Peppermint Community,
2022 is coming to a close and so many things have happened since February of this year and our release, after the passing of Mark Greaves in 2020.
Looking back we have:
- Moved from Ubuntu to Debian and Devuan
- We have increased the value of choice for building a distribution your way.
- We have replaced ICE with Kumo.
- We still kept the 32bit builds
- Fully implemented XFCE
- Implemented the Calamares installer
- Took on a DevOps culture with our developers and community
- Support CodeBerg a fully FOSS organization for development
- Moved our forums to SourceForge
There are more but those are just a few.
The reason for this posting its to reflect on this new chapter in Peppermint’s direction. and to also say a very big heart felt thank you to all the community and contributors, that help keep us going. Its the community that really makes Peppermint, for that we want to thank you for all that you do.
As for 2023 there are a few things that are on the to do list early on:
- Prep upgrade paths for Devuan and Debian builds
- Keep improving Kumo
- Prep a Zoned Storage ready ISO
- Keep improving the Hub and Welcome tools
- Get ready for the XFCE 4.18 release.
There is a longer list, those are just a few to start the year off with
It has been a great adventure, thank you all for sticking with us, and making a difference.
Thank you!
The Peppermint Team
I’ve been using Peppermint OS for the past six months and have been enjoying it.
I would like to be able to right-click a program listed in the menu, and have the drop-down menu provide the option to uninstall it.
Thanks for all your hard work!
Neil, Thanks for the suggestion we will discuss and see about adding this to the to do list
That’s a must-have feature, I agree!
why isn’t my other comment showing up?
It seems like my comments are now showing up, thanks and sorry :)
I’d have a few suggestions for you guys:
– Make the website look and feel more modern and cleaner (example: https://www.slax.org)
– Make the logo clickable
– Change the official DE to a more modern one (KDE or Cinnamon or …)
– Make the downloading process easier and don’t make the users leave your website for that (that’s considered bad UX). The downloading process IMO should take 2 clicks ( click nr.1 – choose between Devuan and debian, click nr. 2 – choose between torrent and direct download)
… I’ll add more later. Thanks :) And btw, distrowatch brought me to you, I was filtering distros by “not systemd” and saw your distro listed there, was amazed to find out that you now have a systemd-free version of your distro. SO thank you for that!!!
Andrew,
Thank you for the feedback.
Will pass your information over to our WebDeveloper.
HI Andrew,
I’ve fixed the non-clickable background image on the navigation. A redesign of the website isn’t off the table, however it’s not a top priority at this time.
Part II
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If you don’t wanna change DEs and you like XFCE so much then please make XFCE look and feel more modern. I know that’s possible, so far only Zorin can do it (at least that’s the only one I know of, even LM isn’t theming their XFCE version as good as Zorin). I believe Zorin’s code is under a FOSS license so you could use that and improve it further! Thanks :)
Its a hard balance isn’t it. some folks Like the current layout others agree with you.
Recently we did a few votes to get a feel for the community
https://fosstodon.org/@peppermintos/109444472998304599
and
https://www.reddit.com/r/PeppermintOS/comments/zan679/desktop_default_layout/
we are also open to community suggested configs
https://codeberg.org/Peppermint_OS/Pep_Community_Post_Install
If you have some good desktop config ideas you can submit them and we can place them in that repo for other to download and use.
Probably the default route we will take is providing max choice where we can.
An easy way to flip between different desktop layouts within XFCE is what we will do.
If the community prefers other DEs yes we can keep them in the community repo easy day.
Hope that helps and thank you very much for your feedback
Hi grafiksinc :)
You see, you don’t understand what I’m saying. I’d myself vote “No” in that survey. Having a Dock doesn’t make a distro look modern. Zorins’s XFCE spin doesn’t have a dock, yet it’s the most modern DE (XFCE-based) I’ve ever seen. Modern means … gosh.. details, consistency, colors, icons, spacing, Menu style, animations, everything….
Maybe in your team there are devs who think that modern=bloat, but that’s not true. Modern means the base, on which you can build anything you want. You could have something modern yet simple and clean looking.
Please consider adopting most of Zorin’s styling and then add a 5% of your touches on top of that. This will make your distro stand out and welcoming to new users!
Maybe you think that you specifically target people who don’t like “modern” styling, but there are so few of them and, since most Linux users have used Windows before, they kind of expect the same level of “moderness” when switching to Linux. Please think about this, don’t close the door to potentially new PeppermintOS users :)
God Bless!
I see what your are saying thanks! Hmmmm… we have no specific, styling preference it just happened to be what the team agreed on at that time…. but if you are open to the idea, would you help build that style?
We do have a community space where you can upload a set of configurations and styles for xfce and we can apply them as needed.
We do have a plan to release another iso Feb march-ish next year so there is time. And we would be so appreciative of that. I personally am not of the design talented. LOL So we are all open completely to ideas and help where ever possible
Thanks so much for the suggestions
Hi grafiksinc :)
That sounds good, I could do it, but… the styling of your distro depends upon your branding, logo colors, etc.. which IMO should be worked on. I do marketing and I think you need a lot of help in this regard and if you’re open, I could try and do my best to help you out.
