Zorin OS 12 Lite Beta

We’re excited to announce the release of the Zorin OS 12 Lite Beta. This is a pre-release version which we have created to get your feedback & bug reports on what we’ve built so far.

With Zorin OS 12 Lite, we have re-thought what the Zorin OS experience can be for low spec machines and computers as old as 14 years. We have built Zorin OS 12 Lite to be a more streamlined concentration of, not a reduction of, the original version, with the same simple user experience, running the same extraordinary apps. We believe Zorin OS 12 Lite represents the perfect blend of power and performance for old PCs, and enables a new breed of ultra-affordable machines for the next billion computer users.

---

New Desktop Environment

To achieve our new goals for Zorin OS 12 Lite, we chose to move away from LXDE and adopt XFCE as the base desktop environment. This allows us to create an experience that is not only more familiar and consistent with Zorin OS 12, but is also more customizable and extensible than ever before. The result is a Zorin OS Lite that’s more intuitive, beautiful and versatile, while keeping resource usage light.

Zorin Appearance

Zorin OS 12 Lite is the first version of Zorin OS Lite with Zorin Appearance pre-installed. Zorin Appearance brings together the functionality of Zorin Look Changer and Zorin Theme Changer into one app. With a click of a button, you can change the desktop layout to match that of Windows versions. Premium editions of Zorin OS 12 Lite will also feature Gnome 2 and macOS-like layouts (coming soon). Zorin Appearance is the go-to app for customizing your desktop, quickly and simply.

Updated System Apps and Technologies

Many of the built-in system apps have seen extensive improvements both visually and under the hood.

Zorin OS 12 Lite is powered by Linux Kernel version 4.8, which now works with even more hardware and introduces performance enhancements and security improvements.

As Zorin OS 12 Lite is based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, it will be supported with security updates until April 2021.

More editions

In addition to the Lite and Lite Education editions before, we will be releasing Ultimate and Business editions of Zorin OS 12 Lite with the full release. This will allow users with old and low-spec machines to have access to all the best Zorin OS apps and features out-of-the-box.

---

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that this pre-release is not recommended for installation on production machines due to potentially unstable software included.

Please leave us some feedback and report bugs along the way when testing this Beta. This will allow us to improve Zorin OS 12 Lite even further for the full stable release in the coming weeks.

We hope that you’ll enjoy using the Zorin OS 12 Lite Beta!

Download Feedback