The developers of Zorin OS, a distribution based on Ubuntu aimed at beginners used to working in Windows, announced that the release of Zorin OS 18 on October 15 has surpassed one million downloads, setting a new record for the project. 78% of all downloads have been made by Windows users.
At the same time, it has been announced that testing support will be provided for updating versions of Zorin OS 17.x to the Zorin OS 18 branch. It is expected that within a few weeks, the functionality for updating between branches, which does not require reinstalling the distribution and preserves all user settings, applications, and files, will be declared stable.
The Zorin OS distribution is notable for its ability to give the desktop the look typical of various versions of Windows and macOS, as well as for including a selection of programs familiar to Windows users. The desktop environment in Zorin OS is based on GNOME with a set of custom extensions and a panel based on Dash to Panel and Dash to Dock. To integrate the desktop with smartphones, the Zorin Connect app (based on KDE Connect) is included. In addition to deb packages and default Ubuntu repositories, support for Flatpak, AppImage, and Snap formats is included, allowing installation from Flathub and Snap Store.
Source: opennet.ru
