I never thought I’d say this…
I never thought I’d say this, but I downloaded a version of Linux. As most of y’all know I am very dedicated to the Apple ecosystem. I don’t have a Mac, I use Windows and Chrome, but I have never professed to like Linux. A friend who is very into Linux bought a Mac and since most Linux versions are open source and free, I said I would try it. Linux has many different versions, called distros, so I asked my friend which distro he would get. He recommended Zorin OS.
I downloaded it and ran into some issues. I was going to try to run it as a virtual machine on my computer. A virtual machine is basically another operating system that runs over top of the one you are already using. This allows you to test and use other operating systems without getting rid of your current OS. I got everything ready and tried to run it. I had a setting wrong, so I fixed that and tried again. I still couldn’t get it to work. I messaged with the friend, and he suggested running it directly as an OS instead of the virtual machine. That’s what ended up working. I just booted it off of the thumb drive I had put it on to try it. Below is a screenshot of the Zorin OS home screen.
A Few Thoughts
My first impressions are: I like how fast and easy it is to use, I like the clean, minimal aesthetic, and I like that it’s free. The one thing I don’t like in what little I’ve used it is I don’t like using Libre Office (the office suit it comes with), or most of the default apps. I also don’t like that most developers of apps I use don’t develop directly for it, so you have to download an open source relative, a fake version, or use the online version. Some people may be comfortable to use a fake version, but it always feels sketchy to me. It seems slightly glitchy in a few spots, but I am running it off a thumb drive so that is probably my problem. In terms of downloading Windows programs and using them, I tried downloading Affinity Designer and it wouldn’t work. It did suggest an alternative but since I was only testing it, I didn’t download it. Overall it wasn’t as bad as I thought. It wasn’t great though.