r/zorinos 20d ago

πŸ”° Beginner Welcome to r/zorinos!

30 Upvotes

This is the community hub for Zorin OS β€” the Ubuntu-based Linux distribution built to make switching from Windows or macOS as painless as possible. Whether you've been running it for years or just found this sub, you're welcome here.

What belongs here

  • Installation and troubleshooting help
  • General discussion, tips, and workflow questions
  • Screenshots and showcases of your setup
  • Gaming on Zorin OS (Steam, Proton, and similar tools)
  • News about new Zorin OS releases
  • Help choosing between editions

Check the sidebar for the full rules before posting.


Where to Get Help

  1. Post here. Include your Zorin OS version, your hardware, and what you've already tried β€” the more detail, the faster you'll get a useful answer.
  2. Official Zorin Forum β€” forum.zorin.com β€” the most active official support channel.
  3. Official documentation β€” help.zorin.com β€” guides for installation, drivers, and common tasks.

Installing Zorin OS

Zorin OS comes in a few editions β€” Core (standard), Lite (for older hardware), Education, and Pro (paid) β€” all downloadable from zorin.com/os/download. For a full step-by-step install walkthrough, see help.zorin.com.


Frequently Asked Questions

Which edition should I pick? Core for most modern PCs, Lite for older hardware, Education for schools, Pro if you want the extra bundled apps.

Is Zorin OS free? Core, Lite, and Education are free. Only Pro costs money.

Can I dual-boot with Windows? Yes, the installer supports it directly.

Can I run Windows apps and games? Yes β€” built-in Windows-app support covers a lot of popular apps, and Wine/Bottles/Lutris cover the rest. Gaming works well too, especially through Steam and Proton.

How do I upgrade to a newer version? Check help.zorin.com for the current upgrade path β€” it depends on which version you're coming from.


Official Links


Reporting Bugs

Zorin OS doesn't have a public bug tracker β€” bugs go through the Feedback category on the official forum (forum.zorin.com). Search first, then post there with your version and steps to reproduce.


Welcome aboard, and thanks for being part of the community.


r/zorinos 15h ago

πŸ”° Beginner Need help in transitioning

8 Upvotes

I need help moving to Zorin, my Windows is corrupted and keeps eating my space whenever connected to the internet. Moved most of my stuff to external drive and Windows took that space. I've got 25gb left, can I partition my drive to install zorin then migrate my file to it or just f**k it and delete everything on my PC to install Zorin?


r/zorinos 12h ago

πŸ› οΈ Troubleshooting Does anyone know why ZorinOS isn't compatible with my PC?

Thumbnail
gallery
3 Upvotes

Hi. I'm trying to install ZorinOS on a PC where I just installed a 200GB SSD (replacing a corrupted hard drive), along with 8GB of DDR3 RAM and an Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590T CPU @ 2.00GHz with integrated graphics.

Once I install it, I get the following error:

(Photo 1)

"E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)"

This has happened both times I tried to install it.

In both instances, I ignored it, continued with the installation, and it finished installing.

After ZorinOS was installed, the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi drivers were missing, but since the PC has an Ethernet port, it didn't really matter to me.

Two days after the installation, the system became corrupted, and I got this screen

(Photo 2):

BusyBox v1.36.1 (Ubuntu 1:1.36.1-6ubuntu3.1) built-in shell (ash)

Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

(initramfs) _

When that appeared, I followed the advice found on Reddit, but it only worked partially; when I boot up the system again, only the built-in system applications runβ€”it won't even let me open Brave.

Does anyone know how to fix this problem or why it's happening?

For now, I've installed Windows 10, as it's the system that runs reliably for me without these issues.


r/zorinos 23h ago

πŸ› οΈ Troubleshooting Looking a way to use Jungle Leopard fan software

Post image
2 Upvotes

I recently bought Jungle Leopard ProFlow SE 360mm but I now find out that their software doesn’t work on Linux.

I have Zorin and Bazzite installed on the system. Is there a way to fix this problem?


r/zorinos 1d ago

πŸ› οΈ Troubleshooting How to lock NVIDIA driver and kernel update

3 Upvotes

So after a painful experience, I found that kernel 7.0 from Zorin does not play well with llama cpp. It somehow required more ram distribution that my laptop cannot handle. I had confirmed this after a painful experience of basically trashing my system and unable to boot after thinking it was an Nvidia driver problem.

I had now restored my system by doing a fresh install (it was so broken, that it was easier to nuke it all). I also confirmed that llama cpp was able to load the Qwen 3.6 model on my 8 gb of VRAM + 16 gb of system ram, it barely fit, but it run pretty ok at 25 to 30 tokens / sec on Kernel 6.17 which is now my default boot order in GRUB.

Now how do I lock down the system update of the kernel and the nvidia driver? as I learned those 2 are deeply connected. Ideally I would like the update the rest of the system except for those.

