A Blast from the Past, a Golden Oldie: Peppermint Linux!

[buster]

Many of us like old, solid furniture, 60s sports cars, black and white movies. Peppermint is nostalgia city, and I may be switching over to it. Here’s a short review and an explanation.

Peppermint is based on Lubuntu, so you get all the benefits of Ubuntu, but the distribution employs a hybrid LXDE/Xfce desktop environment, mixing LXDE's lxsession with Xfce's panel and application menu. Don’t spend too much time analyzing that, just be aware of the lightning quick nature of Peppermint.

The usual virtual machine install went like all Ubuntu installs â€" easy and quick. Setting it up as a vm was similarly simple. I ran all the usual graphics, drag and drop, split screen for the file manager. Flawless. So why did I like it so much?

1. Best speed of any of my recent distro tests, by far.
2. Everything is there that I like and need.
3. I like the appearance!

Get rid of all the plastic, smooth look of modern interfaces, and their heaviness. Remember the simple, clear lines of the late 1990s computer desktops? Rectangular? Grey? Boxy? Like seeing a 1957 Chevrolet or a 60’s Austen-Healy Sprite (which we drove for 4 years). The huge advantage of this is the ease with which a disto puts stuff on the screen, needing almost no cpu or memory. Think about clicking your mouse, and the job is done.

Everything is old fashioned, but it’s lovely, and reminds me of better times. It’s not a classic look - that would be like a Rolls-Royce. This is definitely a Model T Ford. If I haven’t found that anything is missing, I may switch over. Nostalgia with speed. I’ll use it a week or two first to make sure it’s what I want, and then I’ll step into the time machine and go back to a simpler time, but with, of course, air conditioning and a dishwasher under the hood.

Be sure to check the pictures.

[fox]

Indeed it does look very nice, Buster. I haven't used it in years, but I can't tell you why. As you noted, it is very fast, and being based on Ubuntu, all of the software that works on Ubuntu works on Peppermint. (At least any that I can recall trying.) The one thing I didn't like about it is that it was set up for folks who mainly used online apps, which I don't. However, it can be used with regular apps as well, and it had one nice feature that Ubuntu or Mint doesn't - Ice - an app to access an online app directly from its icon (i.e. without opening a browser first).

Your posting peaked my interest in checking it out. I has been around for a long time (since 2010), and it lists 6 team members, which is big enough to suggest that it has further staying power. One bad thing - Mark Greaves, its CEO and team leader, passed away in January and doesn't seem to have been replaced yet. On the other hand, their team did post a very recent news message about changing their servers, so they are definitely still active. Furthermore, their forums are still quite active.

One thing I can't seem to find out is how long they support a given distro. Also, I wondered whether a version can be upgraded, or whether a new version has to be installed from scratch?

[fox]

In case you're interested in an overview and history from the late CEO, check this out. Based on what was stated in the interview, it appears that Peppermint cannot be upgraded to a new version; it has to be re-installed.

[buster]

This edition I believe is supported until 2023.

[buster]

A review from 2019 comments very favourably on the speed of Peppermint. The writer seems infatuated with the distro. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/10/31/heres-why-blazing-fast-linux-os-peppermint-10-just-blew-me-away/#2620019d6d9b

[buster]

And I shouldn't ignore my lightning fast Q4OS, but the setup involves more decisions, and some people shy away from work. (Though mine is very nice. And was pretty easy.) It's based on Debian Buster. Extremely fast. Boots and shuts off faster than Peppermint.

Peppermint with Ubuntu behind it might beat it out for typical users.

[fox]

Your version of Q4OS is a real blast from the past - Trinity desktop, a clone of KDE3. Looks very nice.

The Forbes review of Peppermint that you noted is impressive. Interestingly enough, DistroWatch didn't have that review in their list of Peppermint 10 reviews. I'm tempted to try it on my 2015 iMac. If it's good for three years then they must be supporting Kernel 5.0 for three years. That kernel works well on said iMac, unlike the 5.4 LTS of Ubuntu 20.04.

