Why I'm uninstalling Zorin

When in Firefox and trying to do messaging on LinkedIn my attempts at typing are thwarted with extremely painful slow response times - making typing all but impossible. Nothing else is going on at the time, Firefox is the only task I have running and my Zorin 9.1 core install is less than 24 hours old so I don't think I've had time yet to mess things up on my own. Also, the Firefox window will start doing a "dim and undim" thing (which I can find no explanation for in the forums or documentation) and I find this extremely annoying when I'm trying to get something done on a human, not glacial, timeframe. I'm no fan of Windows, which is why I tried Zorin for my new PC (Sempron dual core, 8GB memory, 1TB HD) as a dual boot along with Windows 7 pro (which by the way seems to have no performance issues such as I'm experiencing in Zorin). I don't like to make a judgment on Zorin based on this one thing alone - but doing the same exact thing with Windows 7 causes no such extreme slow-down problems. You wanted to know why I'm uninstalling and this is why. If my PC can't keep up with the speed of my typing then it's pretty much useless to me, sorry Zorin. My wife has been using Linux Mint for a couple of years and it has never given her any problems at all (superior in all respects to Windows) so I think that I'm going to swap out Zorin for the latest Linux Mint. Still, no hard feelings and I wish you all the very best of luck in improving and moving forward with Zorin - maybe someday in the future I'll try Zorin again but for now I simply don't have the time to waste on simple but extremely annoying issues like this one that I have been experiencing with Zorin. (BTW, Firefox has never given me the same problem with Windows - although it gives me other headaches on a daily basis, so my search for the "better" OS continues......)

Hi, I have had your symptoms occur in Opera on earlier iterations. Whilst you state that you don't have any other applications running Zorin does have other processes running in the background that could be an issue but I never got to bottom it. I don't have such issues on a regular basis but then I did customise my installation and have added Cinammon desktop (which you will be used to in Mint):

See my 'Swarfendor437 Miscellania ...' thread here:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9795

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9795&start=10#p48998

I have to say that I would never touch a Sempron processor - I was surprised that AMD ever went down this route - I would never buy Intel Celeron either which is what Sempron is the equivalent of - they are underpowered in their instruction sets.

If you still can't live with Zorin - you could try Makulu.

Thank you Swarfendor437 for the reply. Yes, Sempron is an underpowered processor when you just compare specs, but it allows me to afford to build and use several PCs tasked for different uses. I have more powerful machines on my desk, but use those for more CPU intensive tasks. My sempron machine now runs top-notch with the latest Linux Mint, which I'm using to write this reply with (my ex-Zorin PC), and provides me more than enough horsepower for what I use it for. Heck, I even have a 486 PC running DOS here at my desk as well (yea, it's a big desk) that runs like a champ for the things that DOS still does best. It's not about specsmanship, it's about using the best tool for the job at the most reasonable cost. I long ago gave up trying to use one PC for everything - too much frustration, too much downtime. IMHO better to have multiple machines that do well at their given tasks. AAMOF, having multiple cheap machines allows me to be far more productive and maximize the use of my time better than it was in the day when I tried to use one PC for everything - and I've still got one more unused Sempron on the shelf waiting for my next cheap PC buiild. Yea I'm a geek that loves being surrounded by PCs, but I say embrace your geekness (and make sure you've got a reliable KVM switch!). As for Zorin, as soon as it matures a bit more I'll probably give it another try on a future PC build. Thanks again for your reply!!

Hi
I have to agree with Swarfendow above, it's probable process/RAM related, you haven't said what PC you're wife is running, or the programmers you are running (?) would be interested in the comparison.

I am running Zorin as an alternative to Windows and found it to be very comparable in terms of speed, and love the desktop gui which has made the transition much easier.
My main area of interest is I will need to run a video editor ( in place of Adobe Premier) and I'm evaluating 'Lightworks', now this is a 'chunky' programme and gives me a similar effect to what you are discribing i.e. Darkened screen. But I can attribute this to the heavy demands being placed on the PC, rendering and on the fly presentation of HD video ( transcoding etc).
I also use the 'libre' office software and have not experienced any problems there.

