14 DAY TRIAL // The Zorin OS developers are pleased to announce today the release and immediate availability of the Zorin OS 12 Lite operating system, the biggest leap forward for the lightweight distro designed for old and low-spec computers.
Based on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system and powered by the Linux 4.8 HWE kernel from Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak), Zorin OS 12 Lite introduces support for more hardware components, an extra layer of performance improvements, the latest security enhancements, and an updated user experience with up-to-date applications and a refreshed design.
"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," reads today's announcement. "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."
What's new in Zorin OS 12 Lite
The biggest visual change of the Zorin OS 12 Lite edition is the new desktop environment, which is a highly customized variant of the popular and lightweight Xfce desktop. For Zorin OS 12 Lite, the development team decided to replace LXDE with Xfce to offer users a more customizable, intuitive, versatile, beautiful, and extensible interface than ever before.
Zorin OS 12 Lite is also the first to ship pre-installed with the in-house built Zorin Appearance utility that lets users change the desktop layout to match that of Windows operating system with a single mouse click. GNOME 2 and macOS-like layouts are also available in the commercial Ultimate and Business editions of Zorin OS 12 Lite, which include various other features out-of-the-box.
Zorin OS 12 Lite and Zorin OS 12 Lite Education editions are available for free, however, and all four of them will be supported with security updates until April 2021, just like Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. You can download the Zorin OS 12 Lite and Lite Education Live ISO images right now from our website for either 32-bit or 64-bit computers if you want to give new life to your old PC.
