Zorin OS 18: Finally, a Linux That Feels Better Than Windows

You know what? I’ve been knee-deep in Linux systems since 2019, working as a cloud engineer, and I’ve watched so many people try to make the switch from Windows. Most of them gave up after a week. Can’t blame them, really. Ubuntu threw them into GNOME without a manual. Fedora expected them to already know what dnf was. Manjaro… well, let’s not even go there.

Then Zorin OS 18 showed up on my radar, and honestly, I wasn’t expecting much. Another Ubuntu derivative with a fancy coat of paint, right? Wrong. Dead wrong.

The Timing Couldn’t Be Better (Microsoft’s Basically Forcing This)

Microsoft’s pulling the plug on Windows 10 next October. October 14, 2025, to be exact. Millions of computers that work perfectly fine suddenly won’t get security updates anymore. And Windows 11? Good luck with that if your computer doesn’t have TPM 2.0 or whatever arbitrary requirement they decided on this week.

My neighbor asked me last month what she should do about her 2018 Dell. Runs fine. Does everything she needs. But Microsoft says it’s not “good enough” for Windows 11. So her options were: buy a new computer (great for Microsoft’s bottom line, terrible for her wallet), stick with an unsupported OS (hello, security nightmare), or try something different.

That’s where Zorin OS 18 comes in, and the team behind it clearly saw this coming. Everything about this release screams “we built this for Windows refugees.”

First Impressions Matter (And They Nailed It)

Boot up Zorin OS 18 and you’re not gonna freak out. There’s your taskbar at the bottom. Start menu in the corner. System tray with all the little icons you expect. Clock sitting there minding its own business. It’s familiar, but prettier. Those floating panels with rounded corners and subtle transparencies? Yeah, they make Windows 11 look clunky.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Underneath all that familiar stuff, you’ve got GNOME 46 running the show. That’s the same foundation that powers a ton of other Linux distributions, which means it’s solid. Really solid. The kind of solid you want when you’re running production workloads or just need your computer to not randomly crap out on you.

The start menu got reworked for this release. It’s cleaner now, less cluttered. Search actually works the way you’d expect it to. Type “calc” and the calculator shows up. Revolutionary, I know, but you’d be surprised how many desktop environments struggle with this basic functionality.

Workspaces Changed How I Work (No Joke)

Look, I was skeptical about the whole workspace thing when I first switched to Linux. Sounded like one of those features that’s cool in theory but useless in practice. You know, like 3D desktop cubes or that time Microsoft tried to make Windows 8 happen.

But just hit the Windows key on Zorin OS 18. Everything you have open just… spreads out in front of you. All your applications, all your different workspaces, right there. Drag something from one workspace to another. Group related stuff together. It’s visual, it’s fast, and it doesn’t feel like you need a PhD to figure it out.

Windows tried to do virtual desktops. They really did. But it always felt tacked on, like someone remembered it existed two weeks before shipping and threw it in there. Zorin OS 18 (and GNOME in general) built the whole experience around workspaces from day one.

I keep my terminals and monitoring dashboards on workspace one. Communication stuff (Slack, Discord, email) lives on workspace two. Browser with 47 tabs goes on workspace three. Separate workspace for documentation when I’m writing. This setup on my laptop means I’m not constantly playing hide-and-seek with windows. Everything has its place.

Window Tiling That Doesn’t Require a Manual

Windows 11 introduced snap layouts last year. Drag a window to the edge, pick a layout, boom. Zorin OS 18 looked at that and said, “okay, but what if we made it actually useful?”

Open up the appearance settings. Under “Windows” you’ll find “Advanced Window Tiling.” There’s an auto-tile feature that’s supposed to intelligently place new windows, though between you and me, I couldn’t get it to work consistently. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. Maybe it’s still buggy. Hard to say.

But the custom layouts? That’s where the magic happens. You can design your own tiling setup. Save it. Use it every single time you drag a window to the top of the screen. No more manually resizing three terminal windows to fit on one display. No more “close enough” arrangements that are slightly off.

