Introducing Peppermint Eight. Say hello to the next iteration of our lightweight, stable, and super fast operating system. Peppermint Eight is built on a long term support (LTS) code base, so as well as being customizable to your heart's content, will be "good to go" for quite some time. Peppermint Eight is built on the Ubuntu ...

Peppermint 8 Released

by Mark Greaves | posted in: Corporate News | 70

Team Peppermint are pleased to announce the latest iteration of our operating system Peppermint 8, it comes in both 32bit and 64bit editions with the latter having full UEFI / GPT / Secureboot support, a new version of Ice (our in house Site Specific Browser framework) is also included with full Chromium, Chrome, Firefox, and now Vivaldi web browser support .

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Peppermint 8 (Peppermint-8-20170527) highlights:-

- Still based on the 16.04 code base, but now with the 4.8 kernel series and upgraded graphics stack via the HWE offering rolling kernel and graphics stack upgrades as they become available upstream.
- Mesa 17.0.2 for an improved gaming experience.
- The Peppermint 8 ISO images now have an ‘OEM Install’ option, allowing computers to be shipped with Peppermint pre-installed (and with additional software pre-installed) where the user will be prompted for their own language, location, keyboard layout, and account details on first boot, allowing the system configuration to be unique to the new owner.
- Talking of keyboard layouts, in response to user requests Peppermint 8 now has much improved keyboard layout handling, including the ability to easily configure then swap between multiple layouts from the system tray (or Left-Alt+Left-Shift keyboard shortcut) .
- Added volume management, so external drives are now auto-mounted when plugged in and DVD’s auto-played in VLC , a utility for changing these settings can be found in the much expanded Peppermint Settings Panel.
- Again because of much appreciated user feedback we’ve switch back to the Chromium web browser as the default, the pepperflash PPAPI flashplayer is included, and we’ve retained the ‘Firefox Theme Lock’ utility for those that wish to use Firefox and a dark Gtk theme instead.

And many other refinements and improvements including:-

- The calculator is now mate-calc because it’s more consistent with the way the Windows/OS X/iOS/Android calculators processes sum entry.

- The lxtask task manager has been replaced with xfce4-taskmanager because it displays more active information including a CPU and RAM usage trace.
- The pluma text editor is replaced with xed, but for documentation compatibility – typing a command with ‘pluma’ or ‘gedit’ will open xed.
- The eog image viewer has been replaced with xviewer because Gnome client side decorations were inconsistent with Peppermint’s overall ‘look and feel’.
- All X-Apps are now in the Peppermint 8 repositories, so you can install pix, xreader, and xplayer if you wish, as are xfdashboard and xfce4-hotcorner-plugin for those that may want them.
- Added NFS support out of the box.
- Added exFAT support out of the box.
- OpenDyslexic font installed out of the box as an option (not the default font).

- Font hinting changed to “full” by default.
- A much expanded Peppermint Settings Panel with additional features and a new ‘Tweaks‘ category.
- Added a ‘Panel Reset’ utility to the Peppermint Settings Panel to reset the xfce4-panel to system defaults.
- Added a utility to the Peppermint Settings Panel to enable/disable system sounds.
- Added a utility to the Peppermint Settings Panel to enable/disable system hibernation.
- Added the ‘Numix Folders’ utility to the Peppermint Settings Panel which allows changing the type and colour of the folder icons when using one of the Numix icon themes.
- The whiskermenu application categories have been switched to the left, and application descriptions replaced with tooltips by popular request.
- Extra color options for Gtk and Icon themes

- New installation slideshow.
- And some new wallpapers that we hope you’ll like including the new default, and some additional images by the brilliant photographer Ray Bilcliff

If you’d like to see more of Ray’s outstanding photgraphy, please visit:
http://www.raybilcliff.com/
or:
http://trueportraits.com/
or his Google+ page (photos):
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/+raybilcliff

Please also see the Release Notes

As with previous releases we invite you to compare Peppermint to other operating systems, we are confident you will be impressed. To take the Peppermint 8 out for a test drive, please visit our website at peppermintos.com where you can download it for free. If you need help installing the Peppermint 8, or have any questions about using it, we have a second-to-none user support team at forum.peppermintos.com please drop in even if only for a chat with friendly like-minded people .. hope to see you there.

