Czajkowski

Recently I popped down to the BT Young Scientist Exhibition here in Dublin.  This is for secondary school students/ High school junior students in Ireland.  It’s pretty amazing to see the enthusiasm they show for science and technology at an early age.

The process starts months ago, students submit a one page proposal on a topic, if it’s accepted they research and come up with the results, prototype or something to show from it all. It also gives Industries who are based over here to come and show case their projects and encourage students into those areas. IBM, Google, Analog Devices to name a few all took part and all have offices here in Ireland.

Walking through the exhibition, I stumbled upon Zorin OS, which caught my eye.  So I stopped and asked Kyrill and Artyom Zorin  the developers behind it all a few questions and I thought I’d share them here. Firstly, Zorin OS is an OS they have developed based on Ubuntu, which is why it caught my eye.

Q: So where did you hear about Ubuntu ?

We first came across Ubuntu while watching videos on YouTube of Compiz and Kiba dock.
We were very impressed by Ubuntu and started using it since June 2008.  However, we learnt that many Windows users found the Ubuntu interface unfamiliar and difficult to operate.

We decided to develop Zorin OS to make Ubuntu more friendly for Windows users. We started our project in September 2008. We added a Windows like start menu and theme, many applications to improve user experience and usability including WINE, which lets users run Windows programs on Zorin OS, and Ubuntu Tweak.

A preview of Zorin OS 1.0 was displayed at the BT Young Scientist And Technology Exhibition 2009 and was highly commended. The public beta was released on 5 May 2009. Zorin OS Lite beta, which was a stripped down version of the original beta, was released on 30 May 2009. We had a few bugs including a start menu bug and a bug with 64bit but we fixed these bugs.

The first stable version of Zorin OS was released on 1 July 2009. In summer 2009 Zorin OS was tested in Kenya by Camara, an Irish charity that ships used computers to Africa to educate the community there. We received very positive feedback. Zorin OS 1.0 was downloaded by estimated 3,000 users.

Based on the comments and feedback from the community we decided to improve Zorin OS even more. We decided to make Zorin OS as friendly for Windows users as possible. We made a new Windows 7 style look including a new theme and Windows 7 like task bar.

We improved stability, fixed bugs, included many updates, added many new wallpapers created by ourselves. We also added many new applications including PlayOnLinux to make it easier for Windows users to install Windows programs on Zorin OS.

We created five different Zorin OS flavours:

1. Zorin OS Core which is a free down loadable release
2. Zorin OS Educational which is also available to download for free
3. Zorin OS Gaming which includes over 40 games
4. Zorin OS Multimedia which has a host of multimedia processing programs
5. Zorin OS Ultimate which includes the best programs from the Gaming and Multimedia editions

Zorin OS Gaming, Multimedia and Ultimate can be purchased on a DVD from our website to support our project. Currently we have to sell our products in order to support our project due to a very small level of donations.

Zorin OS 2.0 was released on 1 January 2010 and currently has over 8000 downloads. Zorin OS 2.0 was displayed at the BT Young Scientist 2010. We got 3rd Intermediate group in the Technology section and also got into the BT Business of Science program.

Zorin OS is growing at a fast pace and we are constantly improving it. Currently Zorin OS has about 75,000 relevant web pages on Google. There are also several very positive reviews on the internet.

Zorin OS 3.0 will be released this summer and will have many new features. It will also be tested in Africa again. We also plan to develop Zorin OS Educational Lite for law spec computers which are widely used in third world countries and Zorin OS Educational for high spec computers. We hope that these products would be used by individuals and schools.

We were very impressed by all of the features of Ubuntu. We really enjoyed its openness and functionality, and were amazed by the stability and the incredible desktop effects. We found Ubuntu to be very robust and extremely fast. We’re looking forward to the new 10.04 release.

Kyrill and Artyom Zorin

I think it’s pretty amazing that a 4th year and a 2 year student came up with this idea, and implemented it. I’d still prefer to work on the idea of getting more people using Ubuntu, then having it themed to look more windows like, but I can see the reasoning behind it.

I also think it’s pretty amazing these developments are happening in my back yard, here in Ireland, and makes me rather proud, that if students can do this, what else we can do.