Just an FYI for the readers of the forum here:

Zorin OS 12 Beta was released earlier today and is listed on DistroWatch.

After downloading, installing,then tweaking I began generally beating the heck out of it for the past several hours and have had zero issue.

Hard to believe this is a beta release!

Awesome, I can't wait for the final release, which should be in mid October. It's been a long time coming. I'll be very curious to see the new look, a blend of Debian and Ubuntu. Deepin hit a home run when it went to Debian. Hopefully Zorin will too.

The Deepin DE is really good but the disto as a whole really didn't work for me. The slow update speed and adding of software turned me off. While waiting for Zorin I did spend some time in the Arch world with Manjaro running the Deepin DE and liked it quite a bit.

One thing I really like about Deepin is that they do rolling updates. A few nights ago, I thought it was updating, but wondered why it took two hours. The next day, I discovered that it actually had upgraded, from 15.2 to 15.3. So, you always have the latest version, and you never have to reinstall. I believe Solus does this also, although I haven't implemented it yet. I'm sure there are others. Really makes things easy for the user. I'm just about out of DVD's. (I'm old school. I like to have a bunch of DVD's lying around. I won't buy a computer unless it has a DVD).

Agreed in that a lot has to be said in regards to the positives of rolling releases. My only gripe is that with my experience a rolling release can only be upgraded so many times until the OS starts having stability issues.

My experience with Deepin did not fair as well as yours did unfortunately. I installed 15.3 then looked for the speediest mirror but a majority of them all timed out so I was stuck with the standard mirror. To apply the updates the OS took about a half hour. I then went to add my 'standard collection' of apps and that took over an hour for roughly 400mb to download and install.

I may revisit Deepin at some point over the winter when the snow has me stuck inside. So far as Zorin, it has served it purpose well with me personally and works for the refurbished laptops I install it on and give away.

Have a good one Michael and happy computing!
Tim

CPMAN, I'm looking at acquiring a used laptop for my wife. I plan to put Linux on it, possibly Mint, as chicks really like that. Any suggestions on where to get one? I absolutely don't want it to have Windows. If I pay for that damn windows license, I know I'll be reluctant to boot Windows off the computer. Windows 7 is the last Windows I want her to use. I need to get her off it by 2000, and on to nice, safe, free Linux. I know I can check with Newegg, Best Buy and even Dell, but what about the local repair shops? Or Amazon?

Hey Michael,

I buy used stuff off Amazon if the price is right but Craigslist has worked really well for me as sellers are local so I can inspect the machine before I buy...I'm kind of a hands on guy like that. Also, what has worked REALLY well as of late, are the Garage Sale sites on Facebook. Again, local sellers but there is of course an avenue to openly discuss issues if items are not as described. I'm not a FB user but the wife is and she does the looking for me. So far this year I have bought 83 laptops and 21 desktops with all coming from Craigslist or FB Garage Sales and have only had 2 bad machines. Knock on wood as with the 70 or so machines I've given away all are running perfectly with either Zorin OS 9 or Ubuntu 14.04.

So far as the wife goes mine was a Win fanatic. I finally weaned her off MS to Apple (I've been an Apple guy for 15+ years and a 27" iMac serving as our primary machine in the house plus our 3 iPads). I got her a new laptop last spring with Win 10 and she hated it so I said heck with it and put Mint Cinnamon 17 on it and she hasn't had any misgivings and loves it.

I use Linux on my two laptops, one of which she uses when we are on the road - one is loaded with Zorin OS 9 and the one which travels with us and I'm writing this post with has Zorin OS 12 Beta plus Fedora 23, Ubuntu 16.04 (Unity & Gnome), openSUSE (Gnome) and Mint XFCE. She likes the Gnome Shell as she uses the touch screen which works well with the DE.

Good luck and let me know what you get your hands on!

Take care,
Tim

Michael,

Have you an idea of the specs you will be looking for in regards to your wife's machine? I just went through my existing inventory of machines I'm working on for my next round of donations and may have something that will work for your wife's needs.

Let me know when you have a chance.

Regards,
Tim

Hi Tim, thanks for your interest. I was thinking about something that would be fairly portable, something you could throw in a suitcase. An i3 or i5, 64 bits, 500 GB HDD, the ability to run Mint 17.2 or higher. Could consider 32 bit, as this would not be her primary machine but something to learn Linux with. She primarily uses her computer to surf the web, do Facebook, Dropbox, etc. I also want something for both of us to make online purchases with for security reasons.