About Peppermint OS

Peppermint OS is a software company, originally based in Asheville, North Carolina but now operating out of Cornwall England. Founded in 2010, we are committed to building the best operating system for both enterprise and consumers available on the widest range of devices. To find out more about us, please visit https://peppermintos.com.

Introducing Peppermint Eight

Say hello to the next iteration of our lightweight, stable, and super fast operating system. Peppermint Eight is built on a long term support (LTS) code base, so as well as being customizable to your heart's content, will be "good to go" for quite some time. Peppermint Eight is built on the Ubuntu 16.04 code base

File Management from Nemo

Fresh from the Cinnamon desktop environment the ultra smooth Nemo file manager allows easy connection to remote network shares, fine grained control of desktop icons, custom action scripts, and together with the new wallpaper manager easy configuration of desktop backgrounds

Web app integration with Ice

Peppermint's handy cloud & web application management tool 'Ice' continues to put web applications on an equal footing with locally installed apps by allowing them easy integration into system menus, and delivery to the desktop via SSB's so they mimic locally installed applications.

Help Keep Peppermint Free For Everyone! Forever!

Peppermint is an Open Source project and uses all of its funds to provide its operating system and community services freely to the world, for everyone to to use. Consider making a donation today.

The Official Peppermint User's Guide

Thank you for choosing to download Peppermint as your operating system. This simple guide should help you to get up and running in as little time as possible, going over the basics of making a bootable CD or USB drive then installing and setting things up the way you like them.

Chapter 1 - Download and Install

Choosing and Downloading a Disk Image

Naturally the first thing you'll need to do in order to get up and running is to download the image. We distribute these images as .iso files, which are commonly referred to as "disk images". We presently offer two different images: one for 32 bit systems (i386), and one for 64 bit systems (amd64).
Regarding the functionality of the desktop, both images are virtually identical. The underlying differences between 32 bit and 64 bit are really beyond the scope of this guide; however, there are a few standard “rules of thumb” to help you choose which one is right for your system:

32 bit only has native support for a little over 3 GB of RAM, but can support more if necessary.
32 bit will run on much older hardware than 64 bit will.
64 bit is generally a little faster, so if you have a 64bit CPU it would be best to use 64 bit Linux.
Most desktop users won't notice any drastic performance differences between the two.
Most processors made after 2008 will support 64 bit.
32 bit may be phased out at some point in the future.

That said, we generally do generally recommend 64 bit for newer systems so that the maximum amount of RAM can be supported without relying on Physical Address Extension. If you're not sure about whether or not your computer will support 64 bit, then please download the 32 bit image.

Direct Download

Depending upon your connection speed, the download may finish in as little as a few minutes. Peppermint disk images are generally smaller than most full featured desktop operating systems.
For additional reading on the differences between 32 bit and 64 bit, Ubuntu has this nice Community Documentation Page that covers the topic in more detail.

Downloading via Torrent

For those wishing to download the ISO images via Torrent, here are the Torrent links. If you don't know how to use Torrents or what a 'Torrent Client' is, please use the "Direct Download" links above.

Checking the Integrity of the Image

When dealing with large or critical file downloads, it's often advised to check the integrity of the file. Fortunately this is easily done using any one of various programs such as md5sum which is available for most modern desktop operating systems, md5 on Apple OS X and most BSD variants, or FCIV for Microsoft Windows.
Checking the integrity of the file is done for a couple of reasons. The first is that it guarantees that the file is not corrupt by checking it against a known value. The second is that it guarantees the file to be authentic and has not been tampered with by unknown third parties.
Conducting the integrity check with md5sum is quite simple. Open a terminal or command prompt in the directory where the disk image is and type “md5sum” followed by the file name. Refer to the image below:

If the result of the integrity check matches the md5 hash provided with the download, then the download was successful and you’re ready to create an installation medium. The md5 hashes for the currently available Peppermint 8 disk images are as follows:

Peppermint 8 Respin-2 (32bit) - f20531e392018bb5ebb13adae0e7fa79 Peppermint-8-20180203-i386.iso
Peppermint 8 Respin-2 (64bit) - 31d69bb2d873eb3fea2bde075b2801d4 Peppermint-8-20180203-amd64.iso

If you're using a tool other than md5sum to verify the integrity of the disk image, please refer to the application documentation for additional instructions. If the application documentation proves insufficient, then instructions are generally readily available online using your search engine of choice.

