"Zorin OS is, according to the project's website, an
easy-to-use, fast operating system which attempts to be useful
straight out of the box. The distro appears to be targeting people
who have, up to this point, been using Windows and the project
makes much of its ability to ape the Windows GUI and run Windows
applications through WINE. The project offers us the Core edition
of their OS for free and charges a small fee for their premium
editions. Zorin's website includes a news section, a page for
frequently asked questions, a support forum and on-line store. All
of this is well laid out, navigation is easy and I found the design
appealing. The Core edition of Zorin OS 4 is downloadable as a DVD
image and weighs in at 1.17 GB.
"Booting from the Zorin DVD brings up a boot menu which allows
us to boot into a live desktop environment, a desktop environment
with safe graphics settings, a text-based environment, or kick off
the installer. I opted for the default graphical environment. A
short time later I was presented with a GNOME desktop featuring a
night sky background. Large navigation icons and a launcher for the
installer were placed on the desktop. A task switcher and an
application menu were displayed along the bottom of the screen. The
first quirk I ran into with Zorin was that clicking on either the
application menu, or the logout button on the task bar, would cause
just the top item in the corresponding menu to be displayed.
Everything else on the menu was hidden. I soon found that either
moving the task bar to the top of the screen or changing the
system's theme would cause the menus to display properly."
