Why is Mint more popular than Zorin?

In the beginning I started off using Mint for a short while, and thought it was pretty great until I learnt about Zorin. Every now and again I'll install the latest version of Mint just to see how it's changing/progressing, and always find myself switching straight back to Zorin. I know in my case it's probably just preference more than anything, but is there any particular reason people favour Mint? It's so much nicer changing workspaces in Zorin, plus it has the look changer, as well as a lighter, cleaner more modern feel that makes it appear more snappy and responsive.

I realise that these are extremely trivial features when it comes to the actual quality of a distro, but when it comes to Windows-like distros that are catering to new Linux users I feel that these are the sort of features that set them apart.

I'm with you. I tried Mint & like Zorin better. Mint didn't seem to flow as smoothly as Zorin. I was told to pick the flavor that best suited me regardless of popularity. Zorin is staying on my machines.

I've looked at mint up to 13 and it feels a bit dated - like Open SuSE which i used to love to bits - but to be fair to the latter I have not tried their latest release!

I tried Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Mint, Lubuntu, and all other flavors. The only one that even came close to Zorin for me was LXLE. I support Zorin with donations. I don't want Zorin to go away so I urge everyone to donate if you use it. For me, it is the best. And tell your friends. Since Windows XP is no longer supported, I tell my friends about Zorin and offer to help them set it up. It costs nothing to try it out on their older systems and many find their "old" computer now works just fine.

janxspirit wrote:... is there any particular reason people favour Mint?

What are you going by as to the relative popularity of Mint over Zorin? If it's the Distrowatch "hit list,"
you could be mistaken, for a couple of reasons:

- Jesse, the Distrowatch site owner/operator, states that those page hit rankings are:

".. a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more."

- Even though there is only "one hit per IP address per day," Mint and Ubuntu both have been
found to encourage a huge cadre of "distowatch clickers" who go into the Distrowatch site
every single day and click on their distro on the list, artificially driving those two distros up
to the top of the list. Ubuntu was found guilty of that first, now Mint.

By other measurements ("non-Distrowatch page hit rankings"), the most used linux distro
is of course Android, which is on every smartphone and tablet except iPhones/iTabs, Nokia,
Windows and Blackberry.

Android aside (with its HUGE market share), it's anyone's guess as to the REAL most
popular distro. Suse is used a lot in European countries, etc. An accurate survey of some
sort would be nice to see.

- Slappy

Personally, I feel that most of the Linux O/Ss that I've tried have their good points, and their bad points.

My main O/S is Ubuntu 14.04, but I dual-boot it with Zorin OS Core 9, and.....I would guess that I probably use them both about equally. I LIKE them both. Admittedly, I've got Ubuntu tweaked up to the eyeballs with Compiz, Tweak Tool, etc, etc., but.....well, you get the picture!

On an external Seagate hard drive, I run Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and.....(tah-dah!!) Mint 17.

Kubuntu is fussy. The KDE Plasma desktop is highly configurable; in fact it's a bit TOO configurable for my liking! I must have taken at least three hours trying to figure out how to get my personal wallpapers onto it..!

Lubuntu is lightweight, but it's FAST. I'm running an old Compaq Presario PC; Athlon 64, 3 GB DDR1 RAM, 160 GB WD Caviar 'Black' HDD, and the good old Radeon Xpress200 integrated graphics. It was a top-spec system 10 years ago, but it's a bit left behind by modern O/Ss.....Linux has really rejuvenated the old girl! She FLIES with Lubuntu, but you're a wee bit limited as to what you can do with it; still, I think that's the idea. It's meant to be clean and lightweight.

Xubuntu; it's a tarted-up version of Lubuntu, really. 'Nuff said.

Which brings me to Mint. Mmm; yeah. It DOES feel dated...frankly, I find it more like XP than XP ever was. I used XP for all 13 years of its life, and to be honest, I was ready for a change. But I can't afford MS's prices every 3-4 years.....and THEN you're stuck with doing stuff the way they DECREE you should; nah...it's not for me. But for some stupid reason, it seems to be more popular than Zorin; heaven above knows why.

Zorin is crisp; it's clean; it's snappy, and VERY responsive. And it just LOOKS the mutt's n*t's!!

Keep up the good work, Artyom.


Regards,

Mike.

Linux Mint offers Xfce, Mate, Cinnamon, and K Desktop Environments; not to mention LMDE Cinnamon and Mate. They all work flawlessly right out of the box.

The last I read, the top 'desktop' OS's in use are:

1. Windows (by far)
2. OSX
3. Ubuntu
4. Linux Mint

I don't really care for GNOME, but I like Zorin's rendition of it. My little girl now has Zorin Lite on her 10 year old Thinkpad and loves it. And if I can talk my wife out of Windows, I'll setup Zorin on her notebook with the Windows 7 look. elementryOS .03 might steal me away when it's released, but we'll see.

My favorite distribution by far is Arch Linux, but it's just too much of a hassle at times. I do miss the AUR though.

Well, Mate (the menu bit) is very reminiscent (to me) of Open SuSE/SuSE Enterprise Desktop menu! I have installed all the Mate packages mainly so I can access some of the themes:

download/file.php?id=3289&mode=view

Slappy said:
"What are you going by as to the relative popularity of Mint over Zorin? If it's the Distrowatch "hit list,"
you could be mistaken, for a couple of reasons"


Distrowatch does not tell right figures of the Mints popularity. That is true, that can be manipulated. However Mint reports ca. 14 000 users and its Forum has 12200 registered users. Zorin Forum has 6200 registered users. These are more valid figures to compare Mints popularity.

My best guess is that Ubuntu keeps the first and Mint the second place and Zorin is one of the ten most popular Linux distros. More exact figures are difficult to get. Android can not be compared here being so much different scope of use before it gets it's still experimental Android x86 version to laptops and desktops ready.

