My experience so far.

Zorin has cost me money but who cares?

Let me explain:

I was looking for a Windows alternative and in the past I've tried a couple of Linux distros but always hit a wall and gone back. This time I'm determined to stick it out but I needed something that my wife and FIL can use easily and research on the net led me to Zorin.

After a 4 hour download (our broadband isn't that broad) I installed Zorin OS on our old Dell Dimension. Everything worked! except the Go-flex NAS drive but everything else including a wireless HP Photosmart that I'd given up with under XP and plugged in via USB when I needed it. Wife and FIL were set up as users, signed into Chrome and were happy bunnies and I set about getting whatever software I thought I needed. First thing to do was get the NAS drive working which I managed to set up as CIF shares (Terminal was a scary place after a couple of years )

Then my new dashcam arrived and things started to go wrong, play the file in Video Player and I had great video and no sound, VLC, which I use on my phone and windows laptop, gave me great sound but choppy video. Turns out the old girl just couldn't really handle HD 1080P video. Now had I still been on XP, and not so stubborn, it would probably have ended there and I just wouldn't have bothered, after all I could watch the vid on my laptop, but the upshot is the Dell went to the dump today and a new box will be delivered on Tuesday next week.

The new box is 64 bit so I thought I'd download the Zoirin 64 bit version ready, nearly twice the size of the original I was looking at a 9 or 10 hour download which was corrupted! Being a glutton for punishment I downloaded it again with the same result! Luckily I've got tethering on my mobile account so one Android wifi hotspot later I downloaded in about 30 mins.

Now I'm off to have a play with Zorin on the laptop.

Update so far.

Well it's all installed on the new box and everything works which is a bonus All I need now is a decent internet connection.

About time for another update I reckon.

After 2 years of Zorin handling everything I've thrown at it (except for one windows app I use at work that I have to keep an old XP Toughbook for) I couldn't be happoer and I'm looking forward to the next LTS release

And I'm finally getting a decent (Satellite) internet connection next Monday thanks to the BDUK subsidy

Hi SteveD, I am guessing you are using Zorin OS 9?
I couldn't agree more, it is one tuff OS (maybe it has 9 lives...) I think some people consider Zorin as Linux with training wheels but after trying many "Distro's" I have used Zorin for 2 or 3 years now and I just love it.
Functional and beautiful at the same time, with some bells and whistles thrown in for eye candy.

Well I thought I was clever getting Fibre Optic Internet to the home, but I think satellite out does me.
Yes, bring on OS 12 LTS.

I would love Fibre but unfortunately BT are so behind the times that we won't get FTTC until 2019 (I think is the planned date) and we are not in a cable area. Currently I'm using 4G which is a lot faster than BT's 5-600kbs attempt at (not so)broadband but limits us. I use a few simcards, 2 x Three sims that give us 15GB each we use for general browsing, these run at about 7-10mbs and an EE sim that is quicker (15-18mbs) but is no good for browsing as the DNS is so slow and can't be changed. The satellite system we are going with gives us 50GB a month but more importantly it's unlimited between midnight and 6am so that is "Download time"

Over the years I have tried various Linux distros but this is the first I found that I could have confidence in. It's also given me the confidence to build a NAS box running Openmediavault http://www.openmediavault.org/

I am in Australia and guessing your in Britain so some of what you say is a little confusing for me. BT is British Telecom?
I got Fibre to the premises/home (FTTP or FTTH) what ever it is called here 13 months ago, awesome just awesome and I am on the slowest speed 12/1, thats 12Mbps download and 1Mbps upload, cost me about $60 AU a month and is unlimited usage, includes the home phone (fibre also). I am hearing you about Internet though, I was on ADSL2+ 8Mbps and lucky to get 800Kbps on a good day, drop outs etc etc, and I thought this was great after dial up...
The Fibre comes to a junction box on my house, then Fibre through the house to the NBN (national broadband network) 'boxes' about 1 metre from the router, this is in Melbourne, some country areas will be a mix of fibre, copper phone lines, wifi and satellite with some boomerang throwing as well!!!

What is FTTC?
All that shuffling of SIMs you could get a job in Vegas Casino...
I get 1.5 GB data a month on my mobile phone but it would cost way too much to use SIMs for Internet here!

I thought about converting an old PC into a NAS box but bought a 'Netgear' NAS and put 2 X 3TB WD Red HDD in 'mirroring'. It is nice and quiet and much smaller than the old PC and would use much less power to run, it is on 24/7. Zorin and Windows both talk to it no problems, also can stream movies etc to TV from it, yep they are a great little thing to have, you just using an old PC or some custom made box?
I uploaded (cloud) stuff like photos etc that can't be replaced so they are 'off site' if the house burns down or PC's/NAS stolen and the rest of it, well I can cope with that.
Also attached it (NAS), main PC, router, and whatever else to a UPS, power had not gone out here for as long as I could remember then started to fail about 4 or 5 times over a few months. Tired of being about 8 hours into a video conversion and having to start all over again because of brown or black out.

Zorin just does everything I want except for gaming so I use Windows for that but many more games are coming to Linux so we can only hope. I hadn't used Windows (didn't even have it installed) for a few years till I started to game recently. Windows 10 'updated' itself the other day and @#!%, now I need to get many things working again till it does it again. Zorin doesn't do that to me when it updates, well OS 12 will be a fresh install but then all good for 5 years I imagine.

Sorry, yes I am in England. BT = British Telecom and FTTC = Fibre to the cabinet.

Yes the NAS is purpose built using this case http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=42#CFI-A2060 2 WD Red 3TB drives in a Raid 1 and an SSD for the operating system

SteveD wrote:Sorry, yes I am in England. BT = British Telecom and FTTC = Fibre to the cabinet.

Yes the NAS is purpose built using this case http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=42#CFI-A2060 2 WD Red 3TB drives in a Raid 1 and an SSD for the operating system

Hi, take a look here before going any further:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/470960/n ... -ssd-cache

Remember, Zorin does not provide a server release!

Sorry Swarfendor, I wasn't very clear, the NAS runs on Openmediavault

Well with the release of the next LTS (Zorin 12) it looks like it will soon be time to upgrade the OS.

I downloaded the 12 beta and tried to run that as a live session but for some reason* that only gave me a blank screen. The newly released 12 Core works fine as a live session though so I am at least one step closer

I also have /home on a separate partition, all backed up to my NAS so I'm hoping it will be relatively painless but I'm not going to rush it.

* I searched on the Ubuntu forum and found the reason for this but I didn't understand a word of it

ETA: The satellite internet is now up and running thanks to a neighbour that allowed me to trim a tall hedge in their garden and is giving us a nice stable connection

Hi SteveD,

I noticed you mentioned 3 - have you checked to see that your account has not been hacked? Heard on the news yesterday that the 3 network had been hacked - did not pickup on much details as to what has been taken if anything of user accounts.

Not a problem

All the Three accounts were closed.

And it's done. Zorin 12 is now up and running

That balances me out as I'm about to blow mine away and start again.