Peppermint OS Four Review: Linux Mint of Lubuntu with added Ice and Web apps!

Peppermint OS Four is one distro, possibly, I haven't paid sufficient attention till date. This week first time I made an honest effort to understand and use it for a few days continuously. I must say I am very impressed with the new Peppermint OS release - Peppermint OS Four. Earlier my impression was it is just repackaged Lubuntu. But, with continuous usage for a few days, my impression changed - it brings a lot more to the user than the parent distro Lubuntu. I guess you'll understand more what I am saying in the remaining part of the review.

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Peppermint OS Four is the latest stable release. It is based on Ubuntu (Lubuntu) 13.04 and has LXDE, a very lightweight desktop environment with Linux kernel 3.8.0-25. The release note states:

"Welcome back to the new and improved Peppermint web site and welcome to the next iteration of our operating system: Peppermint Four. We are seriously excited about this release and we hope you are as ecstatic as all of us on Team Peppermint. Make sure to download a bunch of copies and give them to friends and family; they will thank you, for sure. Peppermint Four is based on the Ubuntu 13.04 code base and uses the LXDE desktop environment, but now with Xfwm4 instead of Openbox as the window manager. Other new features in this release are that we've included some example games by default including Entanglement and First Person Tetris. We've also added some metapackages for popular tasks such as graphic arts and photography to the Featured section of the Software Manager." 

I downloaded the 32-bit Peppermint OS Four ISO, 588 MB in size, for this review. I created a live USB using Unetbootin to do a live boot followed by installation on my Asus K54C laptop with Core i3 2.2 Ghz processor & 2 GB RAM. Peppermint has a lighter ISO than Lubuntu 13.04 because of it's focus on web based applications whereas Lubuntu focuses more on offline apps.

Aesthetics and Hardware Recognition
The boot splash of Peppermint looks good (though I could not capture it as a screenshot) and this time it has a dark red wallpaper with Peppermint logo and white panel below. It is more attractive than the earlier white background with peppermint red dots (which honestly used to remind me of Dalmatians!). However, the desktop is very bare-bone for my test and I installed a conky lua and a docky to make it more attractive.

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Hardware recognition is very impressive from an LXDE distro point of view. It automatically recognized screen resolution, Wifi, LAN, touchpad and sound card among other things. Especially I was impressed with automatic touchpad recognition which didn't happen with me in Lubuntu. I had to manually enable the touchpad for vertical & horizontal scrolling.

Applications
Peppermint OS Four is loaded mostly with web applications (WA), viz.

• Office: Google Calendar (WA), Google Drive (WA), document viewer
• Internet: Chromium 25, Gmail (WA), Dropbox, Ice, IRC client, Bit torrent client
• Graphics: Pixlr editor (WA), Pixlr Express (WA), Image viewer, Simple scan
• Multimedia: Gnome MPlayer 1.0.8, Guayaseque music player 0.3.5
• Accessories: Archive manager, Calculator, File search, Screenshot, Terminal, gedit text editor, Gdebi package installer, Printer manager

I must first begin with Ice - a Peppermint special application. Ice is actually the front end to build web apps or single site browsers with Chromium as the backend. Also, it integrates the web app created to the desired location in the menu. It is not available in the Ubuntu repositories but I found it really handy in creating the so called Ubuntu's "Web Apps". Using Ice, one can create menu entries of commonly visited websites and social networks, which will directly open it in Chromium (and no more scrolling through bookmarks required). Whereas Ubuntu's web app is quite limited to a few social networks, with Peppermint's Ice one can create a direct menu entry for almost every website. Also, it imports the logo of the website! First I created a web app of my favorite website - Distrowatch.

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Next I created web app of the social networks I use. It is so easy and uncomplicated! Only thing you need is to correctly provide the website URL. Say, for Distrowatch, I gave the URL: http://www.distrowatch.com, provided the name Distrowatch, choose Internet as the menu item where it will appear and clicked on Download icon as I didn't have an icon in my system for it. On clicking create it automatically downloaded the distrowatch icon and created a web app. Upon clicking it would directly open a single browser site in Chromium. If you are bored with too many web apps, Ice has option to remove as well.

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

I really got hooked to web apps and created web apps for twitter, Facebook, G+ and Linkedin. Pretty simple and easy stuff!

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

For rest of the application list, they are mostly web apps. Web app concept is good if you have a steady internet connection. Otherwise, having applications downloaded from repositories is better. From Ubuntu/Linux Mint repositories, I could download offline office apps like Abiword and Gnumeric among others.

Like Linux Mint, Peppermint also has common drivers, multimedia codecs and Adobe flashplugin pre-installed. I could play my favorite videos and watch online movies without any issue right after live boot. Also, I found the Guayaseque music player music player to be lightweight and good. I used it for the first time.

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Normally I don't cover games (except for where Steam is added). But, for Peppermint I make an exception. Peppermint has added some web based games like Entanglement in addition to some Linux games. Users can add their favorite gaming sites as a web app using Ice.

