{"id":235405,"date":"2026-04-25T04:12:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T08:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/25\/zorin-os-vs-solus-i-tested-two-great-linux-distros-for-beginners-to-find-out-which-is-best\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T04:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T08:25:08","slug":"zorin-os-vs-solus-i-tested-two-great-linux-distros-for-beginners-to-find-out-which-is-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/25\/zorin-os-vs-solus-i-tested-two-great-linux-distros-for-beginners-to-find-out-which-is-best\/","title":{"rendered":"Zorin OS vs. Solus: I tested two great Linux distros for beginners to find out which is best"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/solus-vs-zorin-best-distro-depends-on-your-linux-priorities\/\">Zorin OS vs. Solus: I tested two great Linux distros for beginners to find out which is best<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/solus-vs-zorin-best-distro-depends-on-your-linux-priorities\/\">https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/solus-vs-zorin-best-distro-depends-on-your-linux-priorities\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-04-25 04:12:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.zdnet.com\">www.zdnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>    <span class=\"c-shortcodeImage_credit g-outer-spacing-top-xsmall u-block\">Jack Wallen\/ZDNET<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Follow ZDNET: <span class=\"c-commerceLink\"><span>Add us as a preferred source<\/span><\/span> on Google.<\/p>\n<h3>ZDNET&#8217;s key takeaways<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Solus has come a long way since its humble beginnings.<\/li>\n<li>You get just the right amount of preinstalled software and your choice of desktop.<\/li>\n<li>Solus is close to Zorin OS, but two factors give Zorin OS the edge.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I recently tested Zorin OS 18.1 and dubbed it the best Linux distro &#8211; for anyone. I would go so far as to say that it&#8217;s the best OS I&#8217;ve ever used. That same day, I learned that Solus had a new release as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Version 4.9 of Solus was released on April 18, and I opted to download the Budgie version of the OS. I&#8217;ve used the Budgie desktop many times and thought it would be a good comparison against Zorin OS.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also: Why Zorin OS 18.1 is simply the best Linux distro &#8211; for anyone<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Why make this comparison? That&#8217;s simple: I&#8217;m often asked which distribution is best suited for new users, and I always want to make sure I&#8217;m suggesting the right option. Because of that, I like to compare them &#8212; such as when I compared Linux Mint to Zorin OS.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As I was testing Solus, it dawned on me that this Linux distribution could be easily recommended to those who&#8217;ve never used the open-source operating system. The more I dug in, the more I embraced that proposition.<\/p>\n<p>But can it stand up to the mighty Zorin OS 18.1? That&#8217;s a high bar &#8212; let&#8217;s see if Solus 4.9 can reach it.<\/p>\n<h2>Preinstalled software<\/h2>\n<p>Just like Zorin OS, Solus has everything you need to get started without installing a single piece of software. You&#8217;ve got Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Rythmbox, Celluloid, gedit (text editor), and all the usual bits and pieces that make up a desktop operating system.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also: Can this $70 Linux app make up for the lack of Photoshop? I tried it to find out<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And if you don&#8217;t find what you need, there&#8217;s a GUI app store (in the Budgie version, it&#8217;s KDE&#8217;s Discover) that has Flatpak support rolled in, so you can install a host of other apps (even proprietary ones like Slack and Spotify).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\" alt=\"Solus\" width=\"1280\" height=\"1012.2175732217573\" fetchpriority=\"low\"\/>  <\/p>\n<p>KDE Discover is a&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/solus-vs-zorin-best-distro-depends-on-your-linux-priorities\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zorin OS vs. Solus: I tested two great Linux distros for beginners to find out&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235406,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/a\/img\/resize\/462a829c1f6c49e144530ef3a574a131796aa53a\/2026\/04\/22\/889ed53b-b97a-4ccf-ba21-fae17e0daada\/solushero.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[71,110,167],"class_list":["post-235405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-linux","tag-linux-mint","tag-zorin-os"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235405"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235407,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235405\/revisions\/235407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}