Peppermint

Peppermint is an open source distribution of Linux based on the Lubuntu operating system, which is an official flavor of the widely used Ubuntu OS built around the lightweight LXDE desktop environment, which is also the default graphical interface for this distro.

Available for download as 32-bit/64-bit Live CDs

This special Lubuntu remix can be downloaded via Softoware or from its official website (see link above) as 32-bit (i386) and 64-bit (amd64) Live CD ISO images of approximately 700MB in size each. The user must write these ISO images to DVD discs or USB flash drives in order to boot them from the BIOS of a PC.

Boot options à la Lubuntu/Ubuntu

Being based on an Ubuntu-based operating system, the distribution features a boot menu on the Live CDs that resembles the look of the one from the aforementioned OSes. It allows the user to try the system without installing it, perform a fresh installation, test the memory, boot from the local drive or check the disc for defects (only if using a CD media).

Beautified LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment)

The main attraction of this operating system the highly customized LXDE desktop environment, which uses a single-panel layout (the panel is located on the bottom edge of the screen) and a custom white theme based on the project’s artwork.

Default applications

Default applications include the PCManFM file manager, Mirage image viewer, GNOME MPlayer media player, Transmission torrent downloader, Chromium web browser, Guayadeque music player, Gedit text editor, Evince document viewer, XChat IRC client, Dropbox client, as well as a bunch of web apps for some Google services.

Bottom line

Summing up, Peppermint has nothing that impresses us. It is a normal distribution of Linux that uses a customized LXDE desktop environment on top of a stable Lubuntu base.

What is new in this release:

• Peppermint Five is built on a Long Term Support (LTS) code base, Ubuntu 14.04. The upstream code base will receive updates for five years.
• Peppermint Ice is our in house built SSB manager, it has been rewritten from scratch and is now significantly more stable and is more feature rich than past versions. The key new feature is that it now supports both Chrome and Chromium as a backend.
• Peppermint Control Center is our new settings app which provides an intuitive interface to customize and manage your workspaces, window behavior, keyboard and pointer settings, keyboard shortcuts and more.
• We've fixed a number of upstream bugs present in Lubuntu, the specific project we fork from. Most notable among these are that the network manager applet starts properly.
• Peppermint-Light is our new window manager and widget theme designed to offer a clean and relatively flat look and feel.
• In previous iterations of Peppermint OS we used Alsa for sound. Our users asked for a more robust audio backend with more options and more user-friendly, Peppermint Five delivers with PulseAudio.

What is new in version Four 20131113:

• Better file system support. It came to our attention that Peppermint Four really didn't like certain file systems that were included in the installer. As a result of this, we've made sure that proper support is now there.
• mtpfs is now supported. Our fearless support leader and developer, Mark, suggested adding this to improve compatibility with certain Android handsets. Since we try to take Mark seriously most of the time, we went ahead and put this in.
• The typographical error on the shutting down screen is no longer present. We realize that the presence of this bug in the first place probably made us look bad, but hey, everyone has a bad spelling day from time to time.
• The file manager is notably less buggy. There's really too much to talk about here to stuff it all into a bullet point in a release announcement, but know that it's much less buggy than it originally was.
• Most system updates available from the upstream Ubuntu 13.04 code base have been installed. I only say "most" because there are probably a few that have come down the pipe in between the time we finished the new ISO files and the time we're releasing them to the public. As of the time we finished the files, "all" system updates had been installed.

What is new in version Three 20121105:

• We're both proud and happy to announce the first respin of Peppermint Three in both 32 and 64 bit editions. The downloads are live now via our standard download links and are also available for purchase in both CD and USB format. The respins offer a fully updated install as of November 5th, 2012, so you aren't left needing to download hundreds of MB of updates immediately after the install. In addition, we changed the desktop notifications back to the way they were in Peppermint Two after several users noted that the way they were implemented in Three seemed to be a bit of a step backward compared to the previous iterations.
• For users already running Three that also want this, it's actually quite simple: simply install the packages "notify-osd" and "notify-osd-icons" via the Software Manager, Synaptic Package Manager, or a terminal, then remove "notification-daemon". From there, just logout and log back in and the notifications will be fixed.
• There are some other minor bug fixes and miscellaneous details that have gone into it, but nothing of notable concern. As always, Peppermint is free to download, use, and modify to whatever extent your heart desires, excepting some media codecs and Flash, but we do greatly appreciate any purchases you make from us and any donations. Thank you for downloading and using Peppermint, and please give us feedback.

What is new in version Three:

• The Chromium Stable repository is now enabled by default. This means no waiting on new versions as any updates will be immediately available as opposed to waiting on upstream maintainers to merge updates into the main repository.
• We've taken a different direction with the look and feel and have decided to go with a very light theme and default artwork. The new look was designed around the new default desktop background created by a very talented art student named Ilina from Bulgaria as well as Daniel Burke who contributed to the menu theme
• We'll be shipping with fewer default web applications in the menu as we feel that we'd rather not clog everything up by default. Instead we'd rather the users select what they'd like. We're still including some Google and Pixlr apps as well as some Peppermint related links.
• Peppermint Three is the first distribution to ship with GWoffice by default. This is a desktop Google Docs client that is lightweight and runs completely independent of Chromium. It's still beta software, but we feel it offers a great improvement over using Docs from a browser or SSB.
• The GIMP 2.8 is in the Peppermint repository as opposed to version 2.6 that is available in the upstream releases. This version has been a long time coming and offers some improvements over the older iteration, notably a single window view.
• We've moved back to Linux Mint's update manager over Ubuntu's due to a handful of issues we had with it in Peppermint Two. We feel that Mint's software is time tested to be stable and reliable and we'd like to pass as much of that on as possible with Peppermint.

What is new in version One 01042011:

• The default kernel has been updated to 2.6.35 in order to stay more current regarding hardware support and to match the kernel in Peppermint Ice.
• The Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) has been completely removed from this edition in order to help with performance and to increase application modularity.
• The default screenshot application has been replaced with PyShot, a simple Python/GTK application contributed by our longtime friend and supporter, Ikey Doherty.
• Some low level utilities have been updated such as the GNU Coreutils to version 8.8, the Samba file sharing framework to 3.5.6, and others.
• Some user level applications have also received updates such as the PCManFM file manager to 0.9.8, LXTerminal to 0.1.9, and Firefox to 4.0b8