Jill:
[0:00] On this week’s episode, we’re going to be interviewing Artyom Zorin of Zorin OS, who is right here.

Ryan:
[0:06] Yeah.

Artyom Zorin:
[0:07] Hey, guys.

Jill:
[0:09] Welcome to Destination Linux, where we discuss the latest news, hot topics, gaming, mobile, and all things open source in Linux. But today, we have a very special interview, yes, once again, with Artyom Zorin of Zorin OS. My name is Jill, and joining me are my students who excel in their use of negative space, Ryan and Michael.

Ryan:
[0:32] I just knew a teacher would get me one day, Jill. And the fact that you’re a professor and found something good to say about my work, a good use of negative space is really special to me. Thank you, Jill.

Jill:
[0:43] Aw.

Michael:
[0:44] I actually do know how to use negative space. This is not just a… But yes, thanks, Jill. Thanks.

Jill:
[0:54] Aw. I love you too, Michael. And we love you, Artyom. Now let’s get the show on the road toward Destination Linux.

Jill:
[1:10] This week, we would like to welcome back to the show, Artyom Zorin, the CEO and co-creator of Zorin OS. Artyom, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s so lovely having you on.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:24] Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It’s always a pleasure.

Jill:
[1:28] Yay. Well, I think we’re going to get right into it. First off, in case we have any new listeners to the show, tell us a little about yourself and how you got involved in open source software.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:42] Yeah, absolutely. I guess the best way to do that is to go back all the way to the beginning, summer of 2008, back when I was 12 and my brother, Kyrill, was 14. And that’s when we first started using Linux. And we just came across different videos of ubuntu and some of the fancy effects that it had, some of the old time members i’m sure would remember compies and like desktop cube and the burning windows so as kids that really excited us so we decided to start using linux on our computer but then we saw it was a lot more than just those fancy effects and features it was also So the big advantages of how much more secure it is than Windows, how much faster it ran. Just in general, the user experience was so much more solid and seamless. And we kind of thought to ourselves, why isn’t this more popular? Why aren’t a lot more people using Linux?

Artyom Zorin:
[2:42] And so we decided to show Ubuntu to our dad, who was a regular computer user, who was a translator by trade. And we got the answer pretty quickly why Linux wasn’t as popular. And we saw that a normal computer user like him would struggle to relearn the muscle memory to use the desktop. You know, the fact that the start menu and the taskbar is not where it is on most computers was kind of jarring. And we saw that Linux didn’t have that level of user friendliness and, you know, design finesse that it would really need to have if it were to be a general purpose operating system for the general public. So we kind of set ourselves the mission to bridge that gap if we could. There was a science project competition that was happening around that time, and we thought, let’s enter into this competition as our project. Let’s try to make a Linux distribution that would be really user-friendly and seamless. And so that was the beginning of Zorin OS.

Ryan:
[3:51] Very nice. You know, it’s interesting in your story that your dad was into computers, because I was thinking, it’s really young to get into computers as a young teenager. And to be like, hey, I want to try this new thing, Linux. And what was your influence to be involved in technology at that level back then?

Artyom Zorin:
[4:10] I mean, like, my brother and I, we’ve always been interested in science and technology, like growing up, we’d watch, you know, Discovery Channel documentaries. And we were really fascinated by just that whole world. And we kind of thought to ourselves, it’ll be cool to get into that industry someday. And the fact that our imagination was captured by linux and we were really enthusiastic about it that really motivated us to start early and focus on what we were really interested in which was you know making linux more accessible um and it was a great learning experience like we’ve never programmed in our lives before and so we learned a lot along the way um so that’s i think 13 14 And.

Ryan:
[4:55] A 15-year-old you would be very proud of how things turned out. That’s pretty cool. Yeah.

Michael:
[5:01] Yeah, that’s pretty awesome. I got started in tech early for the same kind of like my siblings were into tech and they got me into tech and that sort of thing.

Michael:
[5:08] So I kind of feel like a similar vibe there. But you’re talking about Zorin OS and how you were inspired to make it. So let’s talk about Zorin OS. And who would you say it’s designed for? Like you talked about a little bit with your dad and the beginners and stuff like that. Is that the main focal point?

Artyom Zorin:
[5:26] Yeah, I’d say so. Like, since the very beginning, the main aim was about how do we make a Linux environment more user-friendly and really ready for, you know, the general public, which by and large are Windows users. So how would we make the system more familiar to Windows users? And since the very first version of Zorin West the main focus is on the desktop experience and the design of it, And just making it as simple and intuitive to use for a normal Windows user. And that’s always been sort of the North Star that guided our decisions on how we built Zorin OS for all those years since.

Ryan:
[6:14] Makes total sense. I mean, we were talking in the pre-show earlier about the fact that I’m still utilizing Zorin OS, which Artyom is a miracle, not because Zorin OS or other distros aren’t great, but because I’ve stayed on a distro for longer than three months.

Michael:
[6:28] This is actually, you should feel massively accomplished, Artyom. Yeah. In order for him to stay on a system for any longer than even a couple of weeks is crazy.

Ryan:
[6:38] And I think we’re going on eight months or so.

Michael:
[6:41] Yeah, at least.

Jill:
[6:41] Yeah, yeah.

Ryan:
[6:42] In a while.

Artyom Zorin:
[6:43] Impressive, yeah.

Ryan:
[6:44] Yeah, and you know, one of the things that they tease me about, Artyom, is that I never theme stuff to the point where like, Like Michael tells a story about coming to my home and I had a base XFC install and I kept it base, default, never change anything but the wallpaper. And what’s great about Zorin OS is I don’t have to be good at theming because it does it all for me. And I look like a professional. I look like I’ve customized the heck out of my desktop because Zorin OS looks so good out of the box. And so it kind of works out that way. So I love that.

Michael:
[7:14] You can pretend.

Ryan:
[7:15] I can pretend I know what I’m doing. Yeah.

Jill:
[7:17] Yeah.

Ryan:
[7:17] Exactly.

Jill:
[7:18] And Zorin OS has the best implementation of the XFCE desktop with Zorin OS Lite. It’s beautiful.

Ryan:
[7:26] Yeah. You can make XFCE beautiful. You’re doing something really well.

Jill:
[7:30] Yeah.

Ryan:
[7:30] You know, speaking of which…

Ryan:
[7:32] We talked a little bit about the aesthetics, but what do you think makes Zorin OS stand out against the giant distros out there that, like you said, even when you’re younger, you came across Ubuntu first. A lot of people’s first distro might be Ubuntu or Debian or one of those. What is it about Zorin OS that you think makes it stand out from those?

Artyom Zorin:
[7:52] Yeah, I think it’s just our laser focus on making it as user-friendly as possible to that target audience that I just mentioned. And making sure that we’re always taking decisions that support the user base that we’re really focusing on.

Artyom Zorin:
[8:13] We’ve been really fortunate that we’ve been able to keep this project running for over 15 years. And we can see that there are a lot of specific ways on how we think about how do we develop new features, How do you design things that really resonate with that audience? So it’s just making sure that you’re totally focused and you know exactly who you’re building the operating system for. And those users will gravitate towards the system that you’re building. So it really is sort of a symbiotic relationship. We take a lot of ideas from the suggestions we get from our users, and as well as that, we make sure that if there are any user experience issues or paper cuts, you can kind of say, that make the system not as user-friendly and pleasant to use as it should be, that we attend to those issues and make sure the operating system reflects the needs and the wants of the users as much as possible.

