Zorin OS 18 continues to impress in that it makes Linux much more approachable and even Windows-like in many ways. But Linux still has rough edges that will trip up those making the transition, and overcoming the lack of familiarity will take time.
Mostly, this has been a positive experience, and I'm impressed by the polish I see here. But over the past ten days or more I have noted a few issues that aren't ideal. There are small things, like the lack of a PIN or Windows Hello-type biometric sign-in, a minor daily convenience I do miss. And then perhaps more troubling issues tied to power management where I open up the laptop in the morning and it doesn't power on because the battery completely drained overnight. It appears to be configured correctly, so it's difficult to know where to turn.
But Zorin OS is slick. It's clean and handsome looking in ways Windows 11 just isn't, with a nice level of polish throughout. This is not the traditional vibe I get from Linux and while it's not unique to this distribution, it's nicely done. I find myself wanting to make this work, which I think is a good sign. Perhaps I need to try this on a different laptop as well, though most of the non-Arm PCs I have here are HPs and most are Intel-based.
Anyway, since the first write-up, I've taken a few additional steps configuring and using Zorin OS 18. So here are some of the more notable changes.
Quick Microsoft Office follow-up
I don't really use Microsoft Office and I had some understanding that it wasn't possible to install recent versions of the suite on Linux. But I gave it the oldvcollege try, so to speak, and can at least confirm that it doesn't work. So those who do rely on Office will find Linux problematic unless they can use the web app versions or are comfortable switching to alternatives like LibreOffice, which comes bundled in Zorin OS and admittedly looks quite nice.
Typora and ... GIMP?
What I do use, of course, is Markdown and usually with the Typora app which, as it turns out, is available for Linux. Installing it takes a bit of work, but configuring it was also more time consuming than usual because I have a very specific configuration that I store and copy over on new Windows installs and I had to do all that manually here, including installing a few fonts. But all's well that ends well, as they say. And Ghostwriter, an alternative I installed previously, is pretty good too.
I used Typora to write this article in Zorin OS and then publish it to the Thurrott.com website, as I've done with a few articles now. There are no issues to speak of, though the image editing bit was interesting. Zorin OS comes with The GIMP, a free and open source Photoshop-like app, but it's quite foreign to me and just figuring out some basic tasks (resizing, which it calls scale image) and exporting to JPEG were a bit trying on the first go-round.
There are plug-ins for The GIMP like this one that make it look and w...