Why Zorin? It’s always struck me as a weird distro. I can’t put my finger on why, but it feels off.

I wonder how much of a bump other distros have seen in the same period.

More than other distros, Zorin markets (and has marketed) itself as Windows-like, which probably elevates it in search rankings and LLM queries for people looking for a distro that more closely mirrors what they’re familiar with.

People really, really want a “Windows, but just the good parts” with as little deviation and required learning as possible in terms of desktop experience. A distro with a DE that nearly perfectly replicates “greatest hits” Windows versions (2K/XP/7/10) would probably be doing serious numbers right now if it existed.

Probably like MX Linux, which has, for some reason, topped the Distrowatch popularity list for years in front of Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Debian. Strangely enough, CachyOS seems to have adopted the same strategy and it's now first place on that site.

I've been using Linux since 2001, and I honestly I find it funny how these niche flashy distros are popular with the new generations. Probably because newbies follow the screenshots and /r/unixporn posts, instead of caring about support, mind share and governance. Except Arch, because it's both a really good distro and a symbol for cool h4x0r edgelords, so it's where everybody seems to land after playing with the niche distros like Zorin until they inevitably become unsupported.

Rock-solid distros like Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora don't have that "cool" factor so noobs don't even consider them, even though under the hood it's all the same, and on day 2 you just want something that works, rather than something that looks good on a Reddit post.

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You know Linux has gone mainstream when baby's first distro Zorin has a privacy policy and terms of service page, as it's published by a for-profit company.

It helps that it is built on the same Open Source software that powers the New York Stock Exchange and computers on the International Space Station.

per https://zorin.com/os/

The marketing of it as "looks and feels like Windows 11!" is probably the biggest hook, if one can assume the majority of the 780k are non-powerusers who are wary about the end of Windows 10's support, and getting pwned on the Internet...

It looks good, plus they're good at marketing it and the website is very engaging with telling me what problems of mine it solves and how.

I have to do tech support for grandma. Every few years, her Windows laptop gets so slow that we get her a new one. This time I will test out a switch to Linux instead of buying a new computer. Zorin is the most attractive option because it's the least strange.

Because usually it works, the out of the box deb + snap + flatpak, polished experience cozy look with some presets to minimice friction, + ubuntu LTS its a nice pack.