Ryan:
[9:22] That’s good. Love it.

Michael:
[9:24] Nice. And I’m very curious about one thing. You were talking about how you had the beginner focus and stuff like that. And Ryan was talking about how well it looks and the design is so great. And it just popped in my head.

Michael:
[9:39] This is based on GNOME and looks nothing like GNOME in any way. And I have to ask, why did you choose GNOME over the other desktops when you’re going to change so much?

Artyom Zorin:
[9:51] Yeah it’s a variety of reasons um i think the fact that we’re able to customize it and change it around so much is a testament to how extensible and uh extendable gnome is i don’t think it gets enough credit for that like the extension um ecosystem is really vibrant and the fact that you’re able to you know uh overwrite certain desktop uh elements uh just through essentially javascript extensions uh makes it so flexible and even to a point where you know a lot of other desktop environments might not have that ability and you know to customize the system so much As well as that, Gnome is obviously a very popular project and it’s very widely supported. So if there are any new hardware features, there’s a huge community around it that develops to make sure that those hardware features are supported.

Artyom Zorin:
[10:57] As well as that, there’s a big emphasis on making the design very intuitive and user-friendly and taking new users into account when making decisions. Sometimes in open source software, there’s the temptation to add a lot of features, a lot of toggles to the point where it might even get a bit overwhelming for new users. And we find that like some of the design decisions that the GNOME team and the GNOME community make do take new users into account to make sure that, you know, the software that they’re making is designed to be as intuitive as possible. We don’t agree with absolutely every decision that the upstream GNOME developers make, but the fact that it’s such an extensible desktop environment means that we have the ability to tailor the Zorin OS desktop to the needs of Zorin OS users. And that’s a really exciting thing.

Michael:
[11:57] Nice. I mean, you’re talking about how you’re not necessarily agreeing with everything. I think Ryan can appreciate the fact that…

Ryan:
[12:02] I thought applicators popped my mic immediately. like why why you know but they do make a lot of great decisions so i completely agree with you especially from a user interface and i think it makes sense what you’re saying about hey if we’re trying to make a new user experience great and let’s say you started with the basic kd which is very flexible there’s lots of toggles there’s lots of switches to change stuff but if you don’t turn all that off a new user is going to get lost they’re going to be moving their panel in the middle of the screen not know how to get it back all this type of stuff where um what’s interesting I didn’t even think of what I didn’t think of is like the fact that GNOME is flexible on the back end because we know when it’s not flexible, it’s not super customizable on the front end.

Michael:
[12:46] Not for users, really.

Ryan:
[12:47] What you’re able to do on the back end makes it so that you can customize it without having all those toggles or switches or put the things in that, you know, your users want, such as app indicators.

Michael:
[12:56] Yeah, that’s not something I thought of before, like the back end part of it. Like I know it’s built on JavaScript and that would be a lot easier to manipulate and stuff if you’re familiar with that kind of thing. And, but in terms of like the users, there’s, there’s quite a few barriers to get to extensive, like to just even install extensions. It’s kind of a, there’s a barriers for that. But for someone who just wants to manage, like change it and modify it to be a certain way for the users to just start using. Yep. It makes sense. Yeah. Thanks.

Jill:
[13:25] Yeah, and I think you had a really nice balance of users coming from macOS and Windows. You know, you still have the bottom taskbar, but, you know, you can use a doc.

Ryan:
[13:38] They even have like a Mac-like theme and a Windows-like theme.

Jill:
[13:42] Exactly. And that’s the other thing is you can change the theming, which is you’re one of the best distros that does that. Definitely.

Ryan:
[13:51] Yeah, without a doubt.

Jill:
[13:52] So, Artyom, when we did our review of Zorin OS, of the latest release just a few weeks ago, we had asked the community and ourselves how you give back to the larger ecosystem. And you got back to us. Artyom actually got back to us and let us know how you contribute to Linux and the Linux ecosystem and all the things you do. And we talked about it here on the show, but just maybe reiterate or tell us again.

Michael:
[14:32] In your own words.

Jill:
[14:33] Yeah, in your own words. Yeah, absolutely.

Artyom Zorin:
[14:38] So like a lot of the work that we do for, you know, building the Zorin OS experience can end up being quite useful to other projects, other distributions. So say, for example, back in 2016 was when we started to switch over from our own desktop environment to a GNOME shell-based desktop environment. And we felt that, you know, the GNOME shell environment was quite mature and had a lot of, you know, advantages towards using it. And of course, that extensible extension ecosystem. But some of the interface elements that we really needed in Zoran West just weren’t there. So, you know, we didn’t have a suitable taskbar start menu, which are quite important, especially for Windows users. That’s what they’re familiar with. So that’s when we began developing some of our own desktop extensions for GNOME Shell, like the Zoran menu, Zoran taskbar. And that ended up actually being a basis for some pretty popular Gnome Shell extensions like Dash to Pano and the original source code behind ArcMenu, which we found some other distributions also use.

Ryan:
[15:53] Nice.

Artyom Zorin:
[15:54] So it’s really cool to see that, you know, the work that we’re putting out there is also, you know, being used and being loved by users outside of Soren. Even just more recently um on a less glamorous note there was a regression with how ubuntu handled i think it was the nvidia the latest available nvidia drivers unfortunately some gdk4 apps would not open and it was just a bug there but we helped the uh ubuntu team to to find the source of the issue and and to resolve it and and that of course helped both our users because Zorin OS is based on Ubuntu, but also all of the Ubuntu 2204 users, that patch made its way out to them. So that was, I believe it was around a month ago. And it’s cool to see that on an open source ecosystem like the Linux desktop, you’re able to see that cross-pollination of work that is being done by some project over here, make its way out to a completely different audience that the original developers might not have thought of and that’s that’s only possible because of the open source way.

Ryan:
[17:08] Yeah so fundamentally you feel like when we were talking on the show when we’re talking about this in general that it is important that distros that whether they base themselves on another distro or whatnot are giving back and you guys clearly are but is that that’s something that you felt compelled early on that you wanted to make sure Zorin os was about is that a big part of, you know, how you guys think and look at these projects?

Artyom Zorin:
[17:33] Yeah, I think that, you know, the fact that, you know, we’ve been able to stand on the shoulders of giants and all of the open source projects that came before us, you know, like the Linux kernel, the Ubuntu project, GNOME. Um you know we thought it was important to you know make our code out uh and available to everyone else so if anyone else wants to start a new project and they can build on our shoulders and make a new you know experience that we hadn’t even thought of and i think that’s that’s that’s a really cool thing that’s just not possible with you know proprietary systems and proprietary software.

Ryan:
[18:13] It is uniquely open source i love that yep.

Michael:
[18:16] Yeah that is awesome it’s kind of a challenge to you know get involved in certain kinds of projects if you’re like you know if you’re not familiar with certain things but i’m curious like how what kind of challenges have you had with Zorin os just developing and in general like have you had any challenges that you’ve come across that, maybe helped shape the development of it in the future and like design or anything for the their desktop.

