With 2 million downloads in 3 months and 1.5 million Windows users "defecting", a niche Linux system has been forced by Microsoft to become a "phenomenal hit".

"My computer still works fine. Why do I have to replace it?"

Over the past year, this sentence has been repeatedly posted on numerous technology forums, communities, and comment sections. As Windows 10 officially reaches the end of its lifecycle, Microsoft has only one solution: upgrade to Windows 11 or buy a new computer.

However, during this period, a Linux distribution that was not originally mainstream - Zorin OS 18 - quietly achieved an eye - catching result: within less than three months of its launch, the number of downloads exceeded 2 million, and more than 75% of them were from Windows users.

This is not an accidental popularity of a niche system, but a typical "forced migration".

Zorin OS 18 was released on the same day as Windows 10's retirement

The Zorin OS team scheduled the release of Zorin OS 18 at a highly symbolic time: the day when Microsoft officially stopped providing support for Windows 10.

Almost seamlessly, a large number of users who originally planned to "delay it a bit longer" suddenly found themselves on the edge of a cliff: not upgrading to Windows 11 means losing system security patches.

The upgrade requirements for Windows 11 have already discouraged many people: it must support TPM 2.0, have a relatively new CPU architecture, and the official tool directly prompts "This device is not supported". As a result, a large number of old devices with still decent performance have been "declared obsolete" by Microsoft.

While users were struggling with TPM 2.0 and the processor whitelist, the value of Linux was rediscovered. Different from the "artificial barriers" of Windows 11, the Linux ecosystem has long followed another set of logics:

● Be compatible with as much hardware as possible

● As long as the drivers still work, don't prevent you from continuing to use it

● Don't bundle "security updates" with "forced hardware replacement"

For ordinary users, this means that they don't need to spend thousands of yuan to upgrade the whole computer for an operating system. And Zorin OS is the best example of implementing this logic.

Why Zorin OS? Designed specifically for those "escaping from Windows"

In the past, when talking about Linux desktops, people thought of Ubuntu and Linux Mint. But this time, it's Zorin OS that has come to the forefront. There is only one reason: it is almost a Linux system tailored for Windows users.

● The default desktop layout is highly similar to Windows

● Commonly used software is pre - installed and ready to use out of the box

● It has comprehensive graphical settings and rarely requires the use of the command line

● It has a built - in Windows application compatibility layer, resulting in extremely low migration costs

So, when a large number of users seriously considered "whether to try Linux" for the first time, Zorin OS became the easiest option to start with.

Just this week, the Zorin OS team announced the latest data on social platforms:

"The number of downloads exceeded 2 million within 3 months, and more than 75% were from Windows 10/11 users. This is the largest - scale release in the history of the project."

What does this official data mean? Even with the most conservative estimate, more than 1.5 million Windows users have tried Linux at least in these three months. Even if they may not migrate permanently, this is the most real "breaking out of the circle" of the Linux desktop in the past decade.

Not only Zorin OS, the entire Linux desktop is quietly recovering

Of course, the problems with Windows are not just about hardware barriers. To a large extent, users' resistance also comes from the software level.

In the past two years, Windows has become more and more like a mobile platform. For example, AI features such as Copilot are deeply embedded and difficult to turn off; there are more and more pre - installed system applications, but less and less permission to uninstall them; cloud binding, forced account login, and continuous advertising push are increasing... In the eyes of many users, Windows is shifting from a "tool - type system" to an "ecosystem control platform".

Against this background, not only Zorin OS, but the entire Linux desktop is recovering. The latest hardware survey data from Steam shows that the proportion of Linux users increased by 0.38% in a single month, and the current proportion of Linux has reached 3.58%. Windows still dominates with 94.23%. Although the gap is still huge, it is a clearly upward curve.

Therefore, the popularity of Zorin OS 18 is not essentially because Linux has suddenly become perfect, but because the retirement of Windows 10, the raised barriers of Windows 11, and the out - of - control AI promotion strategy of Microsoft - the combination of these three things has finally pushed a group of ordinary users towards Linux.

Maybe they will eventually return to Windows, but at least from this moment on, a crack has quietly appeared in the world of desktop operating systems.

Reference link: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows/zorin-os-18-has-reached-2-million-downloads-with-1m-windows-defections-fueling-one-of-linuxs-biggest-growth-stories-in-2026

This article is from the WeChat public account "CSDN". It was compiled by Zheng Liyuan and published by 36Kr with authorization.