For someone juggling Kubernetes dashboards, multiple SSH sessions, and log viewers all day, this changed everything. My 13-inch laptop screen suddenly feels twice as big because I’m not wasting space on window decorations and gaps.

They Actually Solved the Windows App Problem

Most Linux distributions handle Windows applications by hoping you’ll figure it out yourself. Double-click that .exe file and… nothing. Or worse, something breaks and now you’re searching forums from 2009 trying to fix Wine configuration.

Zorin OS 18 built a database. Over 170 common Windows applications. When you try to install Microsoft Office (because of course that’s what everyone tries first), the system doesn’t just fail silently. It pops up a dialog that says, “Hey, this won’t work natively. But did you know LibreOffice is already installed? Or you could use Microsoft 365 in your browser.”

That last part blows people’s minds. “Wait, I can use Office in my browser?” Yes. Yes you can. Microsoft spent billions building web versions of their apps that work great. You don’t need to install anything. Just open Firefox and go.

The database covers Adobe products, various games, development tools, productivity apps… basically anything a normal person might try to install. And instead of letting you waste 30 minutes downloading, installing Wine, configuring Wine, breaking Wine, reinstalling Wine, and finally giving up, it just tells you upfront what will and won’t work.

Web Apps Are Genuinely Game-Changing

This feature deserves its own section because it’s that good and nobody talks about it enough.

Zorin OS 18 has a Web Apps tool. Sounds boring. It’s not. This thing lets you turn any website into a desktop application. And I mean ANY website.

Google Docs becomes a desktop app. Figma becomes a desktop app. Notion, Microsoft 365, Photoshop (the web version), Slack, Monday.com, your company’s internal portal that only works in Chrome for some reason – all of them can be desktop apps.

Why does this matter? Because they act like real applications. They show up in your start menu. You can pin them to the taskbar. They have their own window separate from your browser. The system treats them like first-class citizens.

I’ve got AWS Console as a desktop app. Azure Portal as another one. Grafana dashboards, CloudWatch logs, New Relic – each one gets its own dedicated space. No more hunting through 50 browser tabs to find the right one. No more accidentally closing the tab with your work and losing your place.

And the setup? Click three buttons. That’s it. You’re done.

For organizations migrating from Windows, this is huge. All your cloud-based tools just work. No compatibility layer needed. No “it works differently on Linux” excuses. If it works in a browser on Windows, it works identically on Zorin OS 18.

The Small Details That Actually Matter

LibreOffice comes pre-installed. Not news. Every Linux distribution includes LibreOffice. But Zorin configures it to look like Microsoft Office. Same ribbon interface. Same general layout. Someone switching from Windows opens Writer and thinks, “okay, this looks close enough.”

That’s intentional. The team removed friction points. They anticipated questions. “Where’s the bold button?” Same place it was before. “How do I insert a table?” Same way you did it in Word.

Color themes got updated. Yellow and brown joined the existing options. The light theme looks fantastic – clean, professional, modern. Dark theme still does that thing where everything gets tinted, which I’m not crazy about, but plenty of people seem to like it.

File manager finally has a search button that doesn’t require keyboard shortcuts. Small change. Makes a big difference for people who aren’t keyboard junkies.

OneDrive integration works now through online accounts. Connect your Microsoft account, and your files sync automatically. One less excuse to stay on Windows.

The file picker shows thumbnails properly. Images, videos, PDFs – they all display previews instead of generic icons. You’d think this would be standard by now, but GNOME just got around to fixing it properly in version 46.

Technical Improvements (The Stuff Under the Hood)

Zorin OS 18 runs Linux kernel 6.14. That’s not bleeding edge (we’re past 6.17 now), but it’s recent enough to matter. Better hardware support, especially for newer AMD and Intel CPUs. Improved encryption performance. Faster storage access. The kind of stuff you don’t notice until you go back to something older and wonder why it feels sluggish.

Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS forms the base. Long-term support until 2029. Five years of security updates without major breaking changes. For businesses, that’s stability. For home users, that’s peace of mind.

PipeWire replaced PulseAudio for handling sound. If you’ve never had problems with audio on Linux, congratulations, you’re one of the lucky ones. The rest of us have horror stories about Bluetooth headphones refusing to connect, crackling audio in video calls, or sound just randomly deciding to stop working.

PipeWire fixed most of that. Lower latency. Better Bluetooth handling. My AirPods actually connect reliably now. Wild.

Remote desktop sessions work without someone being logged in at the physical machine. This took way too long to fix, but it’s finally here. Sysadmins everywhere are quietly celebrating.

Graphics stack got Mesa 25 drivers. Gaming performance improved noticeably. Proton compatibility is better. Steam works great. Even some previously finicky titles just launch and run now.

System Requirements (Will Your Computer Handle It?)

Here’s the important part: Zorin OS 18 runs on hardware that Windows 11 rejects.

Minimum requirements:

• 64-bit processor (basically anything from 2010 or later)
• 2 GB of RAM (though seriously, get 4 GB if possible)
• 15 GB of storage for Core edition

My neighbor’s 2018 Dell that Microsoft declared obsolete? Runs Zorin OS 18 like a champ. Faster than it ran Windows 10, actually.

They offer different editions for different hardware capabilities. Core edition for normal computers. Lite edition for older machines. Pro edition if you want premium features and direct support. But the free Core edition handles everything most people need.

I dug an old laptop out of storage last month. 2013 MacBook Pro with a dying battery and a scratched screen. Windows 10 crawled on it. Zorin OS 18 Lite? Completely usable. Web browsing, document editing, video calls – everything worked fine.

Living With It (Three Months Later)

I installed Zorin OS 18 on my secondary laptop in July. My main machine still runs Arch (yeah, I’m that person), but I wanted something I could recommend to friends without becoming their personal tech support.

The stability has been rock-solid. Exactly one kernel panic in three months, and I’m pretty sure I caused that by messing with graphics drivers. Everything else just works. Updates install smoothly. Programs don’t randomly break. The system doesn’t decide to spend 20 minutes updating when I need to join a meeting.

Battery life improved compared to Windows 10. Not dramatically, but noticeable. Maybe 30-40 minutes of extra runtime. Thermal management seems better too. The laptop runs cooler during normal use.

Performance wise, everything feels snappier. Applications launch faster. Switching between workspaces is instant. Even with a dozen things running, the system stays responsive. Windows 10 on the same hardware would start begging for mercy once you opened more than five programs.

Gaming through Steam works better than expected. Proton compatibility layers have gotten really good. I played through Hades completely on Linux without issues. Stray ran fine. Even Elden Ring worked (though I needed to tweak some shader cache settings).

The Software Center makes finding and installing applications straightforward. No hunting through package managers. No adding PPAs. No arcane terminal commands unless you want to use them. Search for what you need, click install, done.

The Honest Downsides (Because Nothing’s Perfect)

Let’s be real about the limitations.

Zorin OS 18 is based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Long-term support is great for stability. Terrible if you need the absolute latest everything immediately. That kernel version? It’s from earlier this year. Brand new GPU that just launched? You might wait months before the drivers make it into the distribution.

This is the classic tradeoff. Stability versus bleeding edge. Zorin picked stability. For their target audience (people fleeing Windows), that’s absolutely the right call. But if you bought an RTX 5080 last week and want to game on Linux today, maybe look at Fedora or something with a faster release cycle.

Software availability isn’t a problem anymore. Flatpak support out of the box means thousands of applications available through Flathub. But occasionally you’ll find some obscure package that isn’t available as a Flatpak and requires adding repositories or compiling from source. Still way better than it used to be, though.

The auto-tiling feature I mentioned earlier? Yeah, it’s finicky. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it places windows in ways that make no sense. I ended up turning it off and using the custom layouts instead.