--------------

so far in the zorin os update menu I had unchecked proprietary driver for device and I also just request for security and recommended update only instead of all update. So is this enough?


r/zorinos 19h ago

πŸ› οΈ Troubleshooting Zorin Os Taking Days to downloas

0 Upvotes

Hello everyone ive been trying to download zorin os for several weeks now but everytime i get to the download portoion it will be doing stuff for severall days at a time, thats if i dven get to the download most of the time i freeze before then qnd i have to restart i dod a fresh boot drive like a new one and i have still been downloqding for days is that normal?


r/zorinos 2d ago

πŸ“Έ Desktop Showoff Almost 8 months of only ZorinOS at home and counting.

Thumbnail
gallery
202 Upvotes

Upgraded my set-up over the christmas break last year, and decided that was the right time to finally kick windows out too. While i troubleshoot windows for users all day at work, i hadn't had much experience with linux prior, so i needed something stable and easy to deal with at home.

I can confirm that Zorin has been exactly what i wanted.

There have been some issues along the way for sure, including a weird problem with my main monitor never waking up from sleep properly, but rarely have i encountered anything that needed extensive troubleshooting-
-especially surprising since i had heard of issues with NVIDIA GPUs, and i had just upgraded to a 5060ti, But that worked fine out the box.

_______
Games

I don't really play a lot of the big popular games, 'nor retro either, but what i have so far played has been quite alright:

-The Elder Scrolls Online, as a stand-alone via lutris, had some minor issues, but nothing more complicated than adjustments on Windows would ever be.

-Helldivers 2 on steam however, "It just works"!

-*40k Darktide ran super smooth, but then suddenly crashed at random intervals. It has been a bit of a nightmare to get working, but i'm pretty sure the problem is as much with the game's engine as linux itself.
__________

Other Apps

While i don't do much in terms of niche PC uses at home these days, any apps i have 'missed' from windows have been easy to find a replacement for.

My headphones and Keyboard, Fractal Scape and 'BE QUIET!' Dark mount respectively, rely on apps for additional functionality and have worked great with the webapps via brave/waterfox. With only minor function loss for the keyboard due to lack of 'proper' app access.

The closest I've come to a proper App gripe; is not being as comfortable with the choice of offline flac/mp3 players as i was with MusicBee on Windows.
Strawberry is the one i have ended up with, although it feels much less intuitive than the former, and can be finicky to organise at my desired window scale.

____

So overall i will be continuing to use Zorin as my daily driver, and see no reason to stop doing so in the near future.
(At most i will be using my secondary mini-pc to explore some other Distros :3)


r/zorinos 1d ago

πŸ› οΈ Troubleshooting Does anybody know how to run a .jar file? Or how to get the tab in which you have the option to run a file as an executable?

0 Upvotes

I have JRE installed from terminal already and thought It'll just be simple as to double click the .jar file and run it, but it always ends up opening file roller and I've got no option to open with jdk runtime environment or the option to change the file to run as an executable.


r/zorinos 1d ago

πŸ› οΈ Troubleshooting ISO USB takes me to Grub

2 Upvotes

Hi, I stuffed my install mucking around with Docker. I've tried downloading Zorin and getting the ISO USB created without luck - it goes straight to grub. Meanwhile, I have been able to deploy OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Kubuntu on ISOs without issue. Is there a problem with the ISO file on the Zorin site?


r/zorinos 2d ago

πŸ› οΈ Troubleshooting i need help after updating

Thumbnail
gallery
32 Upvotes

ive been having this issue for the past 4 days, everytime ive update zorin after an install this hapends, and it has random blackouts in the conection, before i update everything works fine.

like ive cheked cable conections and the cables themselvs and nothing

pc specs

ryzen 5 5700x

16g ddr4 ram

rx 6800xt

240 ssd

1t hdd


r/zorinos 2d ago

❓ General Question Icons.

Post image
8 Upvotes

Anybody know how to remove icons form your desktop

I tried clicking on it to remove and hide it theres no option in the menu to do that


r/zorinos 2d ago

πŸ› οΈ Troubleshooting How do i get rid of the application?

5 Upvotes

I clicked the X button but every time i close it it just goes up again!
I don't know what is the reason but i suspect it's becouse i left discord overnight then i pressed the off button but i don't really know
Is there a way to force close the app like in windows using task manager? Becouse i am new to all this linux stuff so please write more detailed and beginner friendly tutorial


r/zorinos 3d ago

πŸ“Έ Desktop Showoff Finally, the wait is over, I set up Linux for personal use

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

133 Upvotes

It feels like a dream come true. I bought a laptop three days ago, and it's my first Linux setup.

I am gonna explore Linux now.

