For those not familiar with it, Peppermint OS is a lightweight Linux distro designed to be fast, user-friendly, and optimized for both older hardware and modern machines.
Two versions of Peppermint OS are available to download: one based on Debian, and one based Devuan. Both use the Xfce desktop environment. This post concerns the Debian edition updated on July 1, 2023.
The July 2023 update to Peppermint OS inherits all the benefits of the Debian 12 release including the Linux 6.1 kernel, and an uplift to latest Xfce 4.18 release. Both give users of the distro a wealth of performance refinements and bug fixes.
Elsewhere, the branding of Peppermint OS has been updated. This is most notable at the boot screen. Included documentation is updated, and there are “adjusted features” in the Peppermint Hub based on user feedback – though exactly what, I’m not sure.
The distro now uses the Teela icon set by default and adds some additional Marawaita themes (a variant of which is the default). The Kumo single-site-browser tool (create web-apps) is now based on Lua and its UI has been simplified.
Peppermint OS doesn’t ship with many apps preinstalled. This is intentional (the distro’s slogan is ‘less is more’). The idea is that users can choose the packages they need. If they’re brand new to Linux they might need pointers so the distro includes a suggestions list.
Finally, the Calamares installer will no longer install/remove packages during installation as, in some situations, this was causing installation to take a long time or, worse, fail.
Download Peppermint OS
Interested in taking it for a spin? Peppermint OS’s minimum system requirements are 1GB RAM, a not-too-ancient 32-bit or 64-bit processor, and 10GB of available storage. Recommended specs call for 4GB RAM, 64-bit processor, and 32GB of disk space.
You can download Peppermint OS via the Peppermint OS website, which links to the latest up-to-date image hosted on Sourceforge (yes, it still exists). The Devuan-based edition is expected to get an update soon, if you’d prefer to wait for that.