Creating an Installation Medium

NOTE - Peppermint are currently recommending Windows users use Rufus to create Peppermint 8 LiveUSB's, a tutorial for using Rufus can be found HERE .. Unetbootin doesn't currently have a working profile for Peppermint 8, hopefully this will change in their next release .. the other option is to use Unetbootin but set the profile to -- Distribution: Lubuntu ~ Version: 16.04_Live -- then point it at the Peppermint 8 ISO image. .. for full instructions on using Unetbootin to create a "persistent" Peppermint 8 LiveUSB, please see HERE.

The next step is to take the disk image and write it to some form of external media so that you can boot the computer into that media and then install the operating system. Most commonly the installation medium consists of either an optical disk such as a CD or DVD, or a simple USB flash drive.
Almost all modern computers can boot from a USB flash drive and this is the method that we most strongly recommend. When compared to a CD/DVD, bootable USB flash drives are significantly faster when it comes to live desktop performance and install time. Also many new laptops and netbooks simply do not have any type of optical drive installed, thus ruling out optical media altogether. If you must write the image to a CD/DVD, note that almost every application capable of writing to optical disks ("burning a CD" if you will) is capable of doing this and we strongly advise you to consult the application documentation specific to what you will be working with.
There are also a number of applications available for the specific purpose of creating bootable USB flash drives from .iso disk images. Of these we generally recommend one called UNetbootin as it's simple to use and is available for most common desktop operating systems including most Linux distributions, all supported editions of Microsoft Windows, and Apple OS X versions 10.5 and higher.
Once UNetbootin is installed, running the application and creating the bootable USB flash drive should be a fairly straightforward and intuitive process. In case you’re wondering, insert a USB flash drive, use the “Diskimage” option and navigate through the filesystem to find the disk image you want and then click “OK”.

It will take UNetbootin a few minutes to finish up and then it will prompt you to either reboot the computer or quit. The reboot option is nice if you’ll be booting into the image on the computer you’re working with; however, it’s just as simple to quit, eject the USB flash drive and move it to another computer (note that bootable USB flash drives created with UNetbootin are not bootable with Apple computers).
Peppermint 8 is offered as hybrid ISO images. As a result, the images can be written directly to certain mediums (such as USB flash drives). Documentation on this and instructions on how to do so can be found here.

Booting Into Your Installation Medium

When you first power a computer on, the first thing you see is almost invariably what is called the BIOS screen. Generally this is the part where you see the computer manufacturer's logo (or the motherboard manufacturer's logo if you assembled the machine yourself) along with a few other things such as "F2 to Enter Setup" or something along those lines. What we want to do is to change the device that the computer is going to boot into as most systems will select the installed hard drive as their first choice.
Entering the BIOS setup differs between computer makes and models but is generally accessed using one of the following: F2, F10, F12, or Esc. Very rarely does the BIOS screen not tell you what it is. Some computers give you multiple options including full setup and a designated boot manager, which is ideal for this sort of work. As an example, my Lenovo ThinkPad has a "ThinkVantage" labelled button that enters the full BIOS setup, while F12 enters the simple boot manager. You do need to be quick about hitting the correct button as the BIOS screen rarely stays up for longer than a few seconds. If you enter the full setup, there is almost always a section that defines the boot order. If you need specific instructions for your machine, see the documentation that came with the computer or do a web search.
Once you have selected the correct device to boot from, follow the on screen instructions regarding saving and exiting (or simply hit "Enter" in the case of a boot manager) and the computer should now boot into the USB flash drive and present you with a UNetbootin screen. From here either wait a moment for the computer to automatically select the first option, or select any option from the list and hit "Enter". Ideally, the option you'll want to select is "Try Peppermint OS Live" which will take you to a fully functional desktop from which you can install the system.

