Did you even read the whole comment?

just stick with the free version and find free viable alternatives. Libreoffice, kdenlive, etc.

If time is a factor and you just need a distro that “works” stick with what you have, and find FOSS alternatives for zorin. Best of luck

I respected their time and was simply making a suggestion because zorin seems scummy locking default features behind a paywall.

Most distros come with a built in software downloader. If you consider it “work” to type kdenlive and click download ive got nothing else to say to you.

Yeah fully agree, i just wasnt willing to outright call them scummy. If anything the 50$ price tag should drop to ~20$ since the software they are packaging is not even their own work.

Zorin itself is foss but paying for features like themeing and software Is imo against the spirit of linux, they should, (again imo) release zorin pro as the default and simply accept donations. Like most distro maintainers. Even more frustrating, is the advertised features are just normal features and software readily available for free on other distros being paywalled. Its very likely that a user could get all of the listed features on the free version without paying. I also misread the website, ms office and adobe premier are not even what is included. In fact they do not list the specific names of the alternatives that they use in the pro version. I would bet that the pro version Has all foss software that is being hidden behind the price tag. I will do more quick research and edit this comment if that is the case.

Edit: Yeah i nailed it, its all foss software available through most package managers or flatpak heres a list.

Additional Software Included in Zorin Pro: Office & Productivity:

LibreOffice: A comprehensive office suite compatible with Microsoft Office/365 documents: https://www.libreoffic…​

Scribus: A desktop publishing application: https://sourceforge.ne…​

Graphics & Multimedia: Krita: A powerful, open-source image editing and painting software: https://krita.org/

Inkscape: A vector graphics editor: https://inkscape.en.so…​

Blender: A free and open-source 3D creation suite: https://www.blender.org/​

GIMP: A free and open-source image manipulation program: https://www.gimp.org/d...​

Evince: A Gnome document viewer: https://apps.gnome.org…​

Foliate: A simple and lightweight e-book reader: https://flathub.org/ap...​

Kdenlive: A non-linear video editor: https://kdenlive.org/e...​

FreeCAD: A free and open-source 3D design application: https://www.freecad.or…​

LibreCAD: A free and open-source 2D CAD software: https://wiki.librecad…​

Darktable: An open-source digital photo management and editing tool: https://www.darktable…​

ALL of the listed features from zorin pro have free alternatives, unless you really want microsoft office, screen sharing, adobe premier, etc… just stick with the free version and find free viable alternatives. Libreoffice, kdenlive, etc. How did you land on zorin to begin with? Most new users are recommended to use fedora, ubuntu-gnome, and linux mint. To me, just looking at zorins website they do not share the most basic principles of the linux space (being free and open source). I highly recomend switching, if you could run

echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP

This will output the name of your display manager like gnome, kde, etc. The version of zorin you are running is more than certainly using a popular one. Just find a distro that uses the same one. And your user experience will be almost exactly the same. Zorin might have some QOL features but definitely not anything you couldnt implement yourself.

Feel free to reach out here for more help if you run into any brick walls. You already dual booted your pc so i have faith that you have a pretty good grasp on what you are doing. If time is a factor and you just need a distro that “works” stick with what you have, and find FOSS alternatives for zorin. Best of luck

Honestly that would go hard. The ending is a boss fight against baphomet where you climb him shadow of collosus style to give him pets.

Maybe all goat variants?

I see, sorry for misinterpreting your words, reading back its obvious what you were trying to convey. Your perspective is much appreciated. Yours and everyones comments have been super productive in our converstation trying to work through this today.

Great idea, any specific suggestions? I used to watch alot of stand up but their content was very raunchy so it wasnt really her thing when id show her. We both enjoy bo burham even before he became famous. And lately weve been seeing clips of morgan jay that have had us giggling and quoting.

Normally Id say im sorry to hear about your situation, but you seem the defiant type. So i assume that would be taken as pitty or an insult. Instead id like to say that you and people like you are in my opinion the most genuine specimens of humanity your defiance in the face of adversity is truely an inspiration.

That being said, do you think its healthy to compare belly aches? I am not accusing you of doing so, but your words in this paragraph

There are people in far worse situations due to worse disability.

To me express the idea that “because others have it worse you should be grateful”. This to me is obviously true, but to someone deep in depression or any other dark place in their life could easily be interpreted as, “suck it up”. So when dealing with friends and family in some sort of mental spiral. I tend to heavily avoid this line of thinking. Even it is the cold truth they need. But maybe im wrong?

I don’t worry about things that are outside of my capacity to change. I cannot shape people into a tenable social situation where I can be myself, so I don’t worry about it at all.