Artyom Zorin:
[18:39] Yeah i mean if we go back to the very beginning like um i was 12 and my brother was 14 when we started developing Zorin OS and we had no experience in programming at all so just those first few steps were quite challenging we had to you know learn python uh from the python for dummies book and a few youtube tutorials and i wouldn’t.

Michael:
[19:00] Really i didn’t realize it was going to go into the point of like what was the what was the biggest challenge but learning to program like.

Artyom Zorin:
[19:06] Yeah that’s.

Michael:
[19:07] A big step i love it.

Artyom Zorin:
[19:09] I mean like the very first the very first step towards learning programming at least in our case was setting ourselves the challenge to you know make zorin os and make all of the features that we wanted to you know include in the system um so we had to you know learn um, you know, the programming craft to get ourselves to that level, rather than, you know, the other way around where, you know, if you go to college, you’d learn the programming stuff first, and then you’d figure out what do I use those skills for? But also, say, for example, those Gnome Shell extensions. Back in 2016, when we decided to switch over to Gnome Shell Base and start making those extensions, there wasn’t the level of documentation that there is right now for GNOME extension developers. So in many cases, we had to sort of reverse engineer, look at the source code of GNOME Shell to see how it worked and how we could implement certain features in our extensions.

Artyom Zorin:
[20:12] But even though that there wasn’t that level of documentation back then, The fact that GNOME Shell, and obviously the wider open source ecosystem, you can see the source code behind it means that anyone can see how it works and anyone can build on top of it. Again, something that’s uniquely open source, only possible here. So it was a really cool way to learn about the system and about the components and ultimately helped us to understand all of the inner workings of the desktop and how the operating system works and allowed us to develop even more features in the future.

Michael:
[20:54] That’s awesome. I mean, like the fact that you’re, you started the project as a, like a science project as a kid, and then you turn it into a business and you’re developing the skills to do it. And like that, that is like the fundamental, I don’t know, not poster child or whatever, but like, like the great, a great example of how open source is so powerful, because you don’t, you don’t need to have anything, there’s no barrier to get started. And you can take it as far as you want to go, including making something like Zorin, which is, that’s just awesome.

Ryan:
[21:23] Yeah, it’s an amazing story. And I think about all the young kids that we meet when we do scale and other conferences, Michael and Jill, and like the next Artyom is sitting in that audience somewhere, right? That, you know, gets inspired by this. Instead of drooling over TikTok or YouTube or Instagrams, they’re over there building a new OS, which is just dope.

Michael:
[21:46] Yeah, you need to do the open source challenge, not the Tide Pod challenge.

Ryan:
[21:50] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, there is no shortage of opinions in Linux and open source. A lot of people very opinionated by it, about things and how things should work. And so I was just curious, when you look at all the feedback that comes your way, whether it’s on a new release or shows or news or other thing, how do you use that feedback in the development process? How do you weed out, I’m sure, you know, like anything else, when you get big enough, you get some really negative, harsh stuff, you get some really kind stuff, you get a mixture of everything in between. How do you how do you guys handle that feedback and how do you use it effectively?

Artyom Zorin:
[22:33] Yeah, no, like user feedback is a huge factor in how we go about developing Zorin OS even further. So we always strive to listen to what, you know, people are saying about Zorin OS and their experiences, what they like and what they don’t like. And just making sure that, you know, as well, that the feedback that we’re listening to can be used in a constructive manner and especially aligns with, you know, the values that we abide by, but also by the needs of the users and the target demographic that we’re hoping to develop Zorin OS for. Sometimes the features that some people suggest are actually really useful, and we do end up including them and working on them. Sometimes it might align more with a demographic that might be better served by other distributions, maybe more technical users.

Artyom Zorin:
[23:35] But also, one of the key ways that we develop new features and figure out how we can improve Zorin OS is actually looking at some of the customer support queries that we get and some of the issues and challenges that people might be having. Like, say, for example, if a new user tries to install Zorin OS on a computer that might not be fully compatible with all of the drivers that are included in Zorin OS, Say, for example, like an NVIDIA-based computer a few years ago, it was more of a challenge to get started on. But that gave us the idea of, hey, why don’t we just include the NVIDIA drivers in the default ISO? And that was one of the features that I believe we introduced in Zorin OS 15 that really cut down on the issues that some new users were having because all of those drivers were available sort of out of the box. So that’s just one of the examples of how we take user feedback and develop it into actual features that users see in the next version of Zorin OS.

Ryan:
[24:45] Yeah. Wow.

Michael:
[24:46] That’s great.

Jill:
[24:46] Wow. So what’s one feature in Zorin OS that you think deserves more attention than it gets? The NVIDIA one was a pretty good one, NVIDIA drivers. Yeah.

Artyom Zorin:
[24:58] Yeah, I guess another feature that sort of was along the same lines as that NVIDIA one was the way that we handle what happens when someone double clicks on a Windows.exe or MSI installer file. So we noticed that, you know, there were a lot of users who were very new to Linux and Zorin OS and they were trying to get some of their favorite apps working.

Artyom Zorin:
[25:23] And they were struggling because, you know, maybe the Windows app support component, Wine, might not be fully compatible with the app. And when they double clicked on it and tried to install it with Wine, it might not have worked well. But we also noticed that some of those, you know, negative experiences were when people were trying to, you know, download the Windows version of apps that were actually cross-platform and natively available for Linux. So we thought to ourselves, how can we sort of design the experience in a way that guides the user to the right way of installing apps? So say, for example, someone might download the Windows installer for Slack or Zoom or their favorite web browser, Google Chrome. And they instead of you know prompting them to you know install a wine or the windows app support component and instead it says hey i noticed that you’re trying to install you know this app that’s actually natively available on the software store or from this web page directly for linux and if you do that your experience will be better um so that’s that’s one of the features that we implemented so that users get steered towards the right way of installing apps so that as they go on their Linux journey, they’ll know, hey.

Artyom Zorin:
[26:46] Instead of downloading the Windows EXE, maybe let’s check the software store to see if it’s available there. And there might be a native Linux version of that app already there. And so after implementing that, we saw that it was a lot easier for those new users to get accustomed to how you install apps in Linux and just ultimately improve the user experience.

Michael:
[27:12] That’s awesome. I mean, that’s actually, you know, I’ve always said that Zorin is in the top five options for the for like the beginner distro. And with that feature, I’m more leaning to number one, because that is such a good feature, even if you don’t have these software to just tell them that there’s like, here’s a thing you can do. Here’s another option, you can get it from the website or however, if you have it like specified for a particular application. Do you have like a database of that sort of thing that it just like scans to see what they’re trying to install?

Artyom Zorin:
[27:41] Yeah, so like every copy of Zorin OS has this sort of inbuilt database of some of the common Windows.exe installers. And it checks against that to see, hey, you know, you’re double clicking on an exe and it matches this app. Maybe you should take a look at, you know, the installer in the software store. I mean, it’s not a very like super glamorous or technically impressive feature, but it doesn’t improve the user experience.

Michael:
[28:10] Yeah, it’s a usability feature, which is sadly not the most important to some

Michael:
[28:15] people. And I think it’s great that you have that sort of thing. Another thing that’s also good for like beginners is having compatibility of the hardware, like you’re talking about with NVIDIA stuff like that. But there’s also the element of like the kernel updates and that sort of stuff. And the latest blog post or the latest release, the blog post for that release of 17.2, it says that it has hardware compatibility with the hardware element from Ubuntu. is how does that work when it comes to Zoran? Like, how do you implement that?