Before Installing

There are a few things you should know before installing Peppermint 8, notably some things such as system requirements and a couple of disclaimers.
For a modern operating system, Peppermint 8 has what many people would call "very modest" system requirements. One of the original goals we set when we first started working on the project was to keep the system requirements low in order to offer the best possible performance to the widest variety of hardware. The absolute minimum required specs are as follows:

512 MB of RAM
Processor based on Intel x86 architecture
At least 3.8 GB of available disk space

Again, do note that these are the absolute minimum required specs. We strongly recommend having something a little stronger to install on. Our minimum recommended specs are as follows:

1 GB of RAM
Processor based on Intel x86 architecture
At least 4 GB of available disk space

Taking it a step further, the preferred minimum specs on a candidate for installation are as follows:

2 GB of RAM
x86_64 or amd64 compatible processor
At least 4 GB of disk space

Peppermint generally installs and runs without issue on most systems that have at least the preferred minimum specs; however, there are always some exceptions. Many of these exceptions come in the form of systems that require proprietary drivers to properly function. Common examples of this include systems with NVIDIA or AMD/ATI graphics cards, or wireless cards from select manufacturers. Fortunately, Peppermint includes the "Software & Updates" application which contains a section called "Additional Drivers" which will scan your system and inform you if you need any proprietary drivers to be installed, and will offer to install them for you. This will usually solve these issues immediately; however, there is no guarantee that this will provide a working solution.
Other exceptions exist, some of which are documented and some of which aren't. If you're unsure about any potential incompatibility, please do some research before installing. During your research you may also want to look for incompatibilities between your hardware and either Ubuntu 16.04 or Linux Mint 18, as both of these share a lot of code with Peppermint 8.
We also have to strongly advise backing up any valuable or sensitive data before installing any operating system onto a computer that has one or more existing operating systems. There is always the risk that the install process could potentially interfere with these other operating systems, though this risk is extremely small.
Our final disclaimer here is that Peppermint does include some proprietary software by default, notably Adobe Flash. Peppermint OS (the company that builds and distributes Peppermint) is a licensed Adobe Flash distributor and depending upon where in the world you live, you may be subject to Adobe's End User License Agreement should you decide to run and install Peppermint. Naturally this means that if you're an open source purist you should probably turn back now.

Running the Installer

The installer in Peppermint can easily be launched by double clicking the "Install Peppermint" icon on the desktop. From here it will take you through a few steps ranging from language selection, to disk partitioning, to setting other system defaults such as timezone, keyboard layout, and username. Most of this is incredibly simple and warrants no explanation.
There is also an option to install additional software from third parties. If you wish for things such as MP3 playback to work without issue, then it is advisable that you select this option.
If you already have other operating systems installed, the installer will recognize this and give you the option to install beside them. Other options here are to simply wipe the entire disk or to set up a more advanced partitioning table. If you're unfamiliar with setting up a partitioning table, it's advisable that you not select this option. Selecting either of the first two options will then present you with a screen where you can either confirm the changes or drag a selector to allocate space between Peppermint and other operating systems that may be installed. After completing this step, changes will be written to the disk and can not be undone. After the partition changes have been written to disk, the installation will continue.
When the installer finishes, Peppermint should now be successfully installed on your computer. You will be prompted with a dialog that will ask if you want to continue to test the live image or restart the computer. Note that any changes you make while still in the live image will be lost when you do restart so it is generally advisable to just go ahead and restart.

Chapter 2 - An Intro to the Desktop

The Peppermint Desktop

The Peppermint desktop experience is a combination of components from several different desktop environments along with a few custom components all assembled with the intention of offering a complete and very cohesive experience while being both very easy to use and very pleasing to the eye.
By default we've made it a point to keep the desktop simple and free of clutter. On the left side of the panel you'll find no more than the application menu and a few common application launchers. On the right side, a workspace switcher sits to the left of the system tray and volume control. A clock/calendar is also present. We provide no desktop icons by default, but Peppermint is designed to be customizable so you can easily add them to your own taste by right-clicking any menu item.

The menu in Peppermint 8 is the 'whiskermenu' courtesy of the Xfce4 panel, it conveniently breaks down application categories according to the standards suggested by freedesktop.org yet unlike the previous LXDE menu is a lot more configurable, functional, informative, and 'modern' looking. It has a built in application search function as well as a 'Favourites' section which we've pre-populated with some applications and utilities we think you'll find useful. Feel free to edit the 'Favourites' section to your own tastes by right-clicking menu items.

