Netbook Network

Mentha x piperita is the binomial name for peppermint, and today I tested out Peppermint OS, after 3 or 4 other OS’s wouldn’t work with my flash drive. Peppermint is another OS like Jolicloud, combined with the full blown Ubuntu interface we all know and love.

When first starting Peppermint, it took about 35 seconds to boot up. The bootup is sleek and elegant and has a very short splash screen that looks like that of Lucid Lynx’s except with a Peppermint logo instead of Ubuntu. Then you get this swirly plantlike fuzzy thing… oh so hard to describe… showing that your bootup is done. Then you press a button or move the mouse and you’re diving right in.

What’s unique about Peppermint is that it is another OS that has cloud features. Peppermint features Mozilla’s Prism, which lets users take applications online such as GMail and turn them into apps/programs on your computer. By default, Peppermint comes with most of the programs you would want to have, such as GMail, YouTube, FaceBook, pixlr’s Editor (It’s almost exactly like Photoshop. I’m surprised they never got sued…), Dropbox, Hulu, and much more. I was a bit disappointed that the only office program they included was Google Docs and not OpenOffice, but that may just be me. After downloading a couple programs I checked to see how many resources the OS was using.

The OS itself uses about 5-8% of the CPU and around 250MB of RAM, making this perfect for netbooks. The local programs booted up very quickly, and the cloud based ones a little longer (I don’t have the greatest internet connection). I opened up the Task Manager to check the resources again with several programs open, and the highest levels I saw were 55% of CPU and 311 MB of RAM when using pixlr. Not bad, but could be better. I didn’t try, since GIMP is a large file and doesn’t fit on my flash drive, but GIMP may use less resources than internet based pixlr. Average browsing and programs open gave me around 20% CPU and 289MB of RAM used.

Peppermint has the same kind of GUI that you see in Ubuntu, so it’s very similar to what you would find in Windows. The OS itself looks very sleek and elegant, and is also pleasing to the eye. Just about anyone could come up to your computer and be able to use Peppermint after about 5 minutes, as the interface really isn’t much different other than the cloud based apps.

Even though Peppermint is very cloud oriented with Prism and all, don’t think you can’t download normal programs to use as well. I downloaded VLC and it worked like a synch. Playback was smooth and the resources were lower than when using pixlr.

Overall, Peppermint is a great OS and has very good integration with the web to meet the demands of the evolving generation being connected to the internet more than ever. The Peppermint ISO is 444MB and installation takes up less than a GB of space, so this OS is perfect for anyone using a Solid State Drive. If you are looking for an OS that can have you connected to the web as quick as possible, but also has the ability to use other programs (*cough*GoogleChrome*cough*), then Peppermint is the OS for you.