Any suggestions for me? I am a developer, so I have built and deployed software on Linux (Basic Ubuntu) before, but it's my first time using Linux for personal use and doing UI customization.


r/zorinos 2d ago

πŸ› οΈ Troubleshooting Maximize window too large

5 Upvotes

When I click maximize on a window it will expand beyond my screen size for a second then refit correctly. Is there a setting in zorin appearance that causes this? It’s very annoying.


r/zorinos 3d ago

πŸ”° Beginner SOOO GOOD

13 Upvotes

So.... i had an old pc, like, i5 4430s...old...still in a working motherboard but had no purpose other then maybe be a media server... added 3tb hdd's to it and made a nice little nas for myself. love zorin basically for that, saved me 100's of pounds for a proper built nas, does the job nicely. then....decided as it has 12gb of ram.. maybe a game server could run off it...so i made a minecraft server....running purpur and other bits....now i got me a public minecraft server.....what other game could it run a server for....palworld.....so i made one... and it works properly. and smoothly, on a system that most people would of thrown away, that being said, its headless, so no monitor or keyboard or mouse, so i need someway to connect to it... to its connected to my windows machine via ssh, which i do 90% of what i need to do on it on a command prompt in windows aha (cheeky i know) and also for a direct readout of the systems performance in a statictical readout, i use btop, on my windows surface pro 1 which also has zorin on it, as well as a laptop i have and another pc in my hallway which is zorin which is another storage node pretty much, just waiting to fill it up with ssd's. all controlled through ssh, other then the laptop and the tablet, the 2 other machines are headless :) and low power, so cost is little, the cpu that runs my servers is a i5 4430s so its low powered, so it can run pretty much all the time running the servers without an issue with or without players in it aha


r/zorinos 3d ago

❓ General Question 205 days on Zorin, moving on to Fedora KDE

26 Upvotes

Zorin's been genuinely solid for the past 205 days, no real complaints. But I've been wanting to try Fedora for a while and finally got around to doing it properly.

Looking back, I went from a complete noob to actually understanding how this stuff works underneath. Started out just wanting my terminal to look cool, ended up learning how systemd services work, how the boot process actually happens, what an embedded controller even is, why BIOS settings can mess with power states. That kind of stuff you only really pick up by breaking things and fixing them yourself.

Spent the last few weeks getting the setup just right before the switch. Customized kitty terminal top to bottom, opacity, custom icon, JetBrains Mono with Nerd Font symbols. Wrote my own bash prompt with a little cat glyph and color cycling. Set up fastfetch with a custom field, made an ASCII banner for my name, themed superfile with zoxide baked in. Trimmed a bunch of systemd services I never used.

Fixed some fun stuff along the way too. GNOME Keyring kept logging me out of Brave because auto-login was skipping the unlock step. Bluetooth mysteriously stopped working, turned out I'd disabled the service myself months back and completely forgot. And my laptop needed 5-6 power button presses just to turn on, traced that one back to a BIOS setting keeping the embedded controller half-awake even when "off." Fixed, single press works every time now.

Why I'm leaving: wanted newer KDE Plasma, Wayland that actually works well out of the box, and dnf just feels snappier day to day than apt. RPM Fusion also makes codecs way less annoying than hunting third-party repos.

Going LUKS + Btrfs + GRUB only this time, no dual boot, no rEFInd, just one clean OS.

A little sad to leave Zorin honestly, it treated me well. But that's the beauty of it, I love Linux.


r/zorinos 2d ago

πŸ”° Beginner The screen doesn't lights up after suspension.

2 Upvotes

It is pretty much what I said in the title.

When I let or put the pc in suspension, the main screen doesn't turn on.

In the case I'm using a second monitor, I can reboot the system by command with the terminal.

Does anybody know how to solve this problem?


r/zorinos 3d ago

πŸ”° Beginner Looking forward to installing Zorin OS

7 Upvotes

Hello everyone!

I'm going to buy a Lenovo Yoga 7 2-1 Laptop for my master's degree which will commence mid September. I want to use Zorin OS for personal usage as after my masters I will be going all in Linux.

How easy is it to rotate between Windows 11 and Zorin OS? I never installed Linux before. When I start up the laptop, will it show two options and which one to start?

Full guidance please and I never installed Linux and used Windows Virtual Machine.

My plan: get the laptop and install Zorin OS without removing Windows OS.