Oh, and here’s something important: Zorin OS 18 is technically still in beta as of October 2025. It’s stable enough for daily use (I’m using it), but you might hit occasional bugs. The team has a history of taking their time to get releases right, which I respect. But if you need a system for critical work right now, maybe wait for the stable release. Or at least have a backup plan.

Who Should Actually Use This?

After three months of testing and probably annoying everyone I know by telling them about it, here’s who I think will benefit most:

Windows 10 users facing the October 2025 cutoff: Your hardware works fine. Microsoft decided it’s obsolete. Don’t buy a new computer just to run Windows 11. Try Zorin OS 18. You’ll be surprised.

People tired of Windows 11’s nonsense: The ads in the Start menu. The forced Bing integration. The telemetry you can’t fully disable. The updates that restart your computer during presentations. If you’re done with all that, Zorin OS 18 removes the annoyances while keeping the familiarity.

Complete beginners who want to try Linux: This is the distribution I recommend to people who’ve never touched Linux before. The learning curve is gentle. The documentation is clear. The community doesn’t make you feel dumb for asking basic questions.

Small businesses looking to cut licensing costs: If you’re paying Microsoft per seat for Windows and Office licenses, switching to Zorin OS 18 with LibreOffice and web-based Office 365 could save significant money. The Web Apps feature makes it viable for organizations.

IT departments managing migrations: The familiar interface reduces training time. OneDrive support eases file migration. The stability of the LTS base means fewer support tickets. It’s honestly a reasonable choice for organizational deployments.

Developers and cloud engineers: I fall into this category, obviously biased, but it’s a solid daily driver. Access to all the development tools you need. Web Apps feature helps organize cloud consoles and monitoring dashboards. Terminal works the way you’d expect. Docker, Kubernetes, VS Code – everything just works.

Not recommended for: Hardcore gamers who need every new GPU feature day one. People who absolutely must run specific Windows-only professional software (though check the database first – you might be surprised what has alternatives). Anyone who needs to use their system for mission-critical work during the beta period without a backup plan.

Real Talk: Is It Worth Switching?

I’ve been in the Linux world since 2019. Started with Ubuntu, tried Fedora, spent time on Debian, eventually landed on Arch for my main system because I’m apparently a glutton for punishment. I’ve seen distributions come and go. I’ve watched projects make bold claims and fail to deliver. I’ve cleaned up after Windows migrations that went sideways.

Zorin OS 18 is different. Not because it does anything revolutionary – the individual features exist elsewhere. But because it does everything right. The attention to detail. The focus on the user experience. The willingness to say “no, we’re not shipping this until it’s ready” even when the community is clamoring for a release.

This distribution understands that switching operating systems is scary. People don’t know what to expect. They’re worried about losing files, breaking things, not being able to do their work. Zorin OS 18 holds your hand without being patronizing. It explains things without talking down to you. It provides alternatives instead of just saying “that doesn’t work.”

The hybrid approach works. Take the familiar Windows interface. Add GNOME’s workspace functionality. Polish everything until it feels cohesive rather than franken-distro’d together. The result is something that feels comfortable for Windows users while still showing them why Linux can be better.

My neighbor with the 2018 Dell? She’s been running Zorin OS 18 for two months now. Called me once to ask how to install Chrome (I showed her it was already installed, just called Chromium). That’s it. One support call in two months versus the weekly “Windows is doing something weird again” calls I used to get.

Is it perfect? Nah. The auto-tiling needs work. Being in beta means occasional quirks. Hardware support will always lag behind more cutting-edge distributions. But for the target audience – people who need their computer to work without becoming a hobby – it’s probably the best option available right now.

The Windows 10 end-of-life deadline makes this especially relevant. Millions of computers are about to become “obsolete” according to Microsoft. Zorin OS 18 gives those computers a second life. And honestly, probably a better life than they had running Windows.

Would I put this on my mom’s computer? Already did. Would I recommend it to a small business looking to cut costs? Absolutely. Would I trust it for my own work? I’m literally using it to write this article right now.

That probably says more than anything else I could write.