Peppermint OS

[login123]

Just put the Peppermint One operating system iso onto a CD and running it now. Logging on here from Firefox on Peppermint. Still exploring, but it looks like a good, fast OS with lots of applications. Information is here: Peppermint link. About 450 mb,

 

Thank you, Hazelnut.

 

Must log off now and explore it.

[hazelnut]

Thought you'd like it, I'm sure Tasgandy would too. It's not a bad download size and it seems really well balanced and has a lot on offer.

 

Could be a good one for anyone wanting to try out downloading an iso, burning it to disc and then you just boot your machine with the disc in the drive and you are away!

 

Anyone wants to try this, but is unsure about how to do any part of it, just ask and we'll help you

[Ishi]

Well, Tasgandy was very proud of his Ubuntu. I had my Ubuntu 9 installed almost 2 months now but I'm too lazy to post a thread about it in here or notify Tasgandy about it.

 

So far, the major problem I had with it is that I can't get my Internet to work with it. My MODEM might not support it.

 

But this Peppermint thing wouldn't be a bad thing to try. Its smaller than the Ubuntu ISO, I would get it now if only I am not too hesitant about my slow Internet connection.

[Andavari]

I think I'll give Peppermint OS a whirl, even if to just play around with it.

[login123]

Just came back on here using the newly minted CD.

 

Peppermint is more "windowish" than some of the others. I like that, even though some linux purists frown on it. No matter, it is a pretty intuitive setup.

 

A caution for "newbies", though, this OS will let you mess up your "real" operating system if you aren't careful. It will let you access directories which windows will not, so you have to be careful what you change.

[DennisD]

My MODEM might not support it.

 

 

 

If you have a USB modem, you're in the same position I was in when I first tried this stuff out quite some time back.

 

It was possible to configure Linux to work with a USB modem, but it was a case of having to jump through so many hoops to do this, I just called it a day.

 

If I remember rightly, you have to find the instructions and method for your particular modem.

[login123]

My modem is not USB. Peppermint just went straight out to the net when the CD booted. ???

[DennisD]

I'm gonna have a look at it as well. (Wireless Router these days)

 

How can I refuse a download link login?

[login123]

LuLu, My favorite alternate operating systems are Peppermint, Puppy 5, and Slitaz. Hazelnut put me onto all of those. I know that Puppy 5 runs in memory, and is fast. Peppermint is also very fast, but I think puppy has more "stuff", not sure.

 

edit: there is a Puppy 5.1 out now.

 

There is no big mystery about them. If I can use them, you can for sure. Just download the iso file and burn it to a CD, DVD, or install it to a USB stick. Then figure out how to boot your computer from the that device.

 

I use BurnCDCC for burning iso files to CD, but there are others. BurnCDCC link

 

This is an HP computer, to call up the boot menu you press Escape when the first screen appears, but that is different for others.

 

Boot from the CD and wallah, you are running a (fast) OS which does not depend on windows. Not my choice for a permanent installation (yet), but they are fun to use and pretty full featured.

 

The big drawback is the long download time for the iso file. Once you are past that, everything works pretty quick.

 

edit 2: Did'ja see that, DennisD, there is a Puppy 5.1 out...

Edited August 29, 2010 by login123

[mr don]

Your post has been removed MrDon. It had nothing to do with the topic we are discussing. Please keep on topic instead of rambling on about your own experiences of something else completely.

 

~moderator

[login123]

LuLu, wait till Hazelnut or one of the other members confirms this, but I don't think you can mess up your computer just by booting one of these distros from a CD. Just don't click anything that says install to the hard drive, and don't use the disk manager apps. Also, Redhawk warned about writing to the "real" hard drive, but you don't have to do that to use the distro.

 

Puppy 5.1 is better and faster than Puppy 5 or Peppermint. Running from it now. Got it on a rewriteable CD and it saves changes if you tell it to.

 

If it works for you, you have an operating system for the price of a CD or (faster), a USB stick.

[DennisD]

 

edit 2: Did'ja see that, DennisD, there is a Puppy 5.1 out...

 

Nope, I'm not looking.