The original Peppermint One release came equipped with Mozilla's Firefox web browser by default. Shortly thereafter, the demand for an edition built around Google's Chromium web browser grew to such a point that we released Peppermint Ice. Between then and now we stayed with Chromium because it did everything we needed admirably and because of the deprecation of Mozilla's Prism SSB framework necessary to use Firefox. But although we still use Chromium as the default, we've expanded our Ice application to re-embrace Firefox, Google Chrome, and Vivaldi for SSB backends. So if you prefer those feel free to install whichever suits your needs best.

Next - Chapter 3 - Customizing the Desktop

Chapter 3 - Customizing the Desktop

The Wallpaper

At Peppermint we like to think we have pretty good taste when it comes to default wallpapers, however it's certainly possible that your taste might not agree with ours. Should this be the case, the wallpaper is very easily changed.
The first step is to simply right-click an unoccupied spot on the desktop. This will bring up a context menu containing a few options including "Change Desktop Background". Alternatively you may access "Wallpapers" from the "Accessories" section of the menu.

From here you will see the option to change the wallpaper. The Wallpapers application will display the default wallpapers which are stored in the /usr/share/peppermint/wallpapers directory, but the you can add any directory you wish to be scanned for images by clicking the "Preference" button then choosing "+Add" and browsing to the directory of your choice, any images contained in (or added to) that folder will then be available for selection in the "Wallpapers" application. Another method for setting the desktop wallpaper is to right-click on any image file on your PC and select "Set as Wallpaper..."

The "Customize Look and Feel" Application

Peppermint makes use of a nifty little application called "lxappearance". Since the name of this application leaves a bit to be desired, the application developers have chosen to have it called "Customize Look and Feel" so that everyone can have a more clear understanding of exactly what it does.
Take a look in the "Preferences" section of the menu and "Customize Look and Feel" should be toward the top. Opening the application should present you with the following:

The Peppermint Control Center

Peppermint 8 contains a configuration application called the "Peppermint Control Center" which is located in the "Preferences" section of the main menu or in the new Peppermint settings Panel. The addition of the Xfwm4 window manager in Peppermint Four introduced some disjointed configuration options that were not intuitive and added a degree of confusion to the system. We wrote the Peppermint Control Center to fix this and to consolidate the features of several other applications into a single, unified window.

Installing GTK Themes

The section label as "Widget" in the "Customize Look and Feel" application really refers to what are technically known as "GTK Themes". GTK, short for "Gimp Tool Kit", is a widget rendering toolkit commonly in use by a number of open source desktops including LXDE, Cinnamon, Gnome and Xfce.
Although "Customize Look and Feel" does not currently offer a simple graphical method to install GTK themes, this can still be done quite easily with just a couple of steps. In this example, I'm going to use a theme called "DeLorean-Dark-3.18" that is available from gnome-look.org. The default application selection in Peppermint necessitates that in order for everything to look proper, any theme you install must have both a GTK 2.x component and a GTK 3.x component, so it may be in your best interest to check for these prior to installing themes. Typically most themes labeled as "GTK 3.x" will include a GTK 2.x component, but there are certainly exceptions. After downloading the theme, it should be present in your "Downloads" directory in the file manager.

Now I'm perfectly aware that many new users may be uncomfortable with using the terminal. I have to state that though it can be a daunting task to learn to use it efficiently and effectively, there's no reason to shy away from occasionally using it to perform simple tasks. The terminal is often the most efficient manner in which to perform operations both simple and complex. Allow me to break down these two commands so that they make sense to everyone:

mkdir ~/.themes

The first part of this command is "mkdir" which is basically an abbreviation for "make directory". You can use this command to create directories anywhere in the filesystem presuming you have the proper permissions to do so. In this instance we're creating a directory called ".themes" in your home directory. There are a couple of things here that need some additional explaining though: In all terminal instances the characters "~/" represent your home folder, and the period (or dot) in ".themes" indicates that this is a hidden directory. GTK is programmed to look for themes in the "~/.themes" directory so adding any GTK themes here will make them immediately available. Once you've created the "~/.themes" directory you will not have to do it again for additional themes you wish to install.