Artyom Zorin:
[28:41] The viewers might not know all of the background about Zoran. It’s based on Ubuntu LTS releases, which means that, you know, the system gets a lot more security updates for a longer period of time, and it gets more widely tested. But at the same time, by default, you know, the official Ubuntu LTS release, might be stuck with the same kernel for many years if you get the initial release of that LTS version. However, the Ubuntu team also released hardware enablement updates for those LTS releases. So roughly every six months, they get the kernel version as well as some of the graphics hardware stack from the latest non-LTS releases, which typically come around every six months and and so, We’ve made sure that, you know, newer point releases of Zorin OS get those HWE hardware enablement packages and updates out of the box so that, you know, if you’re using a newer piece of hardware, maybe with a newer CPU or graphics card, that it will have much newer drivers that it will be able to support that out of the box.

Artyom Zorin:
[30:01] And so we make those point releases roughly every six months as well.

Ryan:
[30:05] Because it sounds like you have so much user feedback. Let’s say they get a new laptop, they get a new desktop, and maybe it’s the new NVIDIA driver. Maybe it’s the new AMD processor that wasn’t supported in the LTS. How do you guys handle those compatibility issues? Because really my biggest issue, and when I say issue, I mean it’s the thing I would love to see Ubuntu improve on the most, which is their hardware compatibility. Because six months is a long time in the hardware world. a lot releases in six months. And so you have a new user, which Zorin OS attracts. They buy the new computer at Best Buy. They come home. They didn’t do their proper research. Let’s say they try to install Zorin or Ubuntu, and it doesn’t work because even though we have a kernel out there that has that hardware enablement in it, we’re using an older kernel in those versions. Do you guys try to do something with those, or you just tell them you’ll have to wait, or it’s not compatible, Or how do you handle those situations where there is newer hardware that’s not compatible?

Artyom Zorin:
[31:06] So, you know, typically those newer hardware drivers get released in newer kernel versions, which, you know, the Ubuntu team have been, you know, working to improve the release cadence of them, especially recently. It is a thing, it is a factor where you have to take into account the balance between, you know, the latest features and hardware support, as well as how well tested the kernel is. Because if you, you know, release a brand new version of a kernel to all the existing users, there’s always the risk that, you know, there might be a regression.

Artyom Zorin:
[31:42] And, you know, sometimes the system might crash because those ultra new versions of the kernel might have those kinds of issues that don’t get widely tested upon release. So it is a balance between those factors. But we’re always looking at ways on how to include newer drivers out of the box. So is the Ubuntu team. And you’re starting to see that a lot of those hardware vendors that contribute their drivers to the Linux kernel are starting to do it earlier and earlier. So say, for example, if Intel is planning to release a new CPU, they often include those drivers in versions in their patches that they submit to the Linux kernel team before the launch date of those components. So you’re starting to see that like a lot of the hardware that you know might get released immediately might actually be supported in the latest version of of Zorin or server one two out of the box because they did it so early ahead of time.

Ryan:
[32:52] Gotcha so you know security is a very hot topic on people’s minds a lot especially since every day you open the news and it’s another data breach and another data breach and more of your information’s out there i guess what ryan And there was another data breach.

Michael:
[33:07] While you were talking.

Ryan:
[33:08] I have no doubt. There were probably 50 data breaches while I was talking. And, you know, honestly, a lot of people with things like Windows releasing their, what is it, Snapback, Recall, Recall, Recall features and things like that are starting to come to Linux. You know, I see them going on Reddit forums, asking about Linux. Hey, I’m not happy with, I don’t want to switch from Windows 10, which I think loses support this month or really soon.

Michael:
[33:33] Next year, I think, actually.

Ryan:
[33:35] Is it next year?

Artyom Zorin:
[33:35] Yeah.

Ryan:
[33:35] Yeah, it’s soon. And so people are really starting to inquire wanting to come over to Linux for the first time. So talking about security, let’s talk about how Zorin OS does security. How do you make sure that the environment that you’re setting up is secure for your users above and beyond what’s already, you know, built into the foundation?

Artyom Zorin:
[33:57] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the really important decisions that we took early on in the project was, do we build Zorin OS sort of as an entirely independent Linux distribution, or do we base ourselves on another existing one? And we ultimately decided that, you know, for our use case, Ubuntu was actually a really good base. And a lot of that does have to do with the fact that, you know, the security patches that, you know, fix vulnerabilities are released very often, very quickly. Because it’s such a large distribution that’s used in, you know, servers, supercomputers, IoT devices, sort of all over the world by so many different kinds of companies and organizations that there is that level of support that they provide upstream that if we were to base Zorin OS on Ubuntu would make its way down to Zorin OS users as well. So that’s why we decided to go down that route. And, you know, the Ubuntu team have been doing a really great job to make sure that those patches to fix vulnerabilities do make their way out to all of those users on a really timely manner.

Artyom Zorin:
[35:10] And, you know, that helps to make Zorin OS really secure out of the box because of all of the work that’s being done by not only the Ubuntu team, but also the upstream developers on the Linux team, on other open source projects that are included in, you know, the Ubuntu repositories.

Artyom Zorin:
[35:30] So all of those patches also make their way into Zorin OS. And also as you were mentioning about you know windows and some of the decisions that they’ve been taking over the past few months and years on a security standpoint it is definitely a factor that we see is starting to you know increase the user base of linux in general and of course by that part because users are starting to see that hey i’m not so certain that microsoft has, my intentions in mind when they’re developing new features like Windows Recall.

Michael:
[36:11] I think Recall is fantastic because it shows that they 100% do not have their good intentions behind them for the people.

Ryan:
[36:19] I think it’s not about bad intentions always as it is to what Artyom’s saying is they’re not thinking about the end user because the idea of being able, if you just look at it from the, high level, superficial level, the idea of being able to recall what you’ve worked on all throughout the day actually sounds kind of cool, right? Like, oh, I forgot what I was doing over, you know, earlier there was a website I was looking at and I can’t remember what the URL is and I can go back. When you care about your users, you start thinking, hey, what if a hacker got a hold of that? What does that start to look like when my machine…

Michael:
[36:54] Or how do we make sure that this is not like, well, maybe we shouldn’t send it to our servers and have everything that we… Exactly. Maybe we shouldn’t do these things. That’s a good point. Actually, when you were talking about, you know, the way you’re describing it, it made me think that with a person who thought of this has like massive ADHD, like me, and I would forget things that I’m trying to work on at that moment. And then like, oh, that would be great. But then I thought, yeah, that would be great. And then everything else beside it is awful.

Ryan:
[37:22] Yeah, it’s that looking deeper. Is this the best thing for the users, even though it’s a cool feature to implement? And I think there’s a lot of that going on right now with AI and things. And we’ll get to that in a later question because I’m interested in your take on that, where we’re looking at adding things without thinking about what’s the overall impact it’s going to have on people, society, whatever. So very interesting. And one of the things, Artyom, I want to compliment you on is the fact that throughout this entire interview, you’ve just been giving credit to all the projects that you all work with. And I think that speaks a lot. Sometimes projects try to kind of hide the fact that they’re based on something or that they work with other teams to produce something whereas you’re just very transparent and it sounds like a partnership which is how open source is supposed to be and that makes me feel uh really great so i love that you do that.

