Notes on Zorin 18.1

planted: 16/05/2026last tended: 20/05/2026

1. Installation

It looks and feels nice out of the box.
The post-install tour seems quite handy.
Not sure I like Brave as default browser.
O-ho, Wayland. Right, this'll be my time to switch to Wayland, I guess? Will Debian also be using it?
git not preinstalled on Zorin. Fair enough, it's not a developer distribution.
Issues with Wayland and Guake. (have to set sysyem keybindimg to guake-toggle, and hud doesn't follow mouse)
Only Emacs 29? Was hoping it would be a later version. The version comes from upstream Ubuntu of course.
vim isn't installed by default.

Somehow, some of the transitions and animations feel a bit laggy. Can't quite put my finger on it but something not prominent yet perceptible.
Also when typing in fish, something feels slightly off.
Consistent look and feel so far, it's well done.
My No Bounds bluetooth speaker doesn't work properly out of the box. Can't control the volume from the OS other than mute. But quietest volume setting is too loud.
The Calendar app (based on GNOME Calendar it looks like) looks nice, but is very limited in functionality.
- Evolution looks a bit messy, but has more functionality.
GNOME Weather is a bit useless in terms of finding your location if it isn't a big city.
- You have to download and run a script to find it.
- That's a bad experience for novice users.
- Zorin has it baked into the status centre thingy, and it bugs you for a location, so that's not great.