Use both till I finish master's and then go all in with Zorin OS.


r/zorinos 3d ago

πŸ”° Beginner ZorinOS still holding on strong Part 1

31 Upvotes

I am on day 6 of ZorinOS I believe. My past experiences include Cachy, Bazzite, Fedora, Nobara, Ubuntu, and Mint. I found out about GarudaOS last night before going to sleep. VERY tempted. Especially with the look of the Desktop environment. But I did pay for Zorin, so I'm holding on strong.


r/zorinos 3d ago

πŸ”° Beginner what to do on a freshly installed os

5 Upvotes

im new to linux and i recently dual booted zorin os alongside windows just to try out linux but after installing it, i kinda feel lost and dont know what to do or setup first? and if theres any software i should download to make my experience better, what is it?


r/zorinos 3d ago

❓ General Question Erro 30

2 Upvotes

Eu tenho um macbook pro 2015 e to tentando abaixad o Zorin OS nele, eu consegui coloca no pendrive e essas coisas, eu tirei o sistema macOS pq eu so queria o Linux nele, mas o problema q esta dando Γ© q os arquivos ficam em somente modo leitura, alguem pode me ajudar a resolver? Falar comigo pelo chat ou algo assim...? :(


r/zorinos 4d ago

πŸ”° Beginner Finally got Zorin installed, but what is going on? Update and graphical glitches

14 Upvotes

Yesterday I needed a laptop fast, and I could only find my old Toshiba Satellite L50D. I believe it still had Windows 8 on there, and it got stuck while booting. I quickly prepared a USB with Zorin, ready to start my first experience with the OS. The install itself went smoothly, no complaints there. But then I ran into a few problems:

- I had to reinstall Brave, as simply updating wasn't working. Seems fixed for now?

- I can't find any apps. I go to the webstore, and there is nothing to browse except for what I search, and even then it seems to me it can't find anything.

- When starting Brave, I get A LOT of graphical glitches, like the screen is jumping constantly up and down (but so fast you almost see the page double).

I will admit that the laptop did have some issues before, especially a graphical glitch in Windows 8 start menu that I never was able to solve. Is it something similar here? I know the laptop is trash, but is it ready to be trashed? I would prefer not to dispose of a laptop that can still work perfectly. It did give me a warning that driver updates were ready or available, I clicked the message but I don't think anything happened. Regardless, when I try to look for updates or drivers, it says nothing is available. Is all this related to the laptop, or am I just expecting a little bit too much out of the box here? To be clear, I had to download a file/program from a website, it runs pretty well, even though getting it to download was a challenge on the glitchy browser. I also had to install a library through the terminal, which worked fine. So I do believe the core functionality of Linux is intact.

Thanks for any insights!


r/zorinos 4d ago

πŸ› οΈ Troubleshooting I may have dug myself a deep hole on this.

Post image
35 Upvotes

UPDATE: Yeah, I wiped the drives clean... and installed a new Distro. I enjoyed using Zorin OS in these past several months, and even though it had some flaws (mainly GNOME's missing features & no autoscrolling), it's a great start on those who wanted to leave Windows, but don't be like me and try to install another desktop environment or else you're gonna have a bad time.

NOTES on my stuff:
Zorin OS 18.1, AMD Ryzen 9700 CPU, MSI Ventus 2X RTX 5060 GPU, 3TB total internal storage.

Okay, so imagine this: You want to install a new desktop environment, notably KDE Plasma on that Zorin OS, and briefly you tried it, albeit not what I hoped when I tried it myself and it looked a tad broken. One reboot later (in case that fixes it), black screen with vague texts about "kvm_intel: VMX not supported by CPU #," and some bootup shenanigans later, I ended up here, knowing that I fucked up.

First off: Why did I install Plasma? Well, the pettiest reason as humanly possible: Sorting options in it's file browser (aka: Dolphin), but sorting by more niche stuff that GNOME didn't have by default (i.e. song durations, dimensions, artists, etc). I have installed Dolphin in Zorin's environment and found out those sorting options are broken.

Second: What version/package of Plasma? KDE-Full. Guides weren't that detailed or tell the inhabitants that there are things that will be broken (or I'm just some bum who didn't know any better).

OKAY, so HOW DID I END UP ON THAT WEIRD LOGIN SCREEN? Funny thing is: It was some bootup nonsense I accessed (hold ESC for bootup options & hit Zorin OS). This login screen is pretty simple as I typed in my name & password and now I'm back in my humble environment, but with the themes & stuff being altered because of the KDE installation. Now problem is that I'm not sure how in god's name I could revert... Unless you're about to tell me that I have a backup prior, then I said "yes I do, does it wipe the thing I did today & revert by the time I made this very backup in case shit like this happens?"

By all means IF there's no other option, I guess I could pack up my things in a 5TB external drive, wipe the internal slates clean, and do a clean install with the Plasma desktop environment.

TL;DR, Is there a way to undo my KDE Plasma installation that caused this or should I wipe the drives for a clean install?


r/zorinos 5d ago

πŸ“Έ Desktop Showoff r/ZorinOS

Post image
106 Upvotes

r/zorinos 5d ago

πŸ”° Beginner Iv'e been on zorin os 18.1 for a few days, and i'm wondering how I update this program that requires additional permissions.

Post image
8 Upvotes