i tried zorin awhile back- maybe a year or little more ago- it ran a little sluggish i felt- compared to linux mint- which was why i chose mint- I’ll give zorin another try though see if it has cchanged
Yup- linux is way way better than it used to be- and loads easier than it used to be- everythign is almost 100% automatic as far as detection goes- I had a couple of issues i had to l ook up though- which is one of the downsides ot linux- the support is like way over most people’s heads- technogeek comments that leave a new user lost and frustrated- but for hte most part linux should run fairly simply and automatically=- I did have to find things like installing a new ppa to get my video card working with NVidia drivers- which wasn’t easy to figure out- linux mint cinnamon 17.4 was very easy- automatic- but when i went ot linux mint 18- it no longer was automatic- had to spend a few days fidnign out how to get the files installed-
As long as oen doesn’t need to know command lines, linux is easy- but a few programs need command l ine installations which can be kinda hard to figure out- still- but it’s certainly much easier these days
All true. Case in point; one of the things I use my most used PC for is watching tv using the Kodi program. So far they have not gotten a simple installer program for Linux so I found a website that walked me through using the Terminal, what to type to install Kodi, then found it wasn’t quite the version I wanted so I found another site with a slightly different command line install and ended up with what I wanted. Linux is far easier to learn than Kodi was for me; especially since it’s so close to being in the Windows type format. I really do wish I had tried Linux again sooner. I played with it for quite a while 10 years ago but it still wasn’t what I wanted for a home computer. Close but still not there at the time. Now my 3 Windows computers, one laptop and two PC’s, will all be dual boot with Zorin being the default OS. If I were to start fresh with a new hard drive; I’d just leave off the Windows OS completely but it doesn’t hurt them to have it installed if the hard drive is plenty big enough.
I used to help friends and family a lot before they all got to be super computer techs (hahaha). The one thing I think helped them a lot was teaching them how to ask the right questions in Google to find the answers they needed. It takes a little while to get that down and use as few words as possible to ask the questions. It’s also how they all ended up being super geeks. Now I can’t tell them anything because they know it all. Hehehehe...
Just for fun I think I will get a hard drive for my home office PC to try the various Linux distro’s so I have personal experience with them; especially Mint. Who knows; I might like it even better. On my old XP cheapy laptop I had to massage Linux on using a few more tries than my more up to date PC needed. It was a straight forward install on the PC but I did have to reinstall “grub” to get it dual boot properly. I think the command was sudo update-grub2 or something very close to that. May not have needed the hyphen; just a space.
I chose Zorin simply because the tech articles said it was closest to the Windows format. It’s a fun hobby too if someone enjoys the challenge they bring sometimes. Gotta have a second working computer for Internet access though to find the answers. A smart phone would probably work fine too.