[fox]

Three messages later in the Peppermint Forums and I can tell you two things. The first is that the forums are very active, which is a good thing. The second is that Peppermint gets its kernels from Ubuntu. I think that when the current version came out, the Ubuntu default kernel was 5.0 (from version 19.04). If you install and let it upgrade, you'll end up with Kernel 5.3 (default from version 19.10). When the next version comes out, I'm sure it will be using 5.4 (the default and LTS kernel of 20.04). However, in Peppermint 10, the repositories maintain the 18.04 kernel (4.15), which does work on my 2015 iMac. So if I install it, I get the same 3 years of kernel support that I get on Mint 19.3 and Ubuntu 18.04, and I can get the 4.15 security updates and install the updated 4.15 kernel on the latest versions of any of these distros.

For those of you not familiar with the SSB's (site-specific browsers) that you can install with the Ice program, this is a very nice concept. Peppermint 10 already has the Microsoft Office (online version) SSB's installed, and they show up in the menu. (Other SSB's are also installed.) I tried MS Word the other day in the live version, and it works very nicely. What I'm not sure about is whether you have to sign in every time before use (or whether it retains your sign in from past use). It would be nice if it does.

[Jason]

Three messages later in the Peppermint Forums and I can tell you two things. The first is that the forums are very active, which is a good thing. The second is that Peppermint gets its kernels from Ubuntu. I think that when the current version came out, the Ubuntu default kernel was 5.0 (from version 19.04). If you install and let it upgrade, you'll end up with Kernel 5.3 (default from version 19.10). When the next version comes out, I'm sure it will be using 5.4 (the default and LTS kernel of 20.04). However, in Peppermint 10, the repositories maintain the 18.04 kernel (4.15), which does work on my 2015 iMac. So if I install it, I get the same 3 years of kernel support that I get on Mint 19.3 and Ubuntu 18.04, and I can get the 4.15 security updates and install the updated 4.15 kernel on the latest versions of any of these distros.

Is Peppermint itself supported as well for 3 years? I'm just wondering if you have the 4.15.x kernel now if when the next release of Peppermint comes out if you can stay with the same 4.x kernel series?

Linux Mint does the same thing. Each numbered release is based on the current LTS version. LM (Linux Mint) 19 was based on 18.04 and LM 20 will be based on Ubuntu 20.04 as well as 20.1, 20.2 and 20.3. I know you're already aware, just wanted to mention it for others in case they weren't. I'm pretty sure others besides us regulars are reading this forum even if they don't say anything.

Regarding the SSBs, I'm actually using one inside Kubuntu, at least I think I am. When I'm home, instead of using my phone to respond to to texts, I use Messages for web from Google. It's listed in my menu under the category Brave Browser Apps. Google Keep is in there, too. I think it's pretty much the same thing or concept as an SSB. I can load it separately from the browser but it's basically an app that runs in the browser and they've stripped away all the browser menus, location bar, and such.

[fox]

I hadn't installed Peppermint; I was running it from a live USB. So no, I didn't have the 4.15 kernel installed. But I checked the repos and it was there.

[Jason]

The question that everyone is waiting for, what was the default background colour? Minty fresh?

[fox]

OK, I now have it installed in a VM. (Shades of Buster!) I left the default theme and colour, but I changed the background to one of the ones provided by Peppermint. So if "Minty Fresh" is green, that's not the default. The default is a darkish red, which is fine by me. 

[buster]

So how does it seem?

[fox]

I liked it enough to install it, but I haven't worked with it a lot yet. It is certainly fast, and the desktop environment is quite good. One problem I discovered with SSB's is that, if the site requires a sign-in, you can't bypass that with an SSB, even if you have saved the password.

[buster]

'One problem I discovered with SSB's is that, if the site requires a sign-in,'

What is an SSB?