Did you even read the whole comment?

just stick with the free version and find free viable alternatives. Libreoffice, kdenlive, etc.

If time is a factor and you just need a distro that “works” stick with what you have, and find FOSS alternatives for zorin. Best of luck

I respected their time and was simply making a suggestion because zorin seems scummy locking default features behind a paywall.

Most distros come with a built in software downloader. If you consider it “work” to type kdenlive and click download ive got nothing else to say to you.

Yeah fully agree, i just wasnt willing to outright call them scummy. If anything the 50$ price tag should drop to ~20$ since the software they are packaging is not even their own work.

Zorin itself is foss but paying for features like themeing and software Is imo against the spirit of linux, they should, (again imo) release zorin pro as the default and simply accept donations. Like most distro maintainers. Even more frustrating, is the advertised features are just normal features and software readily available for free on other distros being paywalled. Its very likely that a user could get all of the listed features on the free version without paying. I also misread the website, ms office and adobe premier are not even what is included. In fact they do not list the specific names of the alternatives that they use in the pro version. I would bet that the pro version Has all foss software that is being hidden behind the price tag. I will do more quick research and edit this comment if that is the case.

Edit: Yeah i nailed it, its all foss software available through most package managers or flatpak heres a list.

Additional Software Included in Zorin Pro: Office & Productivity:

LibreOffice: A comprehensive office suite compatible with Microsoft Office/365 documents: https://www.libreoffic…​

Scribus: A desktop publishing application: https://sourceforge.ne…​

Graphics & Multimedia: Krita: A powerful, open-source image editing and painting software: https://krita.org/

Inkscape: A vector graphics editor: https://inkscape.en.so…​

Blender: A free and open-source 3D creation suite: https://www.blender.org/​

GIMP: A free and open-source image manipulation program: https://www.gimp.org/d...​

Evince: A Gnome document viewer: https://apps.gnome.org…​

Foliate: A simple and lightweight e-book reader: https://flathub.org/ap...​

Kdenlive: A non-linear video editor: https://kdenlive.org/e...​

FreeCAD: A free and open-source 3D design application: https://www.freecad.or…​

LibreCAD: A free and open-source 2D CAD software: https://wiki.librecad…​

Darktable: An open-source digital photo management and editing tool: https://www.darktable…​

ALL of the listed features from zorin pro have free alternatives, unless you really want microsoft office, screen sharing, adobe premier, etc… just stick with the free version and find free viable alternatives. Libreoffice, kdenlive, etc. How did you land on zorin to begin with? Most new users are recommended to use fedora, ubuntu-gnome, and linux mint. To me, just looking at zorins website they do not share the most basic principles of the linux space (being free and open source). I highly recomend switching, if you could run

echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP

This will output the name of your display manager like gnome, kde, etc. The version of zorin you are running is more than certainly using a popular one. Just find a distro that uses the same one. And your user experience will be almost exactly the same. Zorin might have some QOL features but definitely not anything you couldnt implement yourself.

Feel free to reach out here for more help if you run into any brick walls. You already dual booted your pc so i have faith that you have a pretty good grasp on what you are doing. If time is a factor and you just need a distro that “works” stick with what you have, and find FOSS alternatives for zorin. Best of luck

honestly, I like your perspective better, its way less depressing than how I normally view people. Its still sad to know that people dont praise eachother or themselves enough. but at least from your viewpoint the people I deemed weirdos are not the monsters I percieve. It gives everyone room to grow, Where as im generally more interested in myself. Praising others, Is definitely something I should work on.

I feel bad now, but when I see people practicing basic decency I generally see it as “the bare minimum”, When obviously thats not the case. Your perspective is very much appreciated, Thank you!

but for most tend to exaggerate enormously what other think of ourselves and the truth is, no one cares much.

This is true, but for most people with S.A.D. they were frequently exposed to people who DO care. Family for example constantly commenting on your looks and demenor can have a lasting impact on someone. I was lucky enough to become more rebelious and anti-conformist. but some like my SO, are constantly worried about what others think because its so engrained in them that the people around them are making snide comments to them or behind their backs.

For me, and what im trying to get her to understand. Is that “indifference” is paramount. Its a difficult thing to do but becoming indifferent to the opinions of others is way more powerful than attempting to believe something that isnt always true (that noone cares much). Truth is we are constantly surrounded by wierdos who take a single look at another person and make 1000 judgements.

I find it to be a way more powerful tool to just think about how sad they are, how lonely they must feel, how every foul word is likely a projection of their own lack of self worth. Shrug my shoulders and walk away. Sadly children are not given the opportunity to “walk away”. Especially in the case of parents and family.