 

I've been looking for a cure for this download affliction, and came across something called "Invisible Link".

 

Sounded like just the thing to add to Opera, but it turned out my that in my desperation my addled brain had added an extra L to the name.

 

And I've just reprimanded myself for going off topic.

[login123]

On here now thru Firefox in Puppy 5.1 from a 2 gb usb stick. Fast as lightning. FYI, could not get the usb to show as "bootable" until I reformatted it from within Puppy to the "ext2" format and set the "boot flag". Puppy has GParted built in.

[DennisD]

I was surfing here with Peppermint this morning.

 

When doing posts I kept getting the wrong punctuation marks from familiar keys. I ended up saying sod it, logged off and came back again. It was doing my head in.

[Andavari]

I was about to burn it onto a DVD-RW then checked the MD5 checksum which didn't match what they had listed on the website so I passed on burning it. If I remember it I'll try again on the next release.

[LuLu]

LuLu, wait till Hazelnut or one of the other members confirms this, but I don't think you can mess up your computer just by booting one of these distros from a CD. Just don't click anything that says install to the hard drive, and don't use the disk manager apps. Also, Redhawk warned about writing to the "real" hard drive, but you don't have to do that to use the distro.

 

Puppy 5.1 is better and faster than Puppy 5 or Peppermint. Running from it now. Got it on a rewriteable CD and it saves changes if you tell it to.

 

If it works for you, you have an operating system for the price of a CD or (faster), a USB stick.

 

Oh trust me, I'm sure I could mess something up without even realizing it. haha A friend of mine has a spare laptop she wants me to clean up for her one of these days and she said she doesn't care if I kill it or not. So if it still works after I'm done with it, then I may use her laptop to try out Peppermint and possibly Puppy. I just don't trust myself trying it on something that's actually needed.

[login123]

Andavari, I really think I like Puppy 510 better, more apps, faster. Runs in RAM. Right now using about 1.0 gb, fast as lightning. Specs say it can make do with less RAM. Boots from USB in a fourth the time of this old cluttered up windows install.

 

BTW, I use filealyzer from Safer Networking to get MD5s, do you know a better one? Came out right for me on puppy and Peppermint.

[mr don]

Just put the Peppermint One operating system iso onto a CD and running it now. Logging on here from Firefox on Peppermint. Still exploring, but it looks like a good, fast OS with lots of applications. Information is here: Peppermint link. About 450 mb,

 

Thank you, Hazelnut.

 

Must log off now and explore it.

 

That looks interesting. Downloaded it to try it yesterday. I also downloaded Ubuntu, Ebuntu, Kubuntu, Puppy Linux, etc etc. I am going to try them all one day. Mandriva, etc.

 

One that I find more interesting at the moment, is React OS http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html

 

It is an attempt to run make an OS that is simpler than windows, but is similar to windows & runs windows apps while being free.

Screenies look nice. Have downloaded it but haven't tested yet. Anyone tried it yet? If so, let me know how it goes!

[mr don]

I never had it mess up anything just by doing the Live CD.

 

I have had Linux flavors of Live CD's that load from CD when Windows disk fails. Meaning, I have had XP, Vista, & 7 machines, all 3 of those on different machines that people brought to me that would each fail to load to a disk prompt, or boot from the CD/DVD so you can do a repair.

 

Ultimate Boot CD would not load (Blue screen). If I am correct, windows uses a registry for most system settings while Linux is free from that method of data retention. Was able to view, see the files on the drive when all forms of windows based boot loaders failed. I am not 100% certain if this was a registry problem, bad driver problem, or what just yet. Perhaps it could be a lack of the right sata drivers on certain machines, or the hardware configurations used.

 

I was able to fix the machines, but I would sometimes (horrors?) have to use a combo 95/98se upgrade/me upgrade all in one disk with scandisk/format etc to delete the partition & then I could use XP/Vista/7 etc to set windows back up.

 

The reason I had to use it in some cases, is especially in cases where they do not care if you back up their data because they don't have important music/docs/games etc to backup, then it is faster to just use dos to do what all 3 other disks would fail to do.