Artyom Zorin:
[38:15] Yeah thanks like it’s it’s only been possible to make so on us because of all of those open source projects out there so so we’re enormously thankful for for all the efforts that they put in and we’re always happy to you know support other projects where they might want to use our code and you know as an open source project ourselves we’re really happy to see that you know other projects are building on top of what we’re doing so yeah it’s a whole symbiotic ecosystem you can there you.

Ryan:
[38:44] Go perfect timing for the new venom movie the.

Artyom Zorin:
[38:46] Symbiotic relationship.

Michael:
[38:48] Love it yes nice uh so what about like this have you any stories about um users who have switched to Zorin os and told you about their experience and maybe had like an impactful experience do you have any examples of that.

Artyom Zorin:
[39:01] Yeah i think like sort of a surprising example that happened a few years ago was there was a city in italy called vicenza it’s a few kilometers west of venice who actually decided to switch over all of their municipal computers from Windows to Zorin OS on an informal basis. What happened was, it was an interesting story, there was a school in the area and they were having issues with.

Artyom Zorin:
[39:29] Um you know the looming windows xp end of life date and they were left with the choice of you know do we have to buy a whole load of new computers just to you know run windows 10 so that you know our it is still supported and up to date and which would have been like really expensive for you know a school with limited resources uh but one of the parents in that school um he knew about Zorin OS and he thought that you know including you know installing Zorin OS on the existing computers could save them from landfill and also save the school a lot of money from having to buy a load of new computers and they switched over their computers to Zorin OS and you know uh it turned out to be you know a really great uh boon to the school and that city municipality were having the same issue where they had i think it was like over 700 computers across all of their municipal offices running windows xp that they would have to buy new computers just to run windows 10 and you know they saw that the school had a great experience with zorin os and they just decided to deploy zorin os on all of their computers and what was funny was that they just emailed us i think it was two weeks before the deployment started saying we’re about to switch our whole city over to Zorin OS. We were panicking because nothing like that ever happened before.

Artyom Zorin:
[40:58] But we’re really happy to say that the deployment went pretty smoothly. There was a newspaper that came back to them around a year after the deployment and asked them how it went, and they were generally quite happy with it. We were really surprised on the… You know the premise of whole cities switching over to our system and sort of on an informal basis but we’re really happy about that and we also want to give a bit of a shout out to some of the people that made it happen so shout out to albano batistala and the vicenza linux users group that basically made that deployment happen i.

Ryan:
[41:39] Mean that’s amazing talk about a huge impact they had that kind of spread the fact that they had that knowledge, they suggested this, it starts with the school and moves on from there. It really shows you, even if you want to work, a lot of people in Linux want to work in an environment where there’s Linux. But we don’t always have that option. But here, someone was able to make that happen eventually, thanks to Windows and the Life situation. So you never know when you can kind of move your organization into Linux realm.

Michael:
[42:07] That’s when you get the Linux user within.

Ryan:
[42:09] The Linux user within comes out. Yeah, absolutely.

Jill:
[42:13] And speaking of that, Artyom, since we’re on the topic of education, how does Zorin OS support educational initiatives or environments? We know that’s a big mission for you to support those environments. And this you probably learned from with the situation in Italy.

Artyom Zorin:
[42:35] Yeah, no, absolutely. So since even the early days of Zorin West, we’ve always been releasing the education edition, which comes preloaded with a lot of software for teaching different classes like maths, geography, coding, science, all out of the box. And it’s something that we’ve been working on since we were in school. So we kind of thought to ourselves, like, how would we make, you know, a desktop experience that would improve the learning experience as well? As we were going through that process and you know it’s a project that we’ve been really passionate about for a really long time and um we’re seeing that you know there are a lot of schools also in italy uh all around the world as well making use of soar and west education even a couple months ago i saw a really cool project that’s happening in malawi there’s a couple charities i believe they’re called k2 tech and bridges to malawi and they’ve been sending um old decommissioned windows laptops to malawi pre-loading them with sorna west education giving them out to schools and it’s been really cool to see that you know something that we’ve made here in ireland is making its way out to places that we’d never thought they would be and is making an impact i hope uh on the the school children there.

Michael:
[43:59] That’s awesome.

Ryan:
[44:00] So kind of going back to what we were talking about a little earlier with the rise of AI. I’m just curious, you know.

Michael:
[44:08] Thinking of making an impact.

Ryan:
[44:10] Thinking of making an impact. You know, and changes that things, because recall, obviously, is kind of made possible by these type of technologies we were talking about earlier. You see AI being talked about everywhere. So I have two questions for you. My first one is, what are your overall thoughts on AI? Like, do you think it’s as big as people are making it out to be? Is this going to be a life changing technology that’s worth, what, $8 trillion now with NVIDIA? You know, what are your thoughts on that? And then second, well, how’s Zorin OS handling AI? Are you guys looking to implement it or integrate it in any way? And what are your thoughts there?

Artyom Zorin:
[44:48] So like the developments in AI over the past couple of years have been, you know, really interesting, really exciting. In some ways you know somewhat scary uh i i’m sure like your viewers would share some of those sentiments uh but overall i think like i’m quite optimistic in you know how ai will be able to you know help people and organizations to to do what they want to do with their technology um.

Artyom Zorin:
[45:20] At the same time though like from the.

Artyom Zorin:
[45:23] Business perspective i see that there’s you know a lot of buzz and hype around it that in some cases might not be fully warranted and you know maybe some of your your listeners and viewers might remember the dot-com bubble for example it was a little before my time um but there were similar hype cycles around technology trends that you know over the long run they might have materialized and made a big difference but maybe.

Artyom Zorin:
[45:51] Some of those companies that were working on tools around that technology didn’t end up surviving that hype period because if there’s a huge boom there’s probably going to be a bust sometime in the future what goes up must come down right exactly yeah and it calls out some of the companies that probably shouldn’t have gotten the hype that they ended up getting and maybe the investor dollars that they ended up getting um so it’s like from our perspective we see that whole um trend in the industry around ai to be kind of up in the air i don’t know exactly where it’s going to go um there might even be some you know developments in ai that might make current ai companies in many industries obsolete um next month for example uh it’s just something that you can’t really predict you know to a far enough time scale to see how it ends up like from our perspective.

Artyom Zorin:
[46:57] We think about things a little bit differently. We don’t really try to look at this cool new technology and see how to implement it. We kind of think of it the other way around. What features and what experience do we want to give to our users? And then how do we work our way backwards to the best technology to implement that use case?

Michael:
[47:18] So that’s how you landed on implementing Clippy?

Artyom Zorin:
[47:23] Of course, of course.

Ryan:
[47:24] Of course, yes, Clippy.

Artyom Zorin:
[47:26] Major new feature um but yeah it’s um that’s just one of those sort of mental models you can say, that led us to where we are today led us to the product that we’re able to put out that you know so many people use and and love on their computers um so we don’t see ai as something that we ought to implement for the sake of implementing ai and there might come a time when you know there’s an important feature that we think will benefit users that might make use of AI. But at the same time, we always want to make sure that those new features line up with our values around privacy and security and making sure that the user always has control over what’s happening on their computers. And that ultimately improves their experience. And like, I see a lot of companies sort of implementing ai features because maybe um investors like the sound word exactly yeah it increases the value of their company in our case we’re entirely funded by our community um we don’t have any investors behind us uh which makes it so that you know we’re always focused on the user and um making sure that the product really lines up with their values.