cp -r Delorean-Dark-3.18 ~/.themes/

In this command we make use of "cp" which is basically an abbreviation for "copy". The "cp" command is rather simple in that you type it, tell it any specifics about how to perform the operation, choose what you want to copy, and finally tell it where you want to copy it to. In this case the "-r" means to recursively copy something, which is basically a glorified way of saying that in addition to copying our target we want to copy absolutely everything inside our target as well. Next we see "Delorean-Dark-3.18", which is the name of what we want to copy. Finally we see "~/.themes/", which is the location where we want the theme to end up. If any of this seems a bit abstract, don't worry. Just know that if you wish to do this with additional themes, just replace "Delorean-Dark-3.18" with whatever the name of the folder is that results from extracting the archive.
Congratulations! The theme is now installed. If you open the "Customize Look and Feel" application you'll see that the theme is ready to be used.

Changing the Panel

The default Panel in Peppermint can also be customized to your liking. The location, appearance, and layout of the panel are all easily customized by simply right-clicking anywhere on the panel and selecting "Panel > Panel Preferences". The panel supports multiple positions on screen including either side of the screen. Be warned that this does not always look the best though. You can even specify the width of the panel or set margins on either side in order to place it precisely where you want it.
When it comes to appearance, the panel gives you several options. By default Peppermint 8 uses a single panel at the bottom of screen, but you can add more including 'dock bar' style panels. You may wish to experiment with some some of the settings in here and fine tune it to your own liking. A word of advice though, as there are millions of setting permutations it may be safest to change just one or two things at a time remembering their default settings in case you want to switch back .. if you somehow manage to make a complete mess of things, please ask at the Peppermint forum how to reset the panel back to defaults.

In addition to all of this, you'll also find the panel "Items" tab which allows you to take any number of available applets and place them anywhere on the panel you like. Examples are a application launchers, a directory menu, and a 'show desktop' button which allows you to quickly minimize all open application windows and access the desktop, then return them to their previous state. If the applet you're looking for isn't already available more applets can be installed via the Synaptic package manager.

Chapter 4 - Installing and Removing Software

Introduction to Software Management

As with most operating systems you will probably want to install some additional applications, or potentially remove some of the defaults that you don't find particularly useful. Fortunately software management in Peppermint is rather simple in that we have multiple methods of accomplishing this.
Software in Peppermint comes in the form of Debian software packages which carry the .deb file extension. These packages contain a complex dependency structure implemented in such a way that the user should never have to worry about anything while installing.

Here you will find software broken down into categories according to their intended use. You will also find descriptions, reviews, and ratings for each application. The most popular and highly rated applications can be found in the "Featured" category. The Peppermint specific metapackages can be found in the "Featured" category as well.
Using the Software Manager is quite easy: simply navigate to the application you wish to install and click on the "Install" button. That's it. The Software Manager will handle all the rest for you, including dependency resolution. In a moment you should be able to check the menu and see your freshly installed application. Removal of applications in the Software Manager is handled in exactly the same way except that you will see a "Remove" button for applications that are already installed on the system.

The Synaptic Package Manager

If you're looking for something that's a little more technical in nature than the Software Manager, the Synaptic Package Manager should fit the bill nicely. Synaptic can be easily be found in the "System Tools" section of the menu. Synaptic makes very few compromises in the way of simplifying software installation the way the Software Manager does. As such it's often the preferred graphical tool for veteran users and power users on systems where it is available. While using Synaptic, be prepared to have a good idea of exactly what you're searching for as it is less discriminating about such things than the Software Manager.

Synaptic functions by having the user mark packages that they wish to install, upgrade, or remove. After all the changes you wish to make are marked, simply click on the "Apply" button. From here you will be prompted with a confirmation window that provides drop down menus which break down all of the changes to be made, including any dependencies that are necessary for the software you are installing. Clicking "Apply" in this window will confirm the changes and Synaptic will go ahead with the process.

Unlike the Software Manager and Synaptic, GDebi does not automatically handle dependencies for you. If a software package requires other packages to be installed first, it will let you know but you'll need to find alternate means of installing the additional packages (such as the Software Manager or Synaptic). These packages must be installed prior to GDebi installing the package. Once you have installed the required dependencies via some other means, you are free to install the downloaded package with GDebi. The installation process should only take a few seconds and you'll be shown a dialog box that indicates the installation status.