To try and mitigate this I will be switching my systems drive to a disk, and using my SSD drive as the data drive, also I only have 4 Gig of ram so will be upgrading that to at least 8 gig.

God luck
Jeff

This 'test' pc is an AMD. Phenom 2 with 4 gig of ram,

@ridipaulo - yes I agree, its horses for courses for me too (perhaps as geeks we should say computers for OSes ) I do have to agree with you in one respect and that is the Desktop Environments becoming too hungry for resources - GNU/Linux in my view has always been about breathing new life into old kit - the problem these days is everyone is assuming that old kit should just be ditched at the local recycling plant. Zorin is (and this is my own personal opinion) geared towards people transitioning from Windows - at the time I took up Zorin and became a moderator in a short space of time was due to the lack of distributions that had a familiar interface - prior to Zorin I would have recommended Freespire - the community project of the much missed Linspire - sadly asset stripped by its owner who seemed more interested in his wallet than the business - I know it had security issues but there were ways around that - and it recovered data and picked up peripherals more readily than Knoppix did at the time I had to do some data recovery from a floppy disk.

For something like Sempron I would be looking at:
Zorin Lite
Lubuntu 14.04
LXLE 14.04
Makulu XFCE edition
Slitaz
Qelitu

For me Linux Mint became a bit boring! But each to their own! I think the last version I played with was 8 - had a look at 13 or so but it felt boring like Open SuSE - there didn't seem to be anything of interest.
Now if you have a 64-bit machine sat doing nothing then I can highly recommend Makulu 10 (Aero) edition - that has a full Windows theming of Cinammon and the desktop icons, windows etc and BOTH windows keys bind the Cinammon menu - but I guess you know that using Mint - I can achieve the same DE in Zorin as pointed out earlier - so I login to Cinammon DE on Zorin when I feel the need!

@Jeff - you could always give Openshot Video Editor a try - it is simple but it is what I have used to create all my videos on my Vimeo channel.

Hi Jeff, My wife is running Linux Mint on an old Dell D630 laptop - talk about underpowered by today's standards, yet with LM it's a screamer. IMHO LM is what I'm looking for in a Linux OS, stable (my wife's PC has needed zero "IT maintenance" in the 2 years she's been using it - and no viruses either) , an intuitive UI and the ability to breath new life into old hardware saving me major $$$s. Mint comes through on accounts.

BTW, Windows 7 took a major dump last night on me for no apparent reason at all on my "main" PC - after using Win7 on several different machines (and paying m$ for legal licenses as well) I can say with all authority that even XP has been far more reliable for me (still have one more XP machine left that I use for apps I really love for which Linux doesn't yet have alternatives I like - and keep off the internet AMAP). And you can easily guess what I'm doing today, backing up the crashed PCs valuable data after which LM 17.3 is going onto it to replace Win7. I paid good $$ for my m$ licenses, but after the last straw last night I've no issue with shredding my license stickers and going to LM. Just wish that Wine would support the greatest programmer's editor of all time, and my favorite, CodeWright - if that was the case I'd probably ditch Windows completely. (and please, I know that there are good Linux editors out there but with over 20 year of CodeWright happiness under my belt I simply don't want to switch - to each their own, right?).

And a big thanks to Swarfendor437 again for the good advice - appreciated!

Not saying it will work but you could try the commercial product the wine devs run - Cross-Over 15 for Linux - you can try it free for 30 days - was always gobsmacked the way it ran MS Office 2000 flawlessly!

Darn it! Cross-Over 15 doesn't support CodeWright. And for a half hour I really had my hopes up!
But, I did submit a request for them to include it - but I'm not holding out hope as although you can still buy it, and it has a legion of loyal users, it is no longer being updated nor supported.

Thanks for the feedback - aint it the way - the best stuff either gets dropped (no longer developed) or the big guns buy out the better smaller outfits. Corel have really made a bad job of Paint Shop Pro and Paint It! or OmniPage Pro buying out an OCR company that is only on sale now in the US!