Ryan:
[48:48] I love that. I love that philosophy. It makes a lot of sense. And I love that you guys are sticking to your ultimate values. You see so many companies that start out with values. And then as they grow and get popular, those values go away. And then the company changes and people don’t like what it becomes because they lose that special sauce that made them. And I like the way you guys are looking at AI as, hey, when it’s useful for our users, and it happens to be the technology that allows us to do that the best, then we’ll implement it. Until then, you know, we’re kind of watching. It’s interesting because Linus Torvalds also just this week was quoted as saying AI is 90% marketing and 10% reality. So I think that’s an interesting way of looking.

Michael:
[49:30] I mean, that is definitely the case. I think that it’s, in terms of reality, it’s just like how useful it is. Like the amount of people talking about it that’s probably a good percentage because when uh when you when you now see people talking about like uh ai devices that are so amazing they’re getting millions of dollars in funding and they are coming to come out and they are complete garbage like it’s you know it’s basically hype at this point but they said.

Ryan:
[49:55] Ai so you know you gotta go behind it.

Michael:
[49:57] But i think there is some great.

Ryan:
[49:59] Things with ai there’s there’s you know um lots of great features in there and

Ryan:
[50:03] we featured this really amazing app that lets you use all the open source ai locally on your machine i wish i could remember its name but maybe wendy will pop it up here uh after our editing but.

Michael:
[50:15] I talked about this on uh on a previous thing and then in a live stream and then i couldn’t remember either someone in the chat told me what it was wouldn’t it be great if i remembered what they said in the gpt for all that’s it for.

Jill:
[50:28] All yeah that’s yeah.

Michael:
[50:29] Yep see i was I’m giving Ryan more time to look it up.

Jill:
[50:33] Good.

Michael:
[50:33] And he was able to do it. See, this is a team effort, right?

Jill:
[50:36] Yeah.

Ryan:
[50:37] So there’s some cool things out there that I could see, you know, having that. Because what I find useful in AI is with fixing errors in code. Like when I’m writing code, which, you know, I’m not that great to begin with. I’m not like you already. I’m like, I’m just very… Barely write code in the early.

Michael:
[50:53] Stage when you were like 14.

Ryan:
[50:54] Yeah i probably not even as good so when i write code though it’s very nice to be able to run it through ai and it just is like here here’s your error here’s the fix and you kind of learn through that process and i thought i find it very good at things like that um writing stuff from scratch not so much puts a lot of errors on there answering questions not so much because it it hallucinates a lot um but you know that stuff like you said could change next week we could have this new ai that puts all the other ai out and stuff so in any case i think it’s very very interesting um linus’s take and your take as well on ai so thanks for sharing that appreciate it so.

Michael:
[51:28] Looking forward to zoran ai you know.

Ryan:
[51:30] Next week clippy run by clippy powered by clippy yes.

Michael:
[51:34] Exactly but really um so let’s talk about like the transitioning that people have to go through from windows and mac to zoran there’s obviously people who want to go to or going from windows to zoran it’s like it’s kind of like the main thing because that’s like the first default visuals that they see. Could you give some advice for the users who are considering switching to Zorin and like what benefits they would get from that?

Artyom Zorin:
[51:58] You know, some of the benefits that we explain just even on our website, on our front page, we try to make it as clear and upfront as possible, just about, you know, increasing the speed of your computer so you could be more productive. If you have old computers that might not be compatible with, you know, the current or the upcoming versions of Windows, that, you know, there’s still life left in them, you can still use them just like they were new. And especially over the coming year, I believe Ryan alluded to this, but Windows 10 is losing support, I believe, around this, yeah, this time next year, so October 2025. And Microsoft has been informing quite a lot of users that the only way to continue having a supported computer is to just buy a new one which i think is quite wasteful uh especially if the computer runs just fine so we’re seeing a.

Michael:
[52:55] Lot of also ignoring of what people actually like whether they can afford to buy a new one and all that sort of stuff and some of the stuff that they’re deprecating with the new versions and stuff are computers that are perfectly fine they’re only like seven years old or something like that.

Artyom Zorin:
[53:10] Yeah even newer ones than that um like personally i’ve been using a computer that’s nine years old for you know quite a long time and it’s been running just fine in fact like every time there’s a new version of xor no s it tends to run faster rather than slower and nice just because of the efficiency of it and you know now that i believe maybe tens if not hundreds of millions of computers are going to be obsolete this time next year, I think is incredibly wasteful. But at the same time, it’s something that, you know, Linux and Zorin OS can help bridge that gap and keep, you know, people using the computers for longer.

Artyom Zorin:
[53:52] Not only just as they were using it before, but in a manner that’s, you know, more secure and faster in many ways, more flexible and, of course, privacy respecting. So from a new user’s perspective, I think now is a really great time to consider Linux, even more so than even just a couple of years ago. We’re starting to see that, you know, a lot of the apps and games that people use are now natively available for Linux. And in some cases, the apps that they use might be web based, which means they can run on any platform. So that app gap that was there back in the early days of Zorin OS that kind of stopped people from switching over from Windows to Linux is no longer as big of a problem as it was before. Same thing goes with hardware support drivers. They’ve gotten quite a lot better than back in the early days. So a lot of those roadblocks that were there stopping people from using Linux are no longer as big of an issue. So, yeah, I’d say it’s a really great time to start using Linux.

Ryan:
[55:01] Never a better time, really.

Michael:
[55:04] Yeah, especially with a recall coming.

Jill:
[55:08] So, Artyom, if you could describe the future of Linux in one word, I know this might be a little tricky, one word, what would it be? And how is Zorin OS part of that future?

Michael:
[55:20] And why is that one word TuxDigital?

Ryan:
[55:23] Yeah what if he comes back with clippy i like that.

Artyom Zorin:
[55:28] So i’m going to i’m going to cheat a little bit i’m gonna use two words uh not not not just like tux digital but um inflection point i think as i was saying earlier right now is a really interesting time for linux where you know it’s becoming way more viable of a general purpose operating system than it’s ever been before on the desktop. Um… You know, the changes that are happening to Windows and the end of life of Windows 10 is, we think, going to be quite a big factor in getting a lot of new users over to Linux.

Artyom Zorin:
[56:07] And I think it’s a huge opportunity. As well as that, the fact that, you know, the quality of the Linux desktop and the experience that new users would be going through is just so much better than it was before. I genuinely think that on the technology side, I think generally Linux would be ready for the general public as it is today, at least the vast majority of users. I think the interesting opportunity to help make that happen, make that big migration happen, is to start focusing on distribution. So I know for quite a long time the general consensus is we could get more people using Linux if you know the manufacturers of laptops and desktops started pre-loading it and you know there have been some interesting examples over the past few years where say for example.

Artyom Zorin:
[57:04] Some of your viewers might be familiar with another distro called Endless OS, They’ve generally been focused on emerging markets, third world countries. And I believe a few years ago, they actually reached number one market share for the operating system on new computers being sold in Indonesia, which was kind of mind blowing to me. But unfortunately, that didn’t really last very long because, you know, some of the major manufacturers that they were partnered with, from what I heard, they essentially received I received a call from Microsoft saying.