Henriolavi
Mint has the most weekly downloads most of the time.
But the least amount long term users among the top ten linux distros.
The average new user for [ Linux Mint ] last about 72 hours....before they look for something better.

Gizmuntu
You are right, time has to be also considered in the popularity. That is why I used the registered users as the best estimate of popularity due to it takes the user time into consideration. It represents mathematically the time integral of user count, which any other figures (page hits or downloads activity) does not do so well or not at all. However it does not tell anything how the user times has been divided among the users, but it gives one figure that can be used to compare different distros' popularity.

Hi all,

I have tried various Versions of Mint but it still lacks something as far as I'm concerned!.

I now use Zorin OS and Ubuntu Mate as both are snappy and fast and are both configureable, I find the Ubuntu Mate settings manager is particulaly good.

I did use Pinguy OS for a Long time but I just don't like Gnome 3 anymore and Ubuntu Mate has the good olde Gnome 2 look and feel!.

https://ubuntu-mate.org/

I think Zorin OS will become more popular, the bots are here every day so more info should be available on the net

Gizmuntu wrote:Mint has the most weekly downloads most of the time.
But the least amount long term users among the top ten linux distros.
The average new user for [ Linux Mint ] last about 72 hours....before they look for something better.

so, where did you get those stats from ?.
- most forums have users are "still trying" the O/S & then disappear,
- as they have an unresolved issue .. ..

The solution is for all Zorin users to register here:

https://linuxcounter.net/distributions/stats.html

But it is down to people registering so you get counted!

Currently there are only 27 ZorinOS users - yeah, right!

All one have to do is open the eyeballs and look around !!!! [ Forum ] [ In ] [ Question ]
And start doing ones math to get the real answer to the problem/s !!!!!

Well, out of curiosity I once did a search for an issue that someone on here had but I searched for the issue in Mint - sure enough a forum member had posted - and never got a reply!

I tried out Mint 17 (Mate) the other day and it has its own version (Mints version) of Synaptic which doesn't have the "Mark all upgrades" button, to enable this function in M17, you must use the "Force Version" function in Synaptic to change the version (of Synaptic) to "Trusty" which then shows the feature I mentioned, not a smart move as far as I'm concerned, for Linux users that like using Synaptic like me, a real downer, the other thing was you cannot add icons to the desktop simply by right clicking them, some worked while others didn't!.

I did try Mint and Mandriver some time ago .. but did not think much to them, nothing like Zorin OS , Oh and ubuntu that had a brown desktop .. Yuk ! dont like borwn

I read the same kind of question on another site, I was genuinely surprised by the amount of Zorin users. I do like the different DE's with other distros but they can be easily installed, the only one I've not tried installing in Zorin is KDE. I must admit if it was just down to the themes and desktops that come with Zorin I might switch to another, I think the dark theme is too dark and the white one is too bright, I had installed Xfce and LXDE to change themes but once I found Gnome tweaks I was very happy and uninstalled Xfce and LXDE.
I pay for Zorin too, if it was free I'd donate, €10 is very little to pay for an OS. I'm constantly recommending Zorin to friends and family. I started using Zorin 8 Gaming and was eagerly waiting Zorin 9 release, I bought it as soon as it came out and I'm sure I will do the same when the next one comes out even though Zorin 9 is supported long term.

Hi Kev,

take a look at the post install guide and the themes section:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2054

KevMcG wrote:I read the same kind of question on another site, I was genuinely surprised by the amount of Zorin users. I do like the different DE's with other distros but they can be easily installed, the only one I've not tried installing in Zorin is KDE. I must admit if it was just down to the themes and desktops that come with Zorin I might switch to another, I think the dark theme is too dark and the white one is too bright, I had installed Xfce and LXDE to change themes but once I found Gnome tweaks I was very happy and uninstalled Xfce and LXDE.
I pay for Zorin too, if it was free I'd donate, €10 is very little to pay for an OS. I'm constantly recommending Zorin to friends and family. I started using Zorin 8 Gaming and was eagerly waiting Zorin 9 release, I bought it as soon as it came out and I'm sure I will do the same when the next one comes out even though Zorin 9 is supported long term.

You may also like to try and install Cairo-Dock DE:



The above shot is my current desktop with Azenis themed icons and blue text applied using 'Lhûn-Magol' [courtesy (and thanks) of Stephanie's links to it on here].

I'm doing my share to support Zorin. Have made a donation and will make more. And I sing its praises on a Windows 7 Forum (also a Vista forum). Give it time, as more people look to escape Microsoft's rapidly tightening noose, Zorin could be poised to boom. I also have tried Ubuntu (just upgraded to 14.04), and Mint 17. They're all great, but Zorin feels more comfortable. Windows refugees will find Zorin almost made for them.

I don't like the updater tools in Mint, other than that, it is a good distro!. (I basically use the terminal or Synaptic myself!).

Another good alternative is Ubuntu Mate!.

And another is MakuluLinux "Aero" 10 LTS Beta - both windows keys launch the menu!

If you want to "Roll your own", Pinguy has brought out his own distro maker, I have not used/tried it but Pinguy is a good man and I trust him no problem:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pinguy- ... O_Builder/

See article here:

http://www.webupd8.org/2015/10/create-c ... .html#more

Ubuntu and SuSE Linux also have roll-your-own.

Some more links for you (this one includes references to build from scratch!):

http://www.informationweek.com/how-to-r ... e_number=1

http://www.zdnet.com/article/roll-your- ... e-studio/#!

http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/73 ... -with-uck/

http://www.staldal.nu/tech/2011/12/11/h ... ux-distro/

An old article but interesting coverage of why the variety exists - even down to ideological values (sic. https://stallman.org)

Enjoy!