Peppermint 5: I'm disappointed

I was an early adopter of Peppermint OS, and a big fan. This was in the days when Peppermint was not numbered, but known as Ice, and other innovative browsers like Flock were recognising that the mushrooming of social media sites and the emergence of cloud computing were going to take us all into regions that we hadn't even thought of. Ice had a small footprint, the Ice app, cloud-centric design, and was fast -- even on under-powered machines. I loved it. I loved One, Two, and Three as well. But then came Peppermint Four and Peppermint Four was ultimately too finicky and frustrating for me to use. I I always seemed to have problems with panels and the Chromium browser the OS was built on. Well, I was triple-booting as usual, so I just stuck to Mint and whatever else I was running as an alternative. I was sad to lose Peppermint but content. Yet I wanted Peppermint to do well.

Recently Peppermint Five was released, to some acclaim. Most reviewers wrote as if Peppermint Five was a new OS, not a revamped one, and I was encouraged enough to download the ISO and run it. The live CD worked well and so I installed it...

But for me the same problems are there. Compared to Mint and elementary Freya (my current first choices) Peppermint 5 is sluggish, crash-prone, unreliable and user unfriendly. It doesn't help that Mint (Cinnamon) and elementary Freya look better too.

I'm very disappointed, especially since I believe the real mobile revolution is not in hardware but a move away from desktops to browsers (as in Google's Chromebooks) and Peppermint could be a real leader here.

One final word. On Mint and Freya I use Mozilla's Firefox, and with the power of its add-ons, these have become very browser-centric for me and easy to sync with my android phones. Perhaps Peppermint could try using Mozilla again?

How to disable Windows 8 'Secure Boot' etc and install Ubuntu, Mint or Peppermint

You've bought a laptop that came with Windows 8 pre-installed on it and now you're tearing your hair out? There's hope (though maybe not so much with the hair replacement). Although Windows 8 ships with a 'Secure Boot' setup that suggests you can't install anything else on the machine (not even go back to Windows 7 or good ol' XP heehe) it's actually quite easy to disable this and install whatever you like. All you need to do is turn the computer off and restart it with the F2 key held down. This will active the BIOS, where you can switch off the 'Secure Boot' and switch to Legacy OS, which means you can use your installers CDs just like you used to, or gparted or whatever. It took me just a few minutes...

I'm posting this from a Lenovo G580 running Linux Mint 14 (Maya). No problems.

Peppermint 3 has arrived!

Finally, Peppermint 3 OS has arrived... it's what I'm using right now and so far, so good. It's built upon Lubuntu and Mint and looks and feels great (I'm not a fan of the new Ubuntu desktop at all). I've installed it on an old 256 RAM machine, but everything is working at the moment and I particularly like the fact that this Peppermint is not overloaded with programs I won't use. Since the early days of the Mac I've really enjoyed customising what I'm using and Peppermint 3 gives me that option from the get-go.

After 3 days, Peppermint 3 is still working really well. I had the usual odd window behaviour as with Peppermints 1, 2 and Ice, but that was easily fixed.

Webian OS: the future?

As you know, I like variety and also like trying out new operating systems, such as Jolicloud OS and Peppermint OS, both of which have been compared and reviewed on this blog before. My opinion was, and still is, that Jolicloud is perhaps the best bet for a netbook and Peppermint for an under-powered laptop. Well, now there's a proof-of-intent prototype, Webian OS, which is available as a live CD.

The live CD lets Webian piggy-back on top of your existing OS without modifying it, and also gives you the opportunity of doing a normal boot if you wish. What you get is a browser instead of a desktop-- i.e., your 'desktop' is now a full browser window: there are no icons, no menus, or anything else to click on.

Is it any good? Well, it's refreshingly different and it does force you to start thinking in a 'cloud' way. For me, that's a blessing since I'm not distracted by 'desktop' tasks while I'm doing 'cloud' stuff. It's also very fast (even running from a disc)-- it makes Joilcloud, for instance, seem like it's stuck in a jar of treacle or molasses.

But this is just an incomplete prototype at the moment, so it does lack necessary things. Just what is necessary is part of the reason for the shell being released right now-- the only add-on built into Webian at the moment is the ability to send feedback and suggestions to its creators. What is necessary for me is the ability to save bookmarks, the ability to save a page on the web (i.e., dropbox or Ubuntu One or 4shared etc), the ability to print a page or a document, and a proper exit from the shell rather than having to reboot to access the desktop (a logout perhaps).

Webian OS, I think, shows enough promise to excite.

Peppermint 2 vs Jolicloud 2 (1.2)

My previous assessment (1 vs 1) was that Peppermint was the OS of choice for a laptop but that Jolicloud was pretty good on a netbook. Both OSs have seen changes since then so it's time again to go head-to-head.

Peppermint used to come in two flavours: One, built upon the Firefox browser; and Ice, built upon the Chromium browser. Jolicloud 1 was built upon Firefox. Now Peppermints One and Ice have become a single entity, Peppermint Two, built upon Chromium; and Jolicloud is now at version 1.2 and also built upon Chromium. For the last few weeks I've been alternating both OSs on the same i386 256 RAM laptop (a cheap Proline machine bought by the company I work for). 