Artyom Zorin:
[57:40] If you want to continue working with them, we might have to alter our deals when it comes to Windows licenses in other markets. And that was kind of a risk to their business. And it ended up not really allowing endless OS and Linux to really thrive where it should have been. So we’re kind of thinking of different ways on how would we bridge that gap? How would we get more people um able to use linux on a day-to-day basis and we kind of thought that actually focusing on businesses enterprises organizations would be an interesting interesting way to go um say that example of vicenza the city in italy that switched over to to Zorin was a success story in its own right and we thought that why aren’t more businesses and organizations using you know linux on their computers and well one of the bits of feedback that we did hear from.

Artyom Zorin:
[58:45] Vicenza was that they were generally happy with Soren OS the main downside was managing all of the computers was a bit of a pain so once they installed Soren OS on their computers if they wanted to make some sort of a change like changing a setting or installing an app or updating software they would have to send someone around to each computer individually so that was clearly a big downside that sort of, stopped organizations from being able to make that change just because it was too difficult to manage. So one of the projects that we’re working on is called Zoran Grid, and that essentially bridges that gap where IT administrators would be able to, you know, manage their entire fleet of computers just from a centralized console. So if they want to, you know, deploy a new app or change a setting on all the computers, they would be able to do that just from a single console. And we think that will be quite a big game changer when it comes to allowing businesses and organizations to actually use Linux on a day-to-day basis. The IT managers in those organizations are able to choose what software that they use rather than, say, the hardware vendors.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:00:05] So they can pick whatever tool is best for them. And hopefully Zorin OS and Linux would be the best tool for a lot of them, especially now that they have to deal with the Windows 10 end-of-life debacle.

Michael:
[1:00:17] Nice.

Ryan:
[1:00:18] Yeah, will Grid be ready before Windows 10 fully ready before Windows 10 officially ends its support?

Artyom Zorin:
[1:00:24] Yeah, so we’re working really hard to make sure that it will be ready by then.

Ryan:
[1:00:28] We think it’s going to be a huge opportunity. Yeah. I love it.

Michael:
[1:00:33] That’d be a perfect timing to be able to switch over and everybody and stuff.

Ryan:
[1:00:35] Yeah.

Michael:
[1:00:35] That’s awesome. I just had a couple more questions that I thought of on the fly.

Michael:
[1:00:40] And currently Zorin OS 17.2 is based on 2204 of Ubuntu. When do you think the next base rebase for 24.04 will happen?

Artyom Zorin:
[1:00:51] Yeah, so we develop new versions of Zorin OS and also just our software in general on a release when ready basis. Um so we don’t have a set release date in mind but uh we’re expecting it to be ready in you know either the second or third quarter of next year so again uh just to be ready for that windows 10 end of life period we think it’s it’s an interesting time and we want to make sure you know zorin os is on its best foot to take on those new uses and we think zorin os 18 will be quite exciting for that that’s.

Jill:
[1:01:28] Awesome especially since linux kernel 6.11 will be available for ubuntu with the hardware enablement then and that’s that’s gonna be really wonderful.

Michael:
[1:01:41] Absolutely and uh also i saw um i mean maybe it’s a rumor i don’t know but i saw something people talking about how zoran light might be going away is that a thing yeah.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:01:53] Yeah so like um that was a decision that we came to um that did take quite a lot of deliberation we wanted to make sure that like the roadmap for new features and new products around zorin os we’d be able to execute upon that um and provide the best user experience we possibly can, um at the same time on the desktop side um you know we were seeing a bigger and bigger mismatch between um the features that would we would be able to ship in you know the non-light editions versus the light editions going forward um and as well as that from a performance aspect we’ve been seeing that like with every new release of um Zorin OS over the past few years the non-light editions have been getting faster and faster to the point where on quite a lot of hardware combinations, the performance of those non-light editions are actually exceeding the light editions. And so if we were to think to ourselves, like we’re a small team with limited resources, how do we provide the best possible user experience and as many new features as possible on a timely basis? What’s the best way of going around it?

Artyom Zorin:
[1:03:15] Going forward. So we did end up coming to the decision to eventually sunset Zorin OS Lite in 2029. We wanted to make sure that the existing users would have a lot of time and, we didn’t want to rush any decisions out of respect for them. So from Zorin OS 19 onwards, So that’s a couple of releases from now we’ll be focusing on just the non-light editions of Zoron OS.

Michael:
[1:03:51] That’s interesting. And also, when I first heard about it, I thought maybe this might be an issue. But it sounds like if the non-light version, if it’s the same speed, the same efficiency, and same resource usage are close to that, then it kind of makes the point where the light doesn’t need to exist rather than just being going away. So I think that if that’s the case, and also there’s five years from now, that makes a lot of sense.

Ryan:
[1:04:18] I was going to say, that’s uniquely open source right there. What project’s like, hey, we’re going to get rid of this thing in five years. So that’s really nice that you guys continue to support it for that long for respect of the users.

Michael:
[1:04:30] And also just telling people that it’s happening.

Ryan:
[1:04:32] Yeah, that’s nice too.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:04:34] Zorin OS Lite won’t be sort of like a curated version of Zorin OS from 2029 onwards, but you’ll still be able to install the XFC desktop environment. You’ll still be able to, you know, have all of the features of that desktop environment on a Zorin OS-based system. So it would be still possible to have a similar experience going forward indefinitely. We just wanted to give the heads up like very early on that it’s a project.

Michael:
[1:05:07] If they still wanted it, they could do it. It just wouldn’t be like an ISO that was prepackaged for them.

Jill:
[1:05:12] Yeah.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:05:13] Yeah.

Michael:
[1:05:15] That’s that, that makes a lot of sense. That doesn’t, that doesn’t sound like a doom and gloom removal thing. It just sounds like a transition, you know?

Jill:
[1:05:22] And that was particularly near and dear to my heart because I run Zorin Lite on lots of old computers. But I also know that GNOME, the performance of GNOME has gotten so much better. And, you know, you’ll be able to install the other desktop manager. So, in fact, with Zorin, I often install WindowMaker along with it as well.

Michael:
[1:05:49] WindowMaker just fits in right in there. Yes.

Jill:
[1:05:53] Yeah. It’s my go-to.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:05:56] It’s really cool to see how, you know, different users might use Zorin OS in different ways that we wouldn’t have been able to anticipate it. They might, you know, install different window managers and desktop environments. And we think it’s really cool that, you know, you are able to do that. You’re able to tailor your system to your own needs and desires. That’s something that’s, again, uniquely open source, uniquely Linux. And it’s just really cool to see.

Michael:
[1:06:22] So at some point, we’re going to expect to see the Zorin OS Rat Poison Edition.

Jill:
[1:06:26] Yes, that’s another one.

Ryan:
[1:06:29] You know, Jill’s use case is really unique though with all of her hardware museum. We call it the hardware museum, but she has thousands of computers and a lot of them very, very old that she features on a special segment that we have for Jill’s museum. And, you know, hardware museum And the fact that, Jill, you rely a lot on Zorin is really, I think, a testament, right, for getting it running on those older machines that you have. I mean, we’re talking really old machines and newer ones, too. But you have some really old machines that you use this on, which is awesome, you know.

