Ubuntu-Based Peppermint 7 Released (peppermintos.com) 74
Softpedia reports on the newest version of Peppermint OS, "a lightweight, stable, elegant, and fast computer operating system based on GNU/Linux and Open Source technologies." An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes their report:
It's a bit earlier than expected, but the Peppermint OS 7 GNU/Linux distribution has been officially unveiled...based on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system [with] a lot of packages from the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS distro, which means that it will also be a long-term support release.... "Along with the shift to the 16.04 (Xenial) code base, Peppermint 7 continues our policy of choosing the best components from other desktop environments, wherever that may be, and integrating them into a cohesive whole with our own software," reads today's announcement.
"Team Peppermint" says they're switching to Firefox as their default browser for site-specific browser functionality (similar to Chrome's -app mode) after Google dropped their 32-bit version of Chrome and moved to PPAPI plugins "which effectively ends Flash support in 32-bit Chromium"... But you can also still choose Chrome or Chromium for site-specific browsing (and the OS comes in 32-bit and 64-bit editions).
"Team Peppermint" says they're switching to Firefox as their default browser for site-specific browser functionality (similar to Chrome's -app mode) after Google dropped their 32-bit version of Chrome and moved to PPAPI plugins "which effectively ends Flash support in 32-bit Chromium"... But you can also still choose Chrome or Chromium for site-specific browsing (and the OS comes in 32-bit and 64-bit editions).
Re: LOL, eh (Score:2)
He's clearly not a real Canadian, he didn't say sorry.
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with capitalism we have insurance pools that do that, too bad we had to put so many losers and parasites in the pool
So what's the selling point? (Score:2, Funny)
Does Peppermint provide some value to somebody that you can't get from, say, Xubuntu? What's this distro's raison d'etre?
Re:So what's the selling point? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, it's based on Ubuntu, but has hot new features like 32-bit flash support.
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Well, it's based on Ubuntu, but has hot new features like 32-bit flash support.
No one should use Flash in 2016.
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No one should be deprived of a 'whoosh' in 2016.
Re:So what's the selling point? (Score:5, Informative)
Does Peppermint provide some value to somebody that you can't get from, say, Xubuntu? What's this distro's raison d'etre?
I haven't tried it, but my sense is that it was originally created as an answer to Chromebooks, i.e., a distro that focused heavily on integrating web applications into the desktop with SSBs, etc. Like Chromebooks, the system requirements were lower because of the reliance on web-based apps. Also, like Linux Mint (its namesake), Peppermint has made certain choices about user interface, settings, etc. that many seem to prefer to the Canonical Ubuntu variants.
Now more distros can do these things more easily, so Peppermint is less distinctive, other than still being a slimmed down version of a standard distro, requiring less RAM and HD space.
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This is a common misconception, but the first Chromebooks were released in 2011, whereas Peppermint released in 2010 and was in development before that .. so if anyone copied anyone.....
Interesting! Thanks for the correction. Yeah, reading about it now, it appears that Peppermint was originally inspired [wordpress.com] by a desire to integrate social media and various cloud elements directly into the desktop. You're right that it predated Chromebooks... I didn't remember the timeline correctly.
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True, it seems to have way too many colors. True elegance requires light grey text on white background and a UI where all the other sources of clutter but hamburger button is removed.
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Spot on, because a) appearance is what matters and b) it's carved in stone at installation time.
I'm pretty certain that I've made Gnome 2 look like both of those by randomly frigging about with it.
Re:So what's the selling point? (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea is, you have a slow old computer and you want to install Linux on it and make it usable.
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Personally, my friend wanted to keep using a 10 year old laptop with a Celeron processor missing some instruction set that Xubuntu wouldn't work on trivially. I got Peppermint to install fine (maybe you had to use a year-old version, it's been a year and I forget the details). Additionally, Peppermint comes with applications that are server-heavier rather than processor intensive.
Of course, there are 300 variations of Linux and more than one will work for any given purpose. But it's not like Peppermint i
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I used Xubuntu before I latched onto Peppermint. I can't really quantify the difference I just liked the feel of it better. Xubuntu "feels" heavier. I currently operate Peppermint 6 on both a Dell E6500 with a 2.8ghz core2duo processor and 4GB of ram and a dual core atom 1.6ghz powered Aspire One with 2GB of ram. It's blazing fast on the Dell and quick on the Aspire. I do a lot of work on the Dell while I usually just check my bank account and e-mail and do some light surfing on the Aspire. I love it
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I've seen this justified time and time again. But it's just not true of a modern Linux distribution. You want to see your old computer fly, install Windows XP on it. Install Ubuntu Drapper Drake (2006).
But doing modern work on an old machine sucks regardless of how magic you think an operating system is.
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If you eventually get so you know a little about Linux, you can install the minimal system and add what you want.
Of course. But this has nothing to do with an article on Peppermint 7 which out of the box will not make your computer seem any faster than a bloated Windows install.
