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Peppermint OS One Review
JimLynch writes "I've covered a lot of remastered versions of Ubuntu since DLR launched. But, every once in a while, I bump into one that is particularly interesting to review. Peppermint OS One is definitely in that category. Peppermint OS One is a web-centric Ubuntu remaster that passes up common desktop applications like OpenOffice.org in favor of web-based alternatives such as Google Docs. And it doesn't stop with office applications either; Peppermint OS One integrates video sites like YouTube and Hulu right into the desktop experience."
Less is, well, less...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I used to use gOS a distro with similar aims, and judging from those screenshots, better aesthetics
What is this, other than a distro with a pre populated bookmark list, cunningly hidden under 'Apps' instead of 'Bookmarks'?
What about accounts for each of these [cloud|web2.0|webapp] services? How is that managed? What if someone else uses your computer? Account creation? Data control? is there a backup service?
The most memorable part of the review for me was the wall paper. Not because I liked it, but the author of the article did, dedicating at least 2 paragraphs to it...
Seriously? Pepermint OS One? POO? I mean, come on...
You will die on the web.
Dance Lap Revolution
I don't play around with Linux much at all, but here's my review of this OS that I tried last evening:
1. Fast!
2. Mostly just web apps in the app menu. Office apps = Google apps, etc.
3. The web apps open up minimalist Firefox windows.
This is basically it, IMO. I've intentionally worded this "review" like I did - very short and concise, because that's what this distro is. It doesn't do much besides opening Firefox windows. Since it doesn't do much else, it runs and boots very fast. The key to its power is that it barely does anything. It can probably be compared to Chromium OS in that regard. One difference from Chromium OS is however that you *can* install other Linux apps too, but that's not the purpose of the distro. Yes, it does multiple accounts, and the main objective of those may be independent storage of the Firefox browser cookies. ;) Backup systems? No no. Google backs up your documents on Google Docs. It seems like the distro is based on Linux Mint.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I don't understand all the hype about these distros, who wants to get less out of their hardware? Yeah, I enjoy using -some- web apps but some things are just pointless to not include such as an office suite. I don't know about you but the entire point of having a laptop is to take it places and I don't want to pay $30 a month to get slow internet everywhere. Desktop apps make sense. Hard disk space is cheap too, unless you have an SSD (and most devices don't) does 500 more megs matter?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Seriously, do we need any more? At this rate, there will be a unique distro for every man, woman and child in the world.
In fact, I think I'm going to write a new app. It will take Ubuntu, select and assemble random packages from it, randomly design a desktop background, toss it all together and give it a random name. Then I can make a bunch of new distros too!
It seems like most of these Ubuntu remixes are still using Gnome. Nothing against the folks who dig that kinda thing, but to me Gnome feels much like Windows - they keep dumbing it down until there's just nothing left. For all the problems KDE 4.0 had, it's understandable that distros abandoned it for a while. But 4.3 is back up to snuff and feels like a much more powerful desktop environment than Gnome is, so I wish some distros would be shipping it as the default.
Anyway no matter which you like, we need competition and choice, and among "big" desktop environments (not counting lightweight managers) we've basically just got two, and what I see as the better one is now a red headed stepchild on most distros.
...must be the 'cloud'
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Peppermint OS One integrates video sites like YouTube and Hulu right into the desktop experience.
...but does it play these smoothly in full screen?
/* No Comment */
This distro does exactly what its designed to do. Some users may appreciate it. Since more gear-heads than naught use Linux then I guess it makes sense that most of you (sic) poo poo it. But come on, its a cloud-apps based distro. No one is forcing you to use it. I won't use it. But there is a user base for this stuff.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Read (among others) as "i386 or derivative processor (AMD64 and x86_64 are fine as well)" (emphasis mine).
Really? I know that for x86 systems usually the only relevant distinction is 32-bit vs. 64-bit CPU, but the above says 'compiled for i386'. Somehow I doubt that:
I've seen much older kernels than the 2.6.32 mentioned, generate some compiler warnings when configured for i386 (and compiled with older verions of GCC). Also IIRC, recent Glibc versions require at least a 486 because it uses intructions that enable atomic operations (either fail or succeed, nothing in between) for some of the included features. Read: on a 386 these instructions wouldn't be available, and use a (less-reliable?) software workaround. And I doubt the included software would be obsolete versions of things like kernel/Glibc/GCC.