Jill:
[1:07:08] Yeah. And in fact, I wanted to tell you, Artyom, I’m part of a local organization called the Linux Chicks of Los Angeles. And for one of our Linux install fests, about a year ago, we featured Zorin OS and showing people how to install Linux using Zorin. So that was really awesome. That’s really cool because one of the reasons we chose it is because you also had the educational version, which is really good for the kids. And we have kids that come to our install fests. Yeah.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:07:45] That’s really, really cool to hear. Really glad to hear that.

Jill:
[1:07:49] Yay.

Ryan:
[1:07:50] So, Artyom, you have made it through this gauntlet of questions unscathed. But the real hard part happens now. This is the lightning round where we asked lots of arithmetic questions.

Michael:
[1:08:03] We’re going to be talking about calculus trig.

Ryan:
[1:08:06] Yeah. So get your no paper, no notes, no AI.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:08:10] I’ll get my chat GPT ready right now.

Ryan:
[1:08:14] Get clippy open real quick and see how that helps um we’re gonna have a lightning round it’s just a couple of questions we’re gonna ask uh just first thing that comes to mind uh there’s uh really uh nothing serious here in these questions so we just want to have some fun let people get to know you a little bit as well you mentioned being a programmer so i’m gonna start with the first question which is if you could use only one text editor for the rest of your life which would it be nano vim or something else i.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:08:42] Mean i’m a bit weird in that i just use gedit.

Ryan:
[1:08:46] Yeah it’s.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:08:51] Just simple gets out of your way.

Ryan:
[1:08:53] So do.

Michael:
[1:08:55] You use like the default vanilla or you have like add plugins for id just the vanilla one vanilla i just like.

Ryan:
[1:09:02] Simple that’s.

Jill:
[1:09:04] Awesome wow I know it’s very strange.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:09:06] But I like the simplicity.

Michael:
[1:09:07] I now want you to do like a live stream coding session so we can see how this all works.

Jill:
[1:09:12] Yeah. Artyom, what’s your go-to snack that you can’t live without, especially when you’re coding and you’re building Zorin OS?

Artyom Zorin:
[1:09:23] I mean, I’ve tried to be a bit healthier over the past few years, so I generally reach for like an apple or a banana. I know it’s a boring answer, but I know. No, it’s great. I like it.

Ryan:
[1:09:35] He didn’t tell us that it’s dipped in caramel with nuts on it.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:09:39] That’s my secret right there. I spilled the beans.

Michael:
[1:09:43] So we have a very deep one now. It’s like imagining you’re on a deserted island and you can only take one piece of tech, which also comes with a battery that you can charge. Or somehow there’s it’s a deserted island also has power utility so you can charge it. What is that going to be?

Artyom Zorin:
[1:09:58] An SOS locator beacon so I could get the heck out of there.

Michael:
[1:10:03] That’s the most practical answer.

Ryan:
[1:10:06] That’s a good one. I like that. All right. What’s the last open source project that really impressed you? Be software, distro, anything.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:10:14] I’ve come across a lot of them, just even just on FlatHub, just some of the apps that show up there. I think there was like one where it was just, you know, an AI generated sort of photo generator kind of thing. And just playing around with it, the fact that it was like really simple and user friendly um you know it really spoke to me that i could just open it type it in i don’t have to log into any service uh i thought that was pretty cool.

Michael:
[1:10:41] Nice if you remember what it’s called let ryan know so that he can use it because he definitely needs that for thumbnails on youtube hey.

Ryan:
[1:10:48] How dare you.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:10:48] I’ll look it up and let you know.

Jill:
[1:10:54] So coffee or tea while coding what’s your preference which one do you like the best.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:10:59] Uh i generally go for tea coffee unfortunately is my kryptonite i won’t be able to sleep at night so even though i do like the taste of it uh i i go for the tea what about decaf, even decaf is too much for me i’m just weird sugar.

Ryan:
[1:11:16] So for the tea is it earl gray hot, just like picard from star trek yeah sorry.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:11:24] I generally go for like a berry tea or chamomile again yeah yeah.

Michael:
[1:11:29] Absolutely so if you could talk with any person in the history of tech who would it be.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:11:39] You know, I think Nikola Tesla would be an interesting person to talk to.

Ryan:
[1:11:43] Oh, what a good choice.

Jill:
[1:11:44] Oh, beautiful choice.

Michael:
[1:11:45] That is a good one.

Ryan:
[1:11:47] I feel like there’s so much to his story about how, you know, he was kind of ostracized. He was a genius, just creating so many amazing things. That’s a good one. I’d love to talk to him. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s awesome. You made it through the lightning round. We got nothing else left for you. We got nothing else left for you.

Michael:
[1:12:05] We do have one special one that Ryan forgot. But which do you choose, cupcakes or muffins?

Ryan:
[1:12:12] Oh, yes.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:12:16] Probably muffins. Keep it simple. Again.

Jill:
[1:12:19] Keep it simple.

Michael:
[1:12:21] That’s right.

Ryan:
[1:12:21] I guess I’m uninstalling Zorin after this.

Jill:
[1:12:28] So, Artyom, thank you so much for coming back to Destination Linux. You know, we appreciate all the hard work you and your team does bringing Linux to more people around the world. We would love to have you back on again at the next major Zoran release.

Ryan:
[1:12:44] Yeah, let’s talk about the next Zoran release. We have you back. We’re going to talk about it, talk about all the great features and stuff. We got to have you back on for that. And it won’t be this long. We just, we had, it’s been so long since you’ve been on the show. We had so much to ask you. But, you know, we’ll do it in shorter increments so we don’t have two-hour interviews next time. Thank you, Artyom. We appreciate it.

Artyom Zorin:
[1:13:06] Yeah, no, thanks so much for having me on. It’s a blast as always, and I’m always happy to come back. Thanks so much.

Michael:
[1:13:13] Nice.

Ryan:
[1:13:13] So we really hope you enjoyed that interview. I know we did. A big thank you to each and every one of you for supporting us by watching or listening to Destination Linux. However you do it, we love your faces. Want to come join our community on Discord and talk about the show and everything that went on, all the interview, all the questions that got answered, then head to tuxdigital.com/Discord. Add your opinions, thoughts there. And you can also send your comments in. You never know, could be used in the show.

Michael:
[1:13:42] Also, if you want to support the show, you can do that by going to tuxdigital.com/membership, where you can get a bunch of cool perks by becoming a member. You can watch the show live with us. You can also join us in the a patron post show that happens every week after the show. And also you can get access to the unedited episodes and so much more. TuxDigital.com/membership. And then there’s so much more you can get. You can actually get some cool merch by going to TuxDigital.com/store.

Michael:
[1:14:09] We have hats, mugs, hoodies, and so much more. TuxDigital.com/store.

Jill:
[1:14:15] And make sure to check out all the amazing shows here on TuxDigital. That’s right. We have an entire network of shows to fill your whole week with geeky goodness. Head to tuxdigital.com to keep those Linux penguins marching. And everybody, have a wonderful week. And remember that the journey itself is just as important as the destination.

Ryan:
[1:14:37] And head to Zorin.com

Jill:
[1:14:39] Yes.

Ryan:
[1:14:41] Thanks, everyone.