 

I have bootable XP, Vista, 7 disks, & on some machines, not any of them could load to a place you can perform repairs or type commands because it would blue screen when it got to a certain part in the load process. I have noted that sometimes on laptops with certain kinds of sata drives, regular AHCI mode would blue screen. I will test later to see if it is a missing sata driver issue, but for now, I know others on the web have those problems in forums, & it can be worked around fairly easily usually by setting the drive to compatibility mode for the drive in the bios.

 

I was concerned that this may impact performance, but upon checking after load into windows, it seemed to run at normal DMA 5 or 6 mode with no problems. My understanding is AHCI is supposed to relieve a slight burden off the CPU, increasing the performance, but when I tested, the gain was so minimal that it wasn't noticed at all.

 

Peppermint/Ubuntu etc are really good for seeing what files are in windows, or perhaps even formatting the drive. Of course, using a 98 utility called fdisk can work as well. 98/me won't format as large of a drive as newer versions of windows, but they won't blue screen getting to your CD to run the harddisk partition tool either. In fact, you can just fdisk with 98, reboot, then use the XP/Vista/7 partition & install like normal.

 

I thought this would be interesting for you all to read.

[login123]

...

One that I find more interesting at the moment, is React OS http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html

...

 

That does look interesting. When it is out of beta I'm gonna try it. :-)

[Andavari]

Andavari, I really think I like Puppy 510 better, more apps, faster. Runs in RAM. Right now using about 1.0 gb, fast as lightning. Specs say it can make do with less RAM. Boots from USB in a fourth the time of this old cluttered up windows install.

 

BTW, I use filealyzer from Safer Networking to get MD5s, do you know a better one? Came out right for me on puppy and Peppermint.

Well for me any Linux distros are just for playing around, nothing I'm ready to actually switch to.

 

As for MD5 checking software I couldn't begin to say what's better than what, I just know what I like. I've been using the MD5 checking software SummerProperties for a long time now, it very conveniently puts another tab into the right-click area named Checksums when viewing the file properties to obtain the checksums. Someone on this forum recommended SummerProperties to me, and I've been using it ever since. There's a screenshot of it on Softpedia.com here.

[Ishi]

All the Linux things I tried failed to make me connect to the Internet. I tried Ubuntu 10 and Linux Mint 9 on a USB and they did establish a connection but when I open Mozilla and go to Yahoo, the pages just won't load. I installed Solaris, the same thing happened, then Linux 9, which is also installed on my PC, fails to establish a connection. I use a cable MODEM, not a USB modem though. This is just killing my taste for Linux because I also felt they lacked a little innovation.

 

 

Well, I already have the Peppermint ISO, but got to get myself a new CD. I was trying this thing they call "DSL" today which stands for "Damn Small Linux", only 50 MB in size which can be run on a USB, but I don't know if my Universal-USB-Installer-v1.7.6 has configured it properly on my USB though or I have to try another app that will embed the OS to a USB.

[Andavari]

Well, I already have the Peppermint ISO, but got to get myself a new CD.

 

If it's only going to be for testing why not use a reusable CDRW or DVDRW disc.

[DennisD]

 

I was trying this thing they call "DSL" today which stands for "Damn Small Linux", only 50 MB in size which can be run on a USB, but I don't know if my Universal-USB-Installer-v1.7.6 has configured it properly on my USB though or I have to try another app that will embed the OS to a USB.

 

Do you mean you're PC won't boot from it?

 

I've got the Macrium Rescue Disk on USB, and my PC won't boot from it automatically.

 

And there's no option in the BIOS to include a USB port as a boot option. But, if I break into the boot sequence with the escape key, the USB option is there in the boot options along with the ROM and Hard Drives.

 

And it boots fine when chosen manually.

[mr don]

I was surfing here with Peppermint this morning.

 

When doing posts I kept getting the wrong punctuation marks from familiar keys. I ended up saying sod it, logged off and came back again. It was doing my head in.

 

That is very interesting. I wonder how Ubuntu 10 does on it? There is also a Mint version (not peppermint), etc. They used to have a lindows version before MS sued & they changed to linspire.

 

Will have to keep that in mind. Thanks for the heads up on peppermint!