things like obs studio to help with podcasting streaming things like that under system tools i think things are pretty much the same and finally under utilities again i think we've got a fairly similar experience better let's just run up the disk usage analyzer where we can see that zone os pro requires about double the drive storage space of zorin os core zorin os 16 in both its core and pro editions is an excellent distro for those wishing to transition from windows to linux so if you're thinking of maybe jumping ship from microsoft i'd strongly recommend that you check out zorino s but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed what you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed please subscribe and i hope to talk to you again very soon [Music] you

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 251,583

Rating: 4.933322 out of 5

Keywords: ZorinOS 16, ZorinOS, Windows alternative, moving to Linux, migrating to Linux, Zorin OS 16, Zorin OS 16 Pro, Zorin OS 16 Core, Zorin OS install, Zorin OS demo, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt

Id: GTMBFtl_xs4

Length: 20min 50sec (1250 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021