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Sunday, June 12, 2011

Peppermint OS Two | Desktop Linux Reviews

Peppermint OS Two

By Jim Lynch on June 10th, 2011

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
There’s been quite a lot of talk about “the cloud” lately so what better time to do a review of one of the best cloud-oriented desktop Linux distributions? Peppermint OS One came out a while ago and its successor has just been released. Peppermint OS Two is based on Lubuntu 11.04 and, for the first time, comes in a 64-bit edition. Lubuntu is a good choice as a base for Peppermint OS Two since it runs well on older or slower hardware.
Peppermint OS Two uses web-based applications for much of its default software. These applications are integrated into the desktop by the Ice SSB framework and essentially make these applications as much a part of the desktop as applications that run locally. They run in a window on your desktop even when you aren’t using your browser.
SSB stands for “site specific browser” and it’s how Peppermint OS Two runs web applications on your desktop. Here’s a bit of background on SSBs from the Peppermint OS site:

Ice is, by definition, a Site Specific Browser [SSB] that Peppermint creator Kendall Weaver wrote himself as a means to launch Web Applications and/or Cloud Applications [SaaS - Software As A Service] from the new Peppermint Ice OS. When you launch a web based application using Ice it will call up a custom SSB using the default Chromium Browser. So, essentially, the Ice SSB acts as software that is installed locally but is actually delivered via the Web.
The difference in using an SSB as opposed to using a tabbed browser is that only one function is assigned to the Ice SSB. In a tabbed browsing system, with several open for example, if one service or site in any given tab crashes you run the risk of losing data by crashing the other tabs and potentially the browser itself. since an SSB is isolated and dedicated to only operating the web application of your choice, if it crashes or hangs, it does not effect the rest of the system. And, because the Ice SSB’s are so sleek, they are perfect for running apps that display better using the most screen area as possible.

Some of you might wonder why this is desirable since you can always just fire up a browser and then go to GMail or whatever the web application is that you want to run. Well it’s quite a bit more convenient to have web applications integrated into your desktop when your first boot into it.
It’s also quite easy to add additional web applications or remove the default ones (more on that in the software section of the review). Once you get used to using web applications in an SSB you start to wonder why you had to do it the old way in the first place. It really makes the web a part of your desktop environment rather than something that exists outside of it.

Live Desktop

What’s New In This Release
Here’s a sample of the new features in this release:
Chromium is the default browser now instead of Firefox
The Ice SSB now comes with the ability to remove SSBs
Additional SSBs added from pixlr
Look and feel has been changed
Dropbox integration improved
Guayadeque is the default music player
Gedit replaces Leafpad as the default text editor
LXKeyMap is now included
Read More...
http://desktoplinuxreviews.com/2011/06/10/peppermint-os-two/

I have used the Peppermint one Live CD since it first came out and it's a great light weight Live OS. It will run on older systems with under 300mb of ram. And on a newer system with like a 2.4ghz P4 or a 1.8ghz Core 2 (not that new I know) with 1 to 2.5 Gigs of Memory, Peppermint one will Run and Play Web Videos for 6 to 8 hours with one hiccup or slow down. I tried out Peppermint two in Virtual Box. It's great, runs fast with 512mb of ram on 1 processor and 64mb of Video in the VM. The layout is pretty much the same as Peppermint one. Except, for one thing. There was no way to change to any of the other Work Spaces - Desktops. I looked around for about 10 minutes, looking for a setting or any way to get to another Desktop. I moved a Running App to Desktop 2. But then never could get to it again. Kind of Weird:( But, that may just be some kind of Bug, that will be fixed soon. I like the ability to add or remove Web Apps and I would be using that if I installed Peppermint two to an HD on one of my Systems...

Don