A nice review of a very solid distro. However, you kind of missed what defines Peppermint Five. It is a Cloud oriented
Hybrid OS. This means that Peppermint Five not only functions as an ultra quick desktop computer. It also functions similtaniusly as an elegant Cloud OS, similar to a Chromebook. This is thanks to the ridiculously simple to use "Ice" application, This in-house app is able to turn any URL into an
SSB, (SiteSpecificBrowser). These are in essence, stand alone apps that you choose where to appear in the menu system. You are able to launch these, "pseudo-apps" like an ordinary package. They just run in The Cloud - very cool indeed
!!
In keeping with the Cloud philosophy, Peppermint has a minimal amount of packages pre-installed. Instead there are a few pre-made SSBs for
GoogleDrive,
Pixlr Editor,
Pixlr O-Matic, the
Online User Guide and the
Peppermint Forum. With the "Ice" application, you can very quickly make more for -
YouTube,
GMail,
News Papers even
Angry Birds and
Facebook - whatever you want
!! If you want or need locally installed packages, you'll find everything that's in the Ubuntu repositories available. They can be easily installed, with APT in the terminal, through Synaptic, GDebi or, from the Software Center. The most popular and highly rated applications can be found in the "
Featured" category. The Peppermint specific metapackages can be found in the "
Featured" category as well. Everything is built for speed and convenience and this is done exceptionally well. The SSBs work seamlessly with the locally installed programmes. After you have made a few SSBs and used them. You will very quickly find them indispensable. As a bonus, the Peppermint Forums are excellent. They are a wealth of information and are extremely nOOb friendly and very helpful
.
The developers at Peppermint have seen the direction computing is taking and that is onward and upwards towards the Cloud. There is no stopping that. They really have taken the bull by the horns with Peppermint Five and delivered something that is unique in the Linux desktop world. Peppermint Five brings to the user a level of flexibility and freedom that no other Linux OS or any OS can offer out of the box. This is a very special distro that really could be leading the Linux desktop computer in an exciting new direction
.