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Ubuntu-Based Peppermint 7 Released (peppermintos.com)
Softpedia reports on the newest version of Peppermint OS, "a lightweight, stable, elegant, and fast computer operating system based on GNU/Linux and Open Source technologies." An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes their report:
It's a bit earlier than expected, but the Peppermint OS 7 GNU/Linux distribution has been officially unveiled...based on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system [with] a lot of packages from the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS distro, which means that it will also be a long-term support release.... "Along with the shift to the 16.04 (Xenial) code base, Peppermint 7 continues our policy of choosing the best components from other desktop environments, wherever that may be, and integrating them into a cohesive whole with our own software," reads today's announcement.
"Team Peppermint" says they're switching to Firefox as their default browser for site-specific browser functionality (similar to Chrome's -app mode) after Google dropped their 32-bit version of Chrome and moved to PPAPI plugins "which effectively ends Flash support in 32-bit Chromium"... But you can also still choose Chrome or Chromium for site-specific browsing (and the OS comes in 32-bit and 64-bit editions).
"Team Peppermint" says they're switching to Firefox as their default browser for site-specific browser functionality (similar to Chrome's -app mode) after Google dropped their 32-bit version of Chrome and moved to PPAPI plugins "which effectively ends Flash support in 32-bit Chromium"... But you can also still choose Chrome or Chromium for site-specific browsing (and the OS comes in 32-bit and 64-bit editions).
Does Peppermint provide some value to somebody that you can't get from, say, Xubuntu? What's this distro's raison d'etre?
I haven't tried it, but my sense is that it was originally created as an answer to Chromebooks, i.e., a distro that focused heavily on integrating web applications into the desktop with SSBs, etc. Like Chromebooks, the system requirements were lower because of the reliance on web-based apps. Also, like Linux Mint (its namesake), Peppermint has made certain choices about user interface, settings, etc. that many seem to prefer to the Canonical Ubuntu variants.
Now more distros can do these things more easily, so Peppermint is less distinctive, other than still being a slimmed down version of a standard distro, requiring less RAM and HD space.