I know a lot of people use Linux as their desktop OS for "free
software reasons", but it's my daily driver because I simply find
it more useable than the alternatives.
I ran Debian + KDE sometime in the mid-2000s on a computer I
rescued from a dumpster, and while I was very fond of that rig, I
remember getting exasperated with it after awhile. I picked up a
Mac the following year, and was an OSX convert for close to a
decade.
Sometime around 2017, I vaguely remember starting to feel like I
was tolerating OSX more than enjoying it. I used Windows 10 for
gaming, and that was fine for that purpose, but I didn't like it
for much beyond that. (Strangely, I really loved the Windows Phone
OSes, but I didn't really carry that love over when their design
principles were ported to the desktop.)
In 2019, I picked up a Dell XPS 13" and put Linux Mint on it. I was
immediately surprised at how straightforward it was to use.
Especially heartwarming was the simplicity of launching programs
(via the windows key + freetext search.) I'd also underestimated
how much Docker made my life on Linux easier (because I could now
confine programming-specific package installs to containers, which
kept my host dependencies pretty simple.)
I was happy with Mint, and then sometime in 2021 had an urge to
tinker. I'd been strangely curious about Zorin -- Mint has this
huge, helpful community, and I'd frequently see Zorin mentioned as
a plug-and-play alternative to Mint. I found very little community
around Zorin, and the bulk of what I could learn about it came from
the Zorin website and some youtube videos. I installed it on a
whim, assuming I'd switch back to Mint in a few days.
I never did. Zorin just works for me. I don't know much about the
folks who make it, or about the folks who run it at home, which is
substantially different than my Mint experience. I had hoped that
Zorin would solve the one issue I had with Mint, which was this
terrible feeling of input lag. Turns out that switching to a
more desktop-friendly kernel configuration (I chose Xanmod) did the
trick, and would have likely done the trick on Mint as well.
Whenever I go back to Mac (for work) or to Windows (for gaming)
now, I find myself low-grade frustrated at the UX. I'm not claiming
that this is going to be remotely true for most people, but it is
for me, and that makes me happy.
I know Zorin has some forums and maybe a Mastodon server or
something, but I haven't felt much of an urge to see what they're
up to out there. I'm just grateful it exists.