What I've noticed so far is that Peppermint is amazingly fast on this limited hardware, attractive to look at and to use, and very open in its design. By contrast, Jolicloud is sluggish, obviously requiring more RAM than this laptop can deliver. Jolicloud's design is also compromised by the bigger-than-netbook screen and gives the feeling of being a more closed approach than Peppermint. This makes sense really, since Jolicloud is trying to give bigger devices a similar look and feel to mobiles.

I think therefore that Peppermint Two will remain on my laptop while Jolicloud relocates to my netbook, for which it is no doubt better suited... although I have  a sneaking suspicion that Peppermint Two will do better there as well. 

Peppermint-One Jan 2011 respin is the biz!

Yes, this post is slightly late... well, I was actually looking for a torrent of the latest Peppermint Ice respin (March 2011) but couldn't find one, so I tried the latest Peppermint-One edition instead. I was happily surprised.

My preference for Ice over One was simply related to the underlying browser-base of each of the distros; the Mozilla-Prism combo of One was often slow and unwieldy because Firefox had itself become bloated. So I preferred Peppermint Ice since it was built on a Chromium-Ice combination. Now, ironically, I find that Chromium has begun to show signs of bloat, and that the new Peppermint-One uses the sleeker and much faster Firefox 4.0 (Beta 9).

In other words, get your copy of Peppermint-One's 01042011 iso, burn it to disc, and install it today! You won't be disappointed. It's fast, efficient, and a real pleasure to use, even with limited RAM. Well done to the Peppermint team.

Ice prevents freezing!

peppermint ice

Although I have a variety of computers, I mostly use three: a Macbook, a Samsung NC10, and a generic laptop that comes with my office at work. I use the generic laptop a lot, especially since I maintain a LAN in the school's admin block. But it came with only 200+ MB of RAM. Needless to say, the new releases of Ubuntu and OpenSUSE hardly get out of their starting blocks on this machine.

Enter Peppermint and especially Peppermint Ice! Instead of waiting, with mounting frustration, for the bigger distros to actually do something on this machine I can actually do my work through Peppermint without hassles. I prefer Ice since it's browser back-end is Chromium rather than Mozilla, and I also think it's slightly faster. Printing doesn't come with Ice initially but CUPS is easy to install via synaptic. All-in-all, I'm a fan.

Peppermint outruns Meerkat

Well, I've been using Maverick for some four days or so, and I definitely like it, but these standard Ubuntu distros are becoming more and more RAM heavy. A lot of the time I'm using a laptop that only has about 200 MB of RAM, so after a while Meerkat begins to crawl. That's when I logout and fire up Peppermint which is like a breath of fresh air... however, I've installed the new UBUNTU font on Peppermint, so it's not as if the Meerkat hasn't changed my user experience! :)

Btw, there's no need to install Ice to get web-apps any more: I notice Chromium has a command dedicated to this in its Tools menu.

Jolicloud 1.0

Well, I updated to Jolicloud 1.0 today and so far so good. I do like the uncluttered interface, although it's quite a bit different from the pre-release final version. As with all new things it will take a while to get used to and I think I'll need to play with this latest version for a day or two before I can say whether it will challenge Peppermint for me or not.

And I'm also keen to download an iso of the new OS to install on a laptop to see if it runs well there too... like many users I work on a variety of machines and I like compatibility.

Peppermint Panels

Well, I enjoyed my first run with Peppermint Ice, but the desktop panel display (aka Task Bar) is buggy with both versions of Peppermint. On some machines, it disappears completely after a reboot. On Ubuntu or Mint this wouldn't be so much of a problem, since you could easily create a completely new panel, but with the Peppermints the menu applets available are not many and the default panel display-- once lost-- cannot be recreated. This is an irritating bug.

Otherwise, I have to admit that I'm getting used to Peppermint's alternative logic and will probably keep using it; if the bugs get ironed out then on balance it will be the Iced version because of its Google base.

Ice Ice Baby! (Peppermint Ice)

Ubuntu -- Linux Mint -- Peppermint -- Jolicloud -- Peppermint Ice: it's becoming quite a family. This blog post is being written and posted using Peppermint Ice OS, which is the newest baby in this lineage (only a few days old at this point). It's fast, so far stable, and different from Peppermint (no ice) mainly in that it uses Google's Chromium browser and elements rather than Mozilla's Firefox and Prism to create browser-based applets.

The change might be significant. Jolicloud started out by using Mozilla and Prism, then switched to Chromium; Peppermint also began with Prism... and now Ice has arrived, using Chromium.

More on this after a day or two.

Peppermint vs Jolicloud

Ok, I've been trying out these two implementations of a Cloud-based OS, and I like them both. It's amazing how quickly my thinking has adjusted to their different designs. My verdict right now is to use Peppermint for laptops and Jolicloud for networks--but that decision is based primarily on the fact that I can't get Jolicloud to install on anything other than my Samsung NC10, where it works just fine.

Both use online suites of apps-- Google's; and, in Jolicloud's case, Adobe's air.

They differ in interface design and underlying technologies.

Both are built on Ubuntu, but Jolicloud looks more like an iPhone desktop than Ubuntu. Peppermint looks like Linux Mint. Rather than a browser, dedicated panes are used to run web applications: Peppermint uses Mozilla's Prism; Jolicloud uses Google's Chrome.

I have had no problems at all so far with either system (although I'm using the Peppermint respin rather than the initial buggy offering).

Which will be the winner? probably something else entirely, but these are showing the way to go. Recommended.