The Terminal

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the terminal can often be an overwhelming place to end up if you aren't familiar with how it operates. In this chapter we're going to cover 7 simple commands that should get you up and running in regards to software management in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update

Peppermint keeps a list of all available software and the versions of that software from all available sources. It makes sense to update that list periodically so that Peppermint will know to look for new versions of installed software and so that it can be aware of new software that is available. The "apt-get update" command tells Peppermint to refresh this list so that it can take advantage of the most recent software updates and additions. Note that "apt-get update" does not actually install any software, it simply informs the system of what is available.

sudo apt-get upgrade

New versions of software packages are being released all the time. The "apt-get upgrade" command tells the system to download and install any available new versions of software that is already installed on the system. If a new version of a package requires an additional package to be installed, or if it requires an existing package to be removes, "apt-get upgrade" will kindly let you know that the upgrade is being held back. Under no circumstances will it install new packages or remove any existing packages.

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

This command will perform the same function as "apt-get upgrade" however it will install additional packages that new versions depend on, and it will remove packages that cause conflicts.

sudo apt-get install

Now we get to the fun part. The "apt-get install" command will install any available package by including the package name after the command If you want to install the Leafpad text editor, then type "sudo apt-get install leafpad". If you want to install the Eclipse integrated developer environment, then type "sudo apt-get install eclipse". Applications like Leafpad, which has no additional dependencies, will simply download and install after you enter your password. Applications like Eclipse, which has a lot of dependencies, will prompt you for whether or not you want to install all of the required dependencies before moving forward. Software management from the terminal is generally much more efficient than going through one of the graphical tools. The downside is that you have to know the name of each package you wish to install.

sudo apt-get remove

Removing software is just the same as installing it except for one word. Just like with the "apt-get install" command, simply add the name of the application you wish to remove after the "apt-get remove" command and hit "Enter". You may be prompted for your password, then the command will ask you to verify using "y" or "n" and if you select "y" then the application will be removed. Configuration files from the removed application will stay on the system in case you later decide to reinstall the application. There's really not much to it.

sudo apt-get purge

This command is just like "apt-get remove" however it will remove any configuration files associated with the application being removed as well.

sudo dpkg -i

Just as GDebi handles downloaded software packages with a graphical front end, "sudo dpkg -i" handles downloaded software packages from the terminal. This command works in a similar manner to "apt-get install", however it does require that the terminal be open to the directory where the package is, or that you type the full path to the software package. In addition, "sudo dpkg -i" requires that you type the entire filename (including the version and the .deb extension) of the software package whereas "apt-get install" simply requires the name. For example I'm going to reinstall the Google Chrome package I installed earlier with GDebi, but this time using "sudo dpkg -i":

Do note that like GDebi, the "sudo dpkg -i" command does not automatically handle dependencies and will alert you of packages you must install via other means.
To break things down just a little bit, the "sudo" part of the command tells the system to use administrative privileges while running the rest of the command. "dpkg" is actually a very large and very powerful framework for working with Debian software packages in almost any capacity. The "-i" is simply one of the many options in "dpkg", this one meaning that it should install something. Finally we have the full name of the downloaded software package. We can't abbreviate here as is done with the "apt-get" commands as "apt-get" will always refer to either the most current version (when installing or upgrading) or the installed version (when removing. Many people use "dpkg" to work with older versions or experimental versions of software and in these situations typing the exact package name with the exact version number eliminates much confusion. The "dpkg -i" command is not a wrapper and thus is the exact same command you would use in Debian/Ubuntu.
Again, don't worry if you feel a bit overwhelmed with some of the terminal commands. This is why the graphical tools exist. Please check the following for some additional information regarding some of what was discussed here:

