Zorin OS 8 Core Release Candidate was made available for download and testing about a week ago. This of course is a pre-release version of what will become Zorin OS 8.

This is also the second Zorin OS-related article appearing on this website. The first was about Zorin OS 6 (see Zorin OS 6 Core preview).

Zorin OS 8 Core Release Candidate is based on Ubuntu 13.10 and so the stable edition is also expected to be based on that edition of Ubuntu. This article presents a few screen shots from a test installation in a virtual environment.

This screen shot shows the default desktop.
Zorin OS 8 Desktop

One of the installed graphical package managers on Zorin 8 Core Release Candidate is Ubuntu’s Software Center. On my test system, attempts to use it to install applications always generated an authentication error.
Zorin OS 8 Software bug

Even from the command line, I couldn’t get through.
Zorin OS 8 sudo error

I later determined that I was being logged in as the guest user. I thought it was my mistake, but the system was automatically switching to the guest account after I typed in my password at the login screen. In my book, that’s a nasty bug and one that I’m sure will be fixed before the stable edition is released.
Zorin OS 8 guest user account

Click on any image in this gallery to view aspects of the default desktop on Zorin OS 8 Core Release Candidate. And if you wish to take this pre-stable release for a test spin, you may download an installation image from here.