Peppermint OS

Peppermint OS was initially conceived at the Black Rose Pub in Hendersonville, NC (North Carolina), USA during a night of drinking and discussion about the future of desktop Linux. Peppermint was originally designed to be a social media-centric distribution.

Pre-alpha development builds consisted of a wide array of potential directions before the decision to fork Lubuntu was made. There was quite a bit of experimentation with KDE, E17, Adobe Air, and several different code bases during January and February 2010. Alpha builds using the Lubuntu 10.04 code base started in March 2010. Peppermint was released to a small group of private beta testers in April 2010 where it remained private until the first public release.

On May 9, 2010, Peppermint One was released. In less than a week, it received over 25,000 downloads. It soon outgrew its web host and switched to VPS.NET. VPS.NET became the first official sponsor of the Peppermint project.

On June 20, 2010, Peppermint Ice was released. It sported Chromium as the default browser and featured a blue and black theme to distinguish it from Peppermint One.

On June 10, 2011, Peppermint Two was released. Combining aspects from the two previous editions, it packaged Chromium as its default browser alongside the Ice application for creating Site Specific Browsers. It was also the first edition of Peppermint to be available in both 32 and 64 bit versions.

On July 23, 2012, Peppermint Three was released. Chromium stable repository was enabled by default; very light theme and default artwork; fewer default web applications in the menu ; it shipped with GWoffice; and GIMP 2.8 was added to the Peppermint repository.

On June 13, 2013, Peppermint Four was released. Peppermint Four was based on the Ubuntu 13.04 code base and used the LXDE desktop environment, but with Xfwm4 instead of Openbox as the window manager. Example games, Entanglement and First Person Tetris, were added. Also added were some metapackages for popular tasks such as graphic arts and photography to the Featured section of the Software Manager.

On June 23, 2014, Peppermint Five was released.[25] "With this release we are getting ready for the future. The technology landscape is constantly changing, and we are always responding to meet our user's needs. We are 100% driven to deliver an OS that is fast, secure, and available everywhere. Peppermint Five is another step in that direction." - Shane Remington - COO of Peppermint OS, LLC

On May 31, 2015, Peppermint Six was released. "Peppermint is excited to announce the launch of our latest operating system, Peppermint Six. Lightweight and designed for speed, Peppermint Six delivers on that promise whether using software on your desktop, online, or using cloud based apps. I want to take this opportunity to thank Mark Greaves, who stepped up and produced most of what you see here in Peppermint Six. Mark is now playing a major role here at Peppermint by leading the development team. I think you will be impressed by what he and the others have put together in Peppermint Six." - Shane Remington - COO of Peppermint OS, LLC

On June 24, 2016, Peppermint Seven was released. "Team Peppermint are pleased to announce our latest operating system Peppermint 7, it comes in both 32bit and 64bit editions with the latter having full UEFI/GPT/Secure Boot support baked in, a new version of Ice (our in house Site Specific Browser framework) is also included with full Firefox web browser support as well as Chromium / Chrome." - Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec) - Development Team Leader & Support Admin

On January 14th 2020, Peppermint CEO Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec) died in hospital. After taking over Peppermint from Shane Remington and Kendall Weaver shortly after Peppermint 5, Mark devoted his life to Peppermint with his family's support and went on to release more versions of Peppermint up to Peppermint 10 and a respin of Peppermint 10. The official announcement was made on the Peppermint forum and a memorial fund has been set up by his family to honour Mark's legacy.

On February 2, 2022, PeppermintOS released a new version for the first time in two years, its main new features and changes include:

Peppermint is now based on Debian Stable 64-bit, instead of Ubuntu or its derivatives,

Dropped LXDE components in favor of Xfce,

Nemo replaces Thunar as the default file manager,

No web browser is installed, a browser can be installed using Welcome to Peppermint application,

Ubiquity has been replaced by Calamares for the system installer

Peppermint OS ships with few native applications and a traditional desktop interface. What originally made Peppermint unique is its approach to creating a hybrid desktop that integrates both cloud and local applications. In place of traditionally native applications for common tasks (word processing, image editing), it ships with the custom Ice application, which allows users to create site-specific browsers (SSB's).

In Peppermint OS, the open-source Firefox browser is used as a way to enable a site-specific browser (SSB) for cloud applications. Instead of opening a browser and then visiting an application site, there is a dedicated browser window that is integrated into the system for a specific application. Support for the Firefox web browser (alongside Chromium and Chrome web browsers) was added to the custom Ice application in the fall of 2015, allowing the creation of SSB's in a web browser window. Peppermint OS is a project where you can marry the cloud to the desktop, as with any Ubuntu based OS, it is possible for users to install applications natively from Ubuntu compatible repositories, allowing one to run cloud based applications right alongside desktop software. Like any other Linux distribution, it allows for installing packages like LibreOffice, GIMP, VLC, Skype, etc. Peppermint is built from Ubuntu and supports whatever Ubuntu supports. Peppermint OS ships with mintInstall, Synaptic, and GDebi to facilitate this.

Peppermint's namesake is Linux Mint. The developers originally wanted to make use of configuration and utilities sourced from Linux Mint coupled with an environment that was less demanding on resources and more focused on web integration. They felt that the concept was a "spicier" version of Mint, so the name Peppermint was a natural fit.

While Linux Mint is known for its Cinnamon desktop, Peppermint uses a default desktop that is a hybrid based mainly on selected components from LXDE and XFCE that is significantly more lightweight.

Peppermint has been consistently releasing updates on a decent cadence since at least 2010, when it was first released.

Version Date Last respin

One 9 May 2010 01042011

Ice 20 July 2010 20110302

Two 10 June 2011 N/A

Three 23 July 2012 N/A

Four 13 June 2013 20131113

Five 23 June 2014 N/A

Six 31 May 2015 N/A

Seven 24 June 2016 N/A

Eight 28 May 2017 N/A

9 22 June 2018 N/A

10 14 May 2019 20191210

11 2 Feb 2022 N/A