Peppermint OS One

Website

Facts:
  • Peppermint OS consists of two versions, One and Ice.  Peppermint is a fork of Lubuntu, which is based on Ubuntu with a LXDE desktop environment. 
  • Peppermint OS Ice is "...by definition, a Site Specific Browser [SSB] that Peppermint creator Kendall Weaver wrote himself as a means to launch Web Applications and/or  Cloud Applications [SaaS - Software As A Service, PaaS - Platform as a Service] from the new Peppermint Ice OS" while One is the 'normal' version you can install to your hard drive.

Things I liked:

  • The appearance. I'm a sucker for a dark theme and Peppermint has a nice red and black theme with some white highlights that looks very nice.  Openbox is the window manager so it's easy to change themes if you don't care for darkness.
  • PCManFM.  This lightweight file manager is very fast and simple.
  • Prism.  Making launchers for web applications is fun and easy with this app.  The Facebook, YouTube, Hulu and other launchers in the menu were created by Prism.
  • Cloud Player.  This cloud based music player will be a big hit with many users.
  • Linux Mint elements, such as the Update Manager and the Software Manager.
  • Pixlr.  This cloud based image editor could eventually give the big dogs a run for the money with proper development.  Works with Flash player.

Things I didn't like:

  • An actual GUI for the 'top' process, unfortunately named Task Manager.  I hate being reminded of Windoze in any way.
  • A trifling point, truly, but refine the look of the Peppermint logo a bit if you would please.  It doesn't quite fit the theme.
  • It's possible (but not definitive) that the Network Manager was not detecting all of my possible wireless connections.  There were two detected but there is usually 4 at least.  Again, not definitive on this issue.
  • The Cloud Music Player was kind of sluggish and didn't generate a lot of results for popular artists.

Summary:

I was not blown away by Peppermint OS in a very obvious way.  However, I was quite impressed in a much more subtle and understated way.  Every time I looked in the menu I found something new and fun to play with and in each case, I was impressed with what I saw.  I, of course, liked the way elements of Linux Mint were incorporated into this Lubuntu based distro.  Openbox is a fine window manager and paired with LXDE desktop made for a very fast computing experience.  I absolutely recommend that anyone try this distro out and have fun with it.  I give it a B+ for appearance and for newbie friendliness I give it an A-   
Well done to the team at Peppermint OS