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Unlike a GNOME or a KDE, settings are not integrated in LXDE but scattered across preferences. However, the nomenclature is quite easy to understand and should not bug new users.

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Like most of the LXDE distros, PCManFM is the default file manager (PCManFM 1.1.0). It is fast and lightweight and performs most of the functions expected from a good file manager. I find PCManFM good, especially after the complete revamp. If interested, you can get details of the functionalities offered by PCManFM from the LXDE wiki. 

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Installation
Installation is typical Ubuntu and no surprises there. Typical user inputs required are language, location, keyboard type and language, installation location and finally user ID creation. Overall, it takes about 20-30 minutes to install Peppermint including download of updates.

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Repositories
Peppermint uses the Linux Mint application installer as default GUI. Further, synaptic package manager is there. Packages are sourced through Peppermint servers but Ubuntu Raring and Linux Mint Olivia ppa's can be added there without making the system unstable.

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

I downloaded Abiword, Gnumeric, Docky, Conky, etc. from the Mintinstaller without any issue. The packages downloaded after resolving all dependencies (automatically) and worked as expected.

Decorating Peppermint
Peppermint OS Four has limited themes for LXDE desktop. In addition, common ornaments like a docky or a conky can be installed to make it more attractive. I have discussed it at length in my Lubuntu 13.04 review. Unlike Lubuntu, Peppermint comes with compositing pre-installed and hence, users should not face the issue of black background in case of docky or cairo dock. 

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Docky, by default, gets added to autostart but conky requires to be added by the user, manually. In case of LXDE it is not as simple as in other desktops like GNOME, KDE or XFCE. To add conky to autostart, simply open a terminal and run the following commands:
$gksudo leafpad /etc/xdg/lxsession/Lubuntu/autostart 

Adding the conky command (in my case @conky -c ./.conky/conkyrc) to the file and saving it before closing adds conky lua to the autostart. Every time I start my system now, Peppermint starts with an elegant Conky.

From Peppermint OS 4 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

 
Performance
Peppermint performs comparable to Lubuntu 13.04 and is very smooth to use. LXDE desktop is itself very smooth. User experience with Peppermint is similar to Lubuntu.Replacing Openbox with Xfwm4 hasn't impacted the performance much and on my machine Peppermint OS Four performed better than Peppermint OS Three.

If I compare with other LXDE distros that I have used in last couple of years, Peppermint 4 definitely comes within the top five for being very economical on resources. It's performance is definitely comparable to Debian Wheezy LXDE and Lubuntu 13.04.

Operating System	Size of ISO	Base	Desktop	Linux kernel	CPU Usage	RAM usagE
Bridge LXDE	547 MB	Arch	LXDE	3.6.7	1-5%	80 MB
Debian 7 LXDE	648 MB	Debian	LXDE	3.2.0	1-5%	80 MB
Lubuntu 13.04	720 MB	Ubuntu	LXDE	3.8.0	1-5%	103 MB
Comfusion 4.1 LXDE	882 MB	Ubuntu	LXDE	3.2.0	1-5%	110 MB
Peppermint OS 4	588 MB	Ubuntu	LXDE	3.8.0-25	1-5%	110 MB
Lubuntu 12.04	722 MB	Ubuntu	LXDE	3.2.0	1-5%	119 MB
Lubuntu 12.10	726 MB	Ubuntu	LXDE	3.5.0-17	1-5%	123 MB
Fedora 18 LXDE	686 MB	Fedora	LXDE	3.7.2	1-5%	124 MB
Peppermint OS 3	562 MB	Ubuntu	LXDE	3.2.0	1-5%	130 MB
Zorin 6.1 Lite	672 MB	Ubuntu	LXDE	3.2.0	1-5%	130 MB

Overall
In overall, I feel, Peppermint OS Four is a significant LXDE release of the year and brings more to table than the parent distro Lubuntu. It can be called the Linux Mint of Lubuntu which just works. Although the desktop is bare-bone LXDE but it adds quite a few things in terms of functionality. 

First, Ice performs almost flawless in creating web apps of my liking. 

Second, relying on web apps more is good for users with stable internet connection. For the rest, Ubuntu repository is loaded with applications and you can download whatever you want. 

Third, web apps may be advantage to new Linux users as they don't have to unlearn much and continue using packages like Google office or online picture editors, etc. For advanced users as well, with everything going to cloud these days, web based applications can be a good alternative to having a bulky OS. Peppermint takes about 3 GB of space in hard drive, lower than most of the distros I have used.

Performance-wise, Peppermint is blazing fast and can be a very good option for resource limited systems. For those with advanced laptops and computers, if you've tried out Ubuntu 13.04 and liked the web apps there, I bet you'll like Peppermint's omnipotent Ice much better. Try it out!

Peppermint OS Four can be downloaded from here. It has both 32 and 64 bit versions.