Chapter 5 - Site Specific Browsers and the Ice Application

An Intro to Site Specific Browsers

Peppermint makes heavy use of what are called "Site Specific Browsers" or SSBs. Essentially many modern web applications offer much advanced functionality and SSBs allow these apps to be more directly integrated with the desktop. Ice now supports SSB's through four web browsers, Chromium, Chrome, Firefox, and Vivaldi. We default to Chromium but feel free to install one of the other browsers and recreate your SSB's.
You may wonder about the difference between Ice and Chromium's built in "Create Application Shortcuts..." tool. The answer is that Chromium's built in tool does not integrate with the system menu at all and doesn't give the user the opportunity to remove SSBs. Both of these things can be achieved in with Ice, as well as easily choosing custom icons for your SSB 'applications'.
SSBs allow an application to function in more of a standalone method than running them directly through the web browser. In addition they allow for the user to take advantage of additional screen space as they don't include all the functions and menus of a browser. Here is an example of Editor by pixlr running in an SSB:

Creating a new SSB is as simple as typing the URL and a name into the text fields. From here you can select exactly where in the menu you'd like it to show up. There are also options for what icon will be used. Most sites use a certain type of icon, called a favicon, that is stored in a standard location. Clicking the "Use site favicon" button will attempt to download the favicon and will automatically associate it with the SSB. There is also the option to use an existing icon already stored on your computer. If no icon is selected or the favicon does not exist, a stock icon will be used.
As an example, I'm going to create a new SSB for Twitter. I simply type in the necessary information and click the "Use site favicon" button:

Chapter 6 - Additional Reading and Resources

Resources

By far the most comprehensive collections of information regarding Peppermint are found on our Community Forum. Here you'll find tutorials covering a wide range of topics as well our most effective support channel.
Peppermint is a GNU/Linux based operating system and as such the low level functionality is very similar to many other GNU/Linux distributions. An oft covered topic is the significance of the terminal, or "Command Line", in modern GNU/Linux operating systems. Here at Peppermint we're firm believers in the usefulness of the command line in modern operating systems, but we're also understanding of the fact that not everyone wishes to use it on any sort of regular basis. For those who do wish to learn the command line, there are numerous excellent tutorials online. Here are some that I've found to be particular useful:

There are also numerous resources and tutorials associated with understanding the filesystem. One in particular that I've found particularly useful is:

Understanding UNIX/Linux File Systems

Outside of this, there is plenty of other documentation available from other GNU/Linux distributions and projects that covers many topics applicable to Peppermint:

Peppermint OS 8 overview | Secure, stable and fully customizable

In this video, I am going to show an overview of Peppermint OS 8 and some of the applications pre-installed. Support the Channel on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/ribalinux Buy Me a Coffee http://ko-fi.com/A0383T5 Discord Server https://discord.gg/YKM9GQw Peppermint OS is a Lubuntu-based Linux distribution that aims to be lightning fast and easy on system resources. By employing its Site Specific Browser, Peppermint integrates seamlessly with cloud and web-based applications. The distribution's other features include automatic updates, easy step-by-step installation, sleek and user-friendly interface, and increased mobility by integrating directly with cloud-based applications. The distribution employs a hybrid LXDE/Xfce desktop environment, mixing LXDE's lxsession with Xfce's panel and application Download https://peppermintos.com/iso/Peppermi... Home Page http://peppermintos.com

Pages

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Peppermint - The Linux Desktop OS

Introducing Peppermint Eight

File Management from Nemo

Web app integration with Ice

Latest Community News

Latest Corporate News

Peppermint is Gratefully Sponsored by -

Help Keep Peppermint Free For Everyone! Forever!

User’s Guide

The Official Peppermint User's Guide

1. Download and Install

Choosing and Downloading a Disk Image

Direct Download

Downloading via Torrent

Checking the Integrity of the Image

Creating an Installation Medium

Booting Into Your Installation Medium

Before Installing

Running the Installer

2. An Intro to the Desktop

The Peppermint Desktop

3. Customizing the Desktop

The Wallpaper

The "Customize Look and Feel" Application

The Peppermint Control Center

Installing GTK Themes

Changing the Panel

4. Installing and Removing Software

Introduction to Software Management

The Software Manager

The Synaptic Package Manager

GDebi Package Installer

The Terminal

5. Site Specific Browsers and the Ice Application

An Intro to Site Specific Browsers

The Ice Application

6. Additional Reading and Resources

Resources

Thank You

Peppermint OS 8 overview | Secure, stable and fully customizable

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