I used the plasma-meta package and to be sure I just now used arch-chroot on a flashdrive and removed plasma entirely. Cleared pacman with -Scc and then reinstalled plasma-meta and all its dependencies.

Also breeze-gtk and oxygen-gtk were the only themes in the long list of dependencies. Maybe they removed them to shorten install times and shrink the size of the DE install?

Youre comment is greatly appreciated. it also gave me an idea. Im next going to install downgrade and check if the dependencies change to add more themes in a previous version.

I could also be crazy and manually installed a bunch of themes one night. but i barely put any work into the look and feel of the DE so im almost 99% sure this is not the case

Update this did not work downgrading breaks dependencies and will not let me since force was depreciated…

After some tests with many different keyboards from f-droid, not a single one of the roughly 12 I tested were able to send capital letters. My workaround would be use a keyboard that allows for custom keys and add shift or a capslock input to the keyboard.

I tried “unexpected keyboard” which had the option to do this but i cannot for the life of me figgure out how to actually press capslock when its added to the keyboard its set to the letter A but its not useable through normal means i must have to hold it or something and i cannot figgure it out.

My other solution is to buy one of these

Its a dinky wireless keyboard with a left click on the top left making it holdable like a game controller and all mouse inputs are useable with only thumbs. Its great for using a keyboard from a bed or couch.

Best of luck

I use fossify, im going to test this on my device later after work and see if i can reproduce any issues you are experiencing. Any specifics would help. (just want to see if the problem is limited to you)

An open source adverts market acutually sounds like an insane, yet viable solution ive never considered. Not only would it be benefitial to users. But the adverts themselves would save money based on the fact that large corps fake advert data to bolster the price on their platform. curious did you come up with that or was this an idea thats been floating aroud?

I agree with every single point youve made. Except

There’s not really any serious competition, people would still watch it.

If youtube stared pulling a reddit and implementing changes that users felt offended enough by many people would probably do what we are doing now. And find a decentralized platform like peertube or lemmy. Obviously reddit and youtube are not going anywhere but its still competiton even if its not “serious”. a few hundred thousand users is alot in terms of profit.

Just because they’ve been dumb with privacy laws, doesn’t mean they have to do that to find adblockers.

Google has all of the cards. like you said forced logins, drm, in stream adverts are all 1000% in our near future. I just think that before we actually get there we shouldnt roll over and take the abuse.

Genuinely appreciate the discourse on this, but im slightly frustrated that i simply implied that it “seems illegal” and I have multiple people explaining that its not illegal, they dont need to x and y to detect adblock, and that google has all the power. IM AWARE i just wish we could hold them accountable for the MANY infractions on privacy that theyve been guiltly of in the past, and continue to be, and see little to no repercussions.

I think youre locked into percieving this as a user who has a google account who has agreed to google’s terms and services. I can go on youtube with no account and watch content with an adblocker on a completely fresh system and IP adress and have the same experience. From what you are saying by simply visiting the website you are agreeing to be tracked and marked as a adblock user. (This obviously happens all the time but lets not let google get away with it) Regardless of the detection method.

I think this would be fine if google forced you to click agree to terms to veiw content. But they dont, so in essence they are collecting data about you and your terminal without your consent which should be illegal. Obviously im bias against google, but i genuinely think it sets a bad precedent. Especially with how shitty and ad flooded the internet has become.

Hanff first reached out to the European Commission about the use of ad blocker detection tools in 2016. In response to his concerns, the commission confirmed that scripts used to detect ad blockers also fall under Article 5.3 of the ePrivacy Directive, a rule that requires websites to ask for user consent before storing or accessing information on a user’s device, such as cookies. “Article 5.3 does not limit itself to any particular type of information or technology, such as cookies,” the commission wrote at the time. “Article 5(3) would also apply to the storage by websites of scripts in users’ terminal equipment to detect if users have installed or are using ad blockers.”

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/7/23950513/youtube-ad-blocker-crackdown-privacy-advocates-eu

Tldr:Just googled it and this came up. wasnt sure if it was illegal (its not). in the EU theres a guy named Alexander Hanff who very much thinks it should be and I agree.

They are monitoring traffic and scripts and storing information about the user without consent. In other words spyware. And from what you said “many adblockers arent even add ons” isnt that worse? The Pihole for example being detected and a corp like google storing that your ip has one. Makes me very uncomfortable.

please no replies with “youtube is providing a serivice that needs to be paid for, ads are a nessecarry blah blah blah.” It doesnt justify spyware.

Websites dont have the ability to see what addons you are using. Youtube must be tracking and storing local traffic data to accomplish this.

Seems illegal