Reflecting On PeppermintOS

In this video I will be taking a look back at the first ISO Peppermint released, probably a year or two after the sad passing of Mark Greaves, with a new developer and based on Debian it was a long time waiting. I already had the ISO PeppermintOS had first released, with the second one I had downloaded in May of 2022, while checking out the second ISO I suspected that there may have been another updated ISO since, it's hard to tell from the Peppermint website as the ISO's are not time stamped in any way, so I decided to download another ISO and sure enough there were some slight differences, so it was worthwhile. I can see that Peppermint has continued to evolve slowly but surely with some subtle differences and the addition of one or two App/Tools. Hope you enjoy the video.

Timestamps - 00:00
First Peppermint ISO Install - 00:51
Second Peppermint ISO Downloaded 22/05/2022 Live Environment - 05:25
Second Peppermint ISO Downloaded 22/05/2022 Install - 08:23
Package Selection Calamares Installer - 09:05
End of Package Selection - 14:22
Login to Installed Desktop - 14:50
Peppermint Hub (Hardware & Software Tab) Side by Side Comparison - 17:04
End of Peppermint Hub Side by Side Comparison - 21:02
Third Peppermint ISO Downloaded 13/08/2022 Install - 21:32
Package Selection Calamares Installer - 22:42
End of Package Selection - 23:42
Login to Installed Desktop - 24:42
Update Manager - 25:40
Update Pep Tools - 26:17
Kumo Site Specific Browser, Possible (Ice Replacement?) 27:42
xDaily looks to be some kind of Pep Tools Dependency Repo Update App? - 34:45
Kumo SSB Continued - 35:06
Outro - 36:06

Awesome Youtube Channels

Linux Saloon -

eznix -

TRG - The Real Geek -

Life, Home and my Linux Journeys' -

DistroTube

Run With The Dolphin (runwiththedolphin)

TuxDigital

Steve's Very Own

Dasgeek

Destination Linux (Best Linux News)

Total OS Today

Linux Quest

Joe Collins (EzeeLinux)

Schyken

Vince - sleepyeyesvince

Awesome Wallpapers

Karl Schneider (Deviant Art)

Karl Schneider (Open Desktop)

Charlie Henson

Awesome Audio Podcast

Colin Brash

[charlescadogan]

Big thanks to your videos. I've learnt so much 🙂

[kswoodsman]

I enjoyed you showcasing the evolution of ISOs from 2022.
Thank You for taking some time to make an informative and well editied video that was enjoyable to watch and follow.
When FF-ESR and the others didn't install, I think the VM might have ran out of memory while downloading the packages.
I get this sometimes when doing very much with the live session, in a VM & real hardware, limited to 1GB before starting the installer.

As for the build date, from the very start I had the build date in the original checksum file.
Another quick way to know is to check the internal build date of the ISO (to the second) of when it was made.
[codeblock]
hexdump -C -n16 -s33598 <path_to_your>.iso
[/codeblock]
and it will display [ 2022051903580300 ] which translates to 2022 - 05(May) - 19th - 03:58 AM(UTC) and 03 seconds.
If you only want the date, change the "-n16" to "-n8" and it only gets the first 8 bytes of the timestamp instead of all 16 bytes in the date string.
When I was building 5-6 or more ISOs a day I had to have something to quickly give a sorted list of the isos in a folder as well as which version was already transferred to USB. I tapped out a "one-liner" called `date_of_iso` for this . It takes no arguments and looks for ISOs in the current working directory, listing them in a terminal.

Dan has been testing for us. He's been a real trooper, being a great help, giving us perspective that we don't see while authoring applications.
Many Thanks there for his efforts, as well.

In the few other reviews I've take the time to watch, I am always surprised that no one clicks on the "Community Links" at the bottom of the Welcome Screen. These open a window using PyQtWebEngine to display webpages from the internet in a similar fashion to a SSB
Though they are basic and do require an internet connection, they are functional and not tied to a specific web browser.

Since not all of us are in the countries where English is the native spoken language, I think the Network/Internet is a "translation thing".
Thanks for catching that .

I'm looking forward to your follow up on the Devuan release.
KsW

[ThatLinuxDude]

To be honest, once Feren OS's big update comes (currently planned as 2022.08, but could always be delayed), it would be fun to distro reflect Feren OS tbh.

[Bruces-Eclectic-World]

I'm glad to see that I am not the only one that does that on videos Colin... LOL LOL LOL lOL lOL
I too get confused with new apps and it takes me a bit to figure them out. Would be nice if Devs would explain them so us old blokes can use them, while hoping it is not altimers setting in... HahahAhAhAha

Nice little project you have going. Was worth a watch for me and I stayed awake too.

Would I use it? While it has come along way from a rocky start, it reminds me of MX with all the special tools. That does make it different from other install's. So I could see me using it as it has changed my mind from the first release of the Debian version.
Dan says it getting better and I be leave that from this video. Not to worry about all of the Oops. It is part of making videos... 😛

Thanks Mate for a great video!

LLAP
🖖

BTW, I like your editing skills. I might get there some LOL

[runwiththedolphin]

there is a odd translation of "Network" to "Internet" in menus. "Network" is the freedesktop category, and most menuing systems put those items under "Internet" on desktop linux. so in kumo it would be "Network" for the category. Probably anyway.

[lqlarry]

One thing about some of these 'Linux Beginner Distro's' is that there are not a lot of explanations of the helper tools that can tell a Linux beginner what they do. Other than that Pep seems okay.

[MrWarneet]

Might spin it up on my Laptop, has decent functionality and light weight...

[PizzaLovingNerd]

I'm interested in making a risiOS Xfce spin that would kind of be the spiritual successor to Ubuntu-based/pre-Debian Peppermint.

Basically it would be a mix of Peppermint, Zorin Lite, and risiOS/Fedora.

It's sad to see how much Peppermint fell, especially as an ICE contributor.

[johanb.]

I think you need a vacation mate😜 You still on ezarch Gnome customized Colin version Colin?

[eznix]

Looks like a hot mess of glitches and annoyances. There is no need to excuse your findings, all the little problems you exposed clearly demonstrate that Peppermint OS need a lot of polishing. Everything that Peppermint adds to Debian are irrelevant and unnecessary for me. I would not trust this system, especially after seeing the various issues you found. I would also need to gut most of the Peppermint tools and customizations in order to even want to use the system. Just give me pure Debian, it's far more trustworthy and capable out of the box.