If you’re ready for it, then our first steps should be: redefining who you are and what do you (as a distro) stand for, in a clearer way. Next, re-design the website, new logo, and only then re-style your distro.
I won’t be able to do it all by myself (I can’t code in JS) and I’d need someone’s help (probably your webmaster’s).
Cheers!
I sent you an email. To your registered email for this site for further discussion… — Thank you so much!
Ohhh, and I’d like to report a bug, when downloading Pep Devuan version through torrents, the file downloads without a .iso extension, so I had to manually add it in order to make the system see it as an iso file.
I installed Peppermint OS on an extra hard drive around a year ago, since then I have chosen to switch from Windows to Peppermint OS. It’s just that good! So thank you, Peppermint OS team for continues updates and support.
Thanks for sharing! Really glad things have been working for you
I miss the old forum…looked and functioned much better and easier to communicate with. The new one is boring and has zero personality. Going back to the previous one is one major thing I’d change if I could. I’m unsure how anyone can like the new one better. I dread having to even bother looking at it.
@Linux Lover thanks for the feedback……I understand there is a lot of love for that old forum….
There are many great reasons we moved to sourceforge. It was not just for the forums…, it was the additional features and centralization of all the other stuff that really has helped us get the community more involve than ever before, There are more people contributing to Peppermint now simply because of the centralized collaboration.
It is not just discussing stuff on a forum anymore, the community is contributing time and code which has never happened before in Peppermint as it was so centrally managed and developed with the waterfall style of work. .
The addition of the git collaboration, broke down so many walls for the community it completely allows for much closer contributions from the community.
The old forum was just that a forum where people talk and wait, with sourceforge….. the community can discuss and actually take action on things and push code, and those ideas actually make it into the ISO.
Our goal is not to trickle down build and support peppermint, we want more and more community members to build and contribute to peppermint, so that it can become something with great value not just being another distro….
There are so many more things we are able to do now that we have moved.
Here are a few reasons why we moved
We have a download repo:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/peppermintos/files/
A really strongly maintained wiki:
https://sourceforge.net/p/peppermintos/pepwiki/wiki%20home%20page/
A community Contributions repo:
https://sourceforge.net/p/peppermintos/com_con/ci/master/tree/
Of course the forums features.
And a mailing list that some like to subscribe to.
https://sourceforge.net/p/peppermintos/mailman/
None of that existed at all before and if it did it was so spread out who in the community wants to make so many accounts just to contribute.
Anyway I hope this helps, explain the why…all in all we truly do appreciate you and your feedback
Have a safe warm holiday!
If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to let us know.
Thanks grafiksinc for the links.
While I like XFCE as it is (I’m still used to Win 95|97!), I’m open to some changes. I quite System 76 after I finally got the bar but was unable to move it from the top to the bottom of the screen. It had some other peculiarities that I could stand!
bruce irving – Thanks! I will with you as i feel the same :-)
i also think xfce lacks features compared to other de but…
– gnome / kde need much more resources and we must not forget that Peppermint came from LXDE (now discontinued)
– cinnamon is nice and functional in LinuxMint, but in debian / ubuntu it’s not at the same level… ex. in debian lacks nemo-share (although today nemo is still better than thunar)
– does zorin offer a better experience? I think it’s a personal matter, because over the theme xfce is always the same
probably the new xfce 4.18 introduces those features that will make it more complete and modern, and will reduce the gap with mate or cinnamon… I suggest to complete it to introduce thunar-share like MX-Linux did
if I may also make another suggestion… it’s nice to allow the user to choose their own software, but I think that those who try the live expect to have the browser
anyway you did a really great job with the peppermint, and i’m sure 2023 will be even better
thank you!
midnite – thanks so much for the feed back – I personally like thunar myself.
Just wanted to mention that I, personally, like XFCE and think that switching Desktop Environments would not be a good decision. You could potentially rework the way it looks by default, but even then I thi k it’s already plenty customizable and that shouldn’t be a major priority. Just know that you are doing a good job, and this is an absolutly fantastic distro.
Soren,
Yeah we will stay with xfce…I do think though some members on the team are looking to modernize the default layout just a bit.You know, fonts colors, theming etc…
Here everyone is proud to use Peppermint was System Operative of my choice, peppermint definitely is a very nice a good choice not only for beginners but for advanced people, it comes with amazing features. I hope you add support for Wine 8.0 which was been released in the past weeks
If its a snap,flatpak, or appimage yes. for the Debian repos will take a bit of time.
Cannot install LibreOffice. System Peppermint said – wrong architecture.. I have intel Atom… not amd64
Might want to post this on the forums here:
https://sourceforge.net/p/peppermintos/pepos/
….but I wonder did download the correct version
I think atom is 32bit
https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/libreoffice64-vs-libreoffice32/73978