You can still build a system that runs fine on 4G RAM and an old quad-core.
As someone who edits photos on a machine with 4GB of RAM this comment is amusing. But it's right it's 2016, and RAM is cheap. I just wish those damn laptop manufacturers realised this.
Why Softpedia? (Score:1, Insightful)
Recently, there seem to be a lot of submissions coming from Softpedia,
Is there some special relationship between Softpedia and Slashdot?
I stopped using Softpedia because they seemed to be spreading crapware,
Have they reformed?
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Either it's because of money (and they're not telling us) or it's because the new new editors are that shitty. Quite possibly both. But you can't blame them because haxx0rz did it. Really. Which is probably why the new new editors talk about haxx0rz so much. And no, softpedia is still shitty. Much of the other stuff that gets posted is equally shitty. The vapid "cio" stuff, the breathless yabbering about the latest tiny little tidbit some security outfit or other managed to shit on a sandwich, clickbait fro
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It's also low footprint in not littering your system with crap.
It does not even have "the LXDE window manager" like there's the Xfce window manager, the Mate one, the Gnome 3 one, the KDE one etc. but instead uses a small, existing one.
Its Windows 95 task bar is not the greatest ever, nor is it really bad. That's where this Peppermint distro release looks interesting, using Xfce's task bar and start menu instead. It's likely very easy to replicate, lxsession has a couple extremely small config files in /etc
Does it still use systemd? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it isn't very light. On my Ubuntu 16.04 system I booted less than two hours ago:
/lib/systemd/systemd-journald /lib/systemd/systemd-udevd /lib/systemd/systemd-logind /sbin/cgmanager -m name=systemd /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system --address=systemd: --nofork --nopidfile --systemd-activation
# ps auxw | grep systemd
root 240 0.0 0.1 34724 6940 ? Ss 01:07 9:05
root 270 0.0 0.0 44900 3424 ? Ss 01:07 2:02
root 545 0.0 0.0 28548 2720 ? Ss 01:07 8:02
root 556 0.0 0.0 29880 1216 ? Ss 01:07 7:00
message+ 572 0.0 0.0 42904 3420 ? Ss 01:07 19:01
That's 45 minutes of CPU usage over less than 120 minutes on a new i7. That's just too much.
Re: Does it still use systemd? (Score:1)
systemd is better so it's worth giving up half of a CPU for it.
Re: Does it still use systemd? (Score:2, Funny)
This. People that don't understand it don't understand why it is worth the slowness.
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That's 45 minutes of CPU usage over less than 120 minutes on a new i7. That's just too much.
Considering how much better binary log files are, that's an acceptable trade-off.
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did you try? there isn't much activity with sysv scripts and no poetteringware. networkmanager? a plain dhcp-client and network/interface needs almost no cpu. init? always idle. syslog? very little cpu.
what does he do, what needs so much cpu? bitcoin mining?
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Those numbers look wrong somehow.
To compare, I have 8 days uptime and pulled these numbers:
# ps auxw | grep systemd
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 383 0.0 0.1 64132 29144 ? Ss Jun17 0:26
root 443 0.0 0.0 45820 5128 ? Ss Jun17 0:01
message+ 1143 0.0 0.0 44596 5648 ? Ss Jun17 7:33
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You're right about one thing, that's too much.
I see 9min 10sec of CPU usage over 75053min on a shithouse old Intel Atom. That's insignificant.
Your system has massive issues. Systemd on the other hand is just fine.
# ps auxw | grep systemd
root 1 0.0 0.0 185596 4812 ? Ss May05 4:29
root 355 0.0 0.0 43900 11892 ? Ss May05 0:57
systemd+ 1539 0.0 0.0 315260 1800 ? Ssl May28 0:02
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Well it won't handle tons of logs without any resources, it's not magic. If you had run syslog then that would have consumed just as much cpu if not more.
For example here is the same output from one server here which still use rsyslogd since it's a non systemd machine (Ubuntu 14.04LTS) and which experienced quite a lot of logging:
root@www99:~# ps aux | grep syslog
syslog 957 0.0 0.0 256224 27664 ? Ssl Jun04 14:46 rsyslogd
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It's a linux-only version, 11.2 with security patches that come in through the package manager.
I doubt malware authors care very much about that one.
It used to be easier to block, but ublock origin is a partial workaround.
upgradeable ? (Score:2)
Is it upgradeable ? I don't really like those distributions that require a clean install on each release.
Well hidden (Score:2)
Concensus is (Score:1)
Yawn. For a real distro, Fedora released 24 recently.
site specific browser (Score:2)
How do they do it?
I really liked mozilla prism, then it was discontinued. Chrome --app isn't quite the same, currently i have one app with epiphany app-mode, which works like prism, but doesn't hide the navigation bar, which takes quite a lot of screen-space like all recent gnome programs with new style. And epiphany doesn't have all html5 features, yet.