Michael

Hi Michael,

I have a Toshiba 15" Satellite laptop that I believe has an i5, a 1TB HDD with 8GB of RAM if memory serves me right. I bought it as part of a lot of machines of which all were slated for me to donate. It may be a little big so far as portability but it is in very nice shape and the spec are more than what I usually give to middle schoolers or high schoolers and I have no families in line in need of a machine right now. I have a couple others that may work but I don't have my list with me. Running Mint or any other recently released distro should work great. What I would do is install Ubuntu 16.04 for the purpose of testing the machine then get it to you with my Ubuntu install or wipe the HD so it's ready for you to install what you would like.

I'm not close to home today thru next Monday or Tuesday but will get all the exacts together as well as some pictures and can send them off early to mid week. If you would like to and are comfortable in do so, Private Message me here on the forum with your email and look for an email from me in a few days.

Take Care,
Tim

Thanks, Tim. I've been doing more research, and have found I can get a new laptop for under 200.00. I found one with a 500 GB HDD (not 32 GB flash), and a DVD (a must for me). It's a Lenovo Ideapad 110. Since this is for a birthday, I decided I can splurge a bit, rather than take a chance on something used. She won't be impressed with how little I spent if it breaks! If it were just for me, that's different. I'd probably be excited about the chance to try and fix it.

Michael,

Sounds good my friend! Lenovo IdeaPads are good machines from my experience but I haven't bought one new. I've fixed up a couple handfuls of Lenovo Notebooks including IdeaPads for folks and if I'm remember correctly all of them had Zorin OS 9 installed when they went to new homes so Mint 17 should work very well.


Let me know if there is anything I can do to be of help!

Have a good one,
Tim

Back to the original theme of this thread: I am seeing a lot of criticism of Zorin 12 on the Zorin blog (zorinos.com). The biggest concern I see is that Zorin is now integrated with Google. Some are comparing that to what Windows 10 does, in terms of "phoning home." I don't like W10 or Google for their monetizing users, which is of course where Microsoft has gone, and Google has been since their inception. I really loved Zorin 9, and I'm not willing to give up on 12 if there's a way around this. But this does seem like it could be a deal breaker, unless someone tells me there is in fact a way to disable the Google integration. Like there was for Ubuntu 14 and the amazon lens. Ubuntu 16 has it disabled by default, so I'm ok with it now. Although still a bit wary. I haven't installed the beta, mainly because I already have 4 Linux distros on this computer, and don't want things to get too crazy and maybe I break something. So I'm going to continue watching Zorin 12, especially after the official release, and see what the reviews say.

Hey Michael,

I agree with the sentiments of your last post 100%. I do not like MS and have not bought a MS product for well over a decade. The last MS related product I personally owned was about 4-5 years ago. So far as Google goes, I'm a G-Mail user on a limited basis but also agree with your thoughts and am in process of moving away from it.

Now, I may be wrong with this line of thought but hope to be corrected if I'm wrong...

With Zorin - Zorin 9 had the ability to add online accounts (Ubuntu 14.04, too, if I'm not mistaken) and Zorin 12 Beta also has the functionality as well (along with Ubuntu 16.04). With either 9 or 12 it is an elected option for the user if they want to provide the OS with credentials to integrate their desktop with Google or other services. It is in the System Settings area of the OS and listed as Online Accounts under Personal. So my thought is this...if a user does not provide credentials to the OS for say a Google account and does not use Chrome/Chromium then all is well. It isn't so much being able to disable the option, it is deciding to use it or not. Again, if I need to be corrected by any readers, please do so.

The thing that stinks is that I do find myself using Chrome as my default browser as we are huge Netflix users but it looks like I will soon be able to remedy that with Firefox in the near future.

Lastly, as a side note, I installed the Beta last week on a travelling laptop while I was away from home. I haven't had any real issues with the OS while on the road or any since I got home. One pain is that the laptop won't suspend when the lid is closed which, after some investigation, appears to be a kernel bug that is in process of being addressed.

Have a good one!
Tim

Thanks Tim, that helps. With Windows 10, it takes a lot of tinkering to try and stop the phoning home, and I'm hearing now that even then it still does it. I'm sure Microsift will not let users get away with subverting W10 for long. It's like keeping a step ahead of the hackers, and I'm not willing to put up with that nonsense. But if it's just a simple matter of avoiding the features in question, I can deal with that. So for now I'm leaning toward trying Zorin 12 when it comes out. Heck, I know I will, I'm like a child waiting for a present. I'm getting addicted to trying new distros. My other current interests are Ubuntu Mate and Manjaro. I'll probably try them to pass the time until Zorin 12 comes out.