This is probably the most helpful bit for my girlfriend (her words), but she mentioned that her social anxiety makes it impossible not to consider every single word and action of those she interacts with. How do you “deal” with not being able to change reality? I feel that ive acheived something similar, a state of neutrality towards the chaos around us. How would you go about helping someone along that path?

This is me and she cant stand it. She always says things like “how can you not care!?!”. I am very much into my hobbies and itd be nice to share that with other but… meh

Great suggestion, and a place to meet people aswell. Ill see how she feels about this. Might be something we do together, Thanks!

Great question, some of them are in other states/ countries making timing a big factor. She often feels alone for days. I will say, the quality of this group is very high. Genuine people who care about eachother. But with work and school some of them simply cant be there as much as theyd like to be.

Thank you, and your thoughts are always valid and valuable even if I or anyone might disagree. The more perspectives the better imo.

She very much agreed with your last point. but has trouble understanding the need to mask in the first place. She does not consider things like “not swearing around children or grandparents” or just being sweeter to them in general to be masking. Could you maybe explain your feelings on “being a sports fan” for example (you may actually like sports). But as someone who doesnt, I have been at events and settings where it was simply the comfortable thing to be. I wasnt lying to anyone but I definitely was asking more questions and cheering for something id normally have near zero enthusiasm for. I have trouble getting my ducks in a row to express something we seem to do so naturally.

I wrote many of my issues with windows in an above comment. But Im still running windows 10 because i hate windows 11 the only real feature they added was the ability to open a command prompt in a directory with right click. Everything else was asthetic nonsense, nothing has changed since windows 7.

it is not secure to be running an older OS or to disable updates and telemetry as i have done. I could use a virtual machine, but anticheat games are usually blocked in vms. I dont have the money to run a second pc, just for windows. Ive been doing this since before windows 11 was even released. I RARELY boot into windows anymore since the only game i play that isnt linux compatable is rust. And even that game runs perfectly under proton but the anticheat prevents me from joining anticheat enabled servers.

To answer you specifically about Windows 11, Its AI was litterally taking screen shots of user desktop and storing them locally without user consent. They quickly shut it down after complaints, and are re-enabling it for everyone with a toggle to turn it off. They know exactly what they are doing. This is a huge privacy and security flaw. They dont care. The less time you are on your windows installation the better.

If you or any other windows users REALLY care about windows id make the switch too, giving linux a larger market share might actually force them to make changes for the better.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

In fact i wasnt even going to respond to this but you are so wildly misinformed that I assumed you are trolling. But you might actually lack the ability to use google or the AI you seem to want to suck off.

You are correct here

There are three different package systems (Red Hat, Debian and Arch) and they are all completely incompatible with each other

But your dumbass actually writes PACKAGE systems. Do you know what a package has inside it? The product! Wow! So if you have the source code… and use a tool to build it on your distro… its almost like youre an idiot.

Do you get to the cloud district very often? Oh, what am I saying? Of course you don’t.

Even from a legality standpoint, if a company publishes a button that says “click me and I will do x”, they are opening themselves up to legal liability

The irony of this statement is that they do this all of the time when I run a game with kernal anticheat or DRM or even something as simple as data collection from chrome.

But you are correct I very likely devalue the importance of gui for standard users. since ive been in the linux sphere for so long and i did get used to scripting in windows aswell. This is one of those times where i agree with everything you are saying but my entire being wants you to be wrong, because it does not allign with my experience of reality.

Agree with everything you said except the last paragraph there are definitely too many distros all with different standards and design philosophies. And you are correct that this has stifled its use for standard consumers. But “linux” isnt working its way to becoming a new standard individual distros are attempting this. Popos ubuntu fedora are all fighting to become that consumer desktop experience and in some peoples opinion its 99% of the way there. We just need the amount of users to increase, For more valuable bug reports and feedback for that to actually happen.

software or a few pieces of software can automate something, and can accurately evaluate whether or not to trust the source of an exe file

This is frustrating because what i did in the example with my roms and a python script is essentially the same as what a windows user would do the main difference being that a windows user probably wouldnt have to go to github because a fancy gui alternative software exists. The user still has to worry about viruses all the same, just because the exe has a website and a download page doesnt make it safer than a terminal based alternative. All users of all levels should be using malwarebytes at a minimum regardless of how safe it “looks”.

That being said i agree with you that many users are definitely intimidated by running programs in the terminal. and ive even seen some users joke about downloading suspicious software thinking its fine and then a spooky command prompt window apears.

I just think if you subtract peoples preconcieved notions about the terminal the actual usual experience and results are the same. The fact that windows has more gui programs just speaks to the fact that its been profitable and the standard to develop apps for windows and macos for far too long.

Try the open source nouveau driver for your older gfx card ive heard compatability is better for older cards