Peppermint OS One
Sound and Multimedia
YouTube & Flash
I did my usual test of YouTube videos and I was pleased to note that I didn’t have to install flash or otherwise configure anything. YouTube videos looked and sounded great.
Web-Based Multimedia
One of the more intriguing things about Peppermint OS is its inclusion of web-based video sites like Hulu in its Sound and Video applications menu. This makes it, in a webbish-way, an excellent distro for multimedia. It adds a greater range of multimedia content choices to the desktop, with little or no effort on the part of the user.
I tested Hulu and I had no problems watching Glee. Sound and video both worked perfectly. I also tested last.fm by playing a Michael Jackson song and it worked perfectly. Pandora Radio also worked well.
Flash is installed by default, so YouTube videos play without the need to download anything.
Once I got used to being able to access sites like Hulu from your application menus (via Prism), I started feeling that this is something I’d like to have in all of my distros. It adds a whole other dimension to multimedia on the Linux desktop. You’ll see what I mean if you try it in Peppermint OS. It just feels so right for those links to be there and for you to be able to fire up sites like Hulu with one click, outside of the traditional browser interface.
Problems & Headaches
As I noted earlier, there is no slideshow while the Peppermint OS One install happens. I’d like to see the developers add one in the next release. It might seem like a small or unimportant thing to experienced Linux users, but a slideshow can help educate newbies about the features offered by a distro. It’s a great chance to educate and every distro maker should take advantage of it by including an install slideshow.
There are no games bundled into the Peppermint OS One desktop. Given that Peppermint OS is cloud-oriented, it would be nice to see links placed in a Games menu to browser-based games. That would add a “fun-factor” to Peppermint OS that would lighten things up a bit. The developers could probably also include a few desktop games as well. There are plenty of games available in the Software Center though (1160 packages last time I checked it).
I ran into the annoying problem of giant fonts in certain application menus. I didn’t have time to fix this but the fonts should adjust themselves when the screen resolution changes. In my case, I bumped the resolution up to 2560 x 1600. I have a 27-inch monitor, so a higher resolution is a must for me. Plus I love the extra screen space.
Another problem I ran into was seeing an ugly GRUB menu when I rebooted, after updating my system. Before the update, I simply saw the Peppermint OS bootsplash screen for a few seconds and then the login screen appeared. After the update I saw the ugly black and white GRUB screen. This really isn’t a huge problem; it’s more a cosmetic thing than anything else. The Peppermint OS developers might want to dress up the GRUB screen with the distro’s logo and colors, or find a way to prevent it from happening in the first place.
Peppermint OS One features web-based office applications by default.
(11 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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(4.83 out of 5)
[...] one that is particularly interesting to review. Peppermint OS One is definitely in that category. Peppermint OS One is a web-centric Ubuntu remaster that passes up common desktop applications like OpenOffice.org in favor of web-based [...]
Superb distro! I love Mint, and PeppermintOS is a fantastic LXDE distribution. Lubuntu/Mint combination, super!
The wallpaper would fit best a distro called CinammonOS. :-)
I have gOS 8.04.2 or whatever the latest update is and it’s on my Gateway laptop. It is one of the oldest of the early distros that started experimenting with the Web and the cloud. Maybe I ought to replace it with this Peppermint OS. I’ll consider it. gOS has actually been a pretty good OS for me these past couple of years.
So if I add Mozilla Prism, Google Docs, and Dropbox to my Ubuntu install, do I have a cool “cloud OS” ?
Wait, for that matter, I could get an even cooler “cloud OS” by adding Google Docs, a VPN, and an online storage service to Windows Vista and I’d be living in the cloud!
[...] review on slashdot– I’ve covered a lot of remastered versions of Ubuntu since DLR launched. But, every once in a while, I bump into one that is particularly interesting to review. Peppermint OS One is definitely in that category. [...]
Looks interesting though some parts (such as links to Hulu, Last.FM, and Pandora) are useless for non US users. Still, an interesting idea in a “cloud OS”.
why the hell are you watching a video of a squirrel being skinned ?
I installed Peppermint Os today. In the past I used PcLinuxOS XFCE which I found too slow on my Thinkpad R40e. In the few hours I am using it I am very surprised about this fast distro. It looks also very stable and has all the new updates including Firefox 3.6.3. I am very enthusiastic and going to use it for a while. Therefore I want tgive the developer a compliment and advice others to use this new exciting distro.
I was about to link to this review, but that was until I saw the YouTube screenshot. Was this really the best YouTube screenshot you could find ?!? I second gino, a previous commenter on this review.
I really hope you can include another YouTube screenshot, because this takes the quality from your Peppermint review.