TouchOdeath
Mon Apr 27, 2020 11:07:38 pm
So I've been running this distro as my daily driver for a month or two and here are my impressions. I apologize for not giving a more specific/technical explanation of some of the problems I've been experiencing.
Quirks:
===========
1. Lock screen. So there is two places in Zorin where you can set your lockscreen: xfce4-power-manager and xfce4-screensaver-preferences. Each has its own lockscreen username/password (if both are checked then you will type your password twice). In order to get this to only one lockscreen.. I toggled it to death until it worked.. At one point.. both were disabled and that gave me one lockscreen. Then an update happened.. and It took away my lockscreen.. So i toggled it to death.. and this time both had to be checked to get one lockscreen. An update happened.. and now it seems correct, xfce4-power-manager remains checked, and the xfce4-screensaver-preferences is disabled. This one is probably fixed with the latest update....
2. If my computer is running low on memory, my screen will completely freeze until linux decides to kill a random app. I just walk away and do something else.. but from now on, I make damn sure I don't run out of memory. If I'm not mistaken, this is a linux kernel issue, and not Zorins fault.
3. If my virtual machine is downloading a file, my host internet slows to a crawl. It seems Zorin has a hard time sharing the bandwidth simultaneously.
CONS:
======
1. This is a minor con... after a fresh install, 1gb of RAM was in use. I like to have a lot of RAM available/less bloat, but the way I see it, if everything works... you can have that 1 gig of ram.
2. Alt + Mweelup/down zoom feature. There is a window focus problem here that does not exist in other distros. When you zoom in and out.. different windows come into focus when they shouldn't... which makes Window Manager>Focus>'Focus follows mouse' unusable.
PROS:
======
1. Bluetooth - holy moly.. you guys nailed this! Its a blessing to be able to set a default 'always connect device' when I turn on my bluetooth Headphone. Its super nice. I just turn on my bluetooth headphone and it says 'connected'. And the audio automatically switches to the bluetooth output. Brilliant!
2. Pulse Audio - When I switch output devices (turn on my bluetooth headphones), Pulse audio knows what to do and automatically switches to that output device. To not have to mess with pavucontrol is another blessing! Great job!
3. App Store/gnome-software - This is great... every linux distro needs a user friendly app store. Simply put, synaptic isn't user friendly (although synaptic is great for sure).
4. Flatpaks, snap - Because Flatpak and snap works, I have access to tons of software!
5. Gaming - Lutris just works.. and thats freaking awesome! The fact that I don't have to reboot into windows to play games makes me super happy
.
6. Boot speed - WOW, boot speed is super fast, beats other distros by far! Super Impressive!! I am definitely not a systemd fan... but I know that the boot speed is possible because of systemd. I think Linux gurus need to get together and solve the boot speed problem without systemd.
7. xfce-power-manager-settings was able to detect that my hardware could not perform a 'Hibernate' so it doesn't even show as an option. Very nice!
Anyways, big thanks to you guys, and I hope you guys keep killin it!
Quirks:
===========
1. Lock screen. So there is two places in Zorin where you can set your lockscreen: xfce4-power-manager and xfce4-screensaver-preferences. Each has its own lockscreen username/password (if both are checked then you will type your password twice). In order to get this to only one lockscreen.. I toggled it to death until it worked.. At one point.. both were disabled and that gave me one lockscreen. Then an update happened.. and It took away my lockscreen.. So i toggled it to death.. and this time both had to be checked to get one lockscreen. An update happened.. and now it seems correct, xfce4-power-manager remains checked, and the xfce4-screensaver-preferences is disabled. This one is probably fixed with the latest update....
2. If my computer is running low on memory, my screen will completely freeze until linux decides to kill a random app. I just walk away and do something else.. but from now on, I make damn sure I don't run out of memory. If I'm not mistaken, this is a linux kernel issue, and not Zorins fault.
3. If my virtual machine is downloading a file, my host internet slows to a crawl. It seems Zorin has a hard time sharing the bandwidth simultaneously.
CONS:
======
1. This is a minor con... after a fresh install, 1gb of RAM was in use. I like to have a lot of RAM available/less bloat, but the way I see it, if everything works... you can have that 1 gig of ram.
2. Alt + Mweelup/down zoom feature. There is a window focus problem here that does not exist in other distros. When you zoom in and out.. different windows come into focus when they shouldn't... which makes Window Manager>Focus>'Focus follows mouse' unusable.
PROS:
======
1. Bluetooth - holy moly.. you guys nailed this! Its a blessing to be able to set a default 'always connect device' when I turn on my bluetooth Headphone. Its super nice. I just turn on my bluetooth headphone and it says 'connected'. And the audio automatically switches to the bluetooth output. Brilliant!
2. Pulse Audio - When I switch output devices (turn on my bluetooth headphones), Pulse audio knows what to do and automatically switches to that output device. To not have to mess with pavucontrol is another blessing! Great job!
3. App Store/gnome-software - This is great... every linux distro needs a user friendly app store. Simply put, synaptic isn't user friendly (although synaptic is great for sure).
4. Flatpaks, snap - Because Flatpak and snap works, I have access to tons of software!
5. Gaming - Lutris just works.. and thats freaking awesome! The fact that I don't have to reboot into windows to play games makes me super happy
.6. Boot speed - WOW, boot speed is super fast, beats other distros by far! Super Impressive!! I am definitely not a systemd fan... but I know that the boot speed is possible because of systemd. I think Linux gurus need to get together and solve the boot speed problem without systemd.
7. xfce-power-manager-settings was able to detect that my hardware could not perform a 'Hibernate' so it doesn't even show as an option. Very nice!
Anyways, big thanks to you guys, and I hope you guys keep killin it!