Maybe it's just my uninformed me here, or this "i386" is bullshit and should probably read "486", "Pentium", or even "generic 686 class CPU". Can anyone clarify?
Desktop apps make sense. Hard disk space is cheap too, unless you have an SSD (and most devices don't) does 500 more megs matter?
It does if you're limited to 5 GB of transfer per month. Satellite, 3G, Australian, and South African Internet connections tend to have limits like that.
Flash Player under stock Ubuntu 9.10 zooms 480p YouTube video into the 600p full screen just fine on my Dell Mini 10. It had problems on my Eee PC 900, but perhaps a 2-thread Atom at twice the clock speed really is faster than a single-thread Celeron.
I use an Ubuntu remaster called PC/OS, http://www.pc-os.org. Their release known as WebStation does this better than peppermint OS. I also like the way that the PC/OS team integrates the services throughout the system menus rather than just having bookmarks in a browser. PeppermintOS offers nothing that others have offered before. I'll stick with PC/OS.
Adding the netbook launcher by default might make it a good, out-of-the-box netbook distro. It seems odd to me to have a minimalist approach with a maximum desktop. But then again, I don't put a lot on the desktop...
WTF?
http://desktoplinuxreviews.com/2010/05/12/peppermint-os-one/6/
I say: why not... In fact, I think I'm going to write a new app. It will take Ubuntu, select and assemble random packages from it, randomly design a desktop background, toss it all together and give it a random name. Then I can make a bunch of new distros too!
I like the notion of your potential app building dynamic Linux distributions but am not too keen the assembly of the random packages bit. I reckon an application able to interview, monitor, or survey current user activity and craft a bespoke Linux distribution, customised to the persons tastes would be fantastic and I wouldn't limit it to simply the "Ubuntu remixes"; there are other base sets for this. I personally prefer a RedHat/Suse base and a Gnome UI simply out of our need for support familiarity.
Let me prefix my comment with this: I fully support linux development and am glad to see any attempts to produce "alternative" operating systems, and I wish the developers luck
Now, why would they choose the name Peppermint OS One, which is sure to cause confusion? The reason I ask is because there are many, many other English words available, while Peppermint is an awful lot like Mint. This is a problem for Peppermint OS One (unless they would like it shortened to POO, which appears to be appropriate), since Linux Mint, or simply Mint, has been around for several years now, with the forthcoming version 9 likely to be released next week. Mint strives to be a more polished, more complete derivative of Ubuntu, and it really delivers. Mint has been my main OS for everything for over two years now, and is the first OS I can say I've ever really liked (dating back as far as MSDOS 3 or so).
Is this an attempt by POO to ride the coattails of Mint, or just a very poor but innocent choice? Mint has gained wide-spread notoriety among linux enthusiasts, and currently receives the second or third most hits on Distrowatch.com, ahead of such venerable distros as Debian, Mandriva, Slackware and OpenSUSE, and running neck and neck with Fedora, to trail only Ubuntu. Surely the POO developers had to be aware of its existence. And after reading the review of POO, and failing to find it even listed on Distrowatch, I have not found any compelling reason to try it. Looks similar to gOS, but not as nice looking or as well integrated. I'll stick to Mint, hold the pepper.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Didn't gOS operate like this too? It was the OS shipped on the Walmart PCs.
POKE 36879,8
Webapps are an attempt to break the upgrade cycle and all that goes with it (mostly downtime).
Since when does a web application upgrade not introduce its own downtime? Often, upgrades turn out to be downgrades when they break or outright remove features that a company depends on, or when they make page load time unacceptable.
Imagine really thin clients. I mean, real thin, like ~1mm thin and credit-card sized. Open up for a qwerty keyboard + touchscreen, a full suite of apps in your wallet over 3G.
For people who rarely make cell phone calls, imagine how much it will cost to upgrade from a $7/mo Virgin Mobile plan to the sort of data plan that such a thin client would require. I'm keeping my netbook until mobile data prices in the United States drop dramatically.
In that case, I'm glad my Dell Mini 1012 has a GMA 3150, which is closer to the GMA 950 than to the Poulsbo.
Tiny Core sounds similar to Puppy Linux in running entirely from RAM. I tried Puppy recently but was disappointed to find that the default setup has the user doing everything as root. Changing it to add non-root users was not a trivial as I thought it would be.