14 DAY TRIAL // Peppermint Two has been released, bringing several improvements and changes. Among the biggest is the switch to Chromium as the default browser and the underlying app for stand-alone web applications running via ICE, the distro's own Site Specific Browser (SSB).
The look and feel has been upgraded as well, taking cues from both Peppermint One and Peppermint ICE.
The underlying operating system has been updated, Peppermint Two is based on Lubuntu 11.04, the LXDE version of Ubuntu.
"Peppermint Two is now available either for free download or via purchasable Live CD. This edition is based upon Lubuntu 11.04 and includes a number of new features. Also this marks the first time Peppermint has been available in 64 bit architecture," Kendall Weaver announced.
Initially, Peppermint used Mozilla Prism, based on Firefox, to run web applications. However, the Prism project has been deprecated, in favor of the emerging Chromless project, leaving the developers with only one real alternative.
"We’re now using Chromium as the default web browser in our main release. This decision was made after gaining several months of user feedback and contrasting the pros and cons of both Chromium and Firefox," Weaver added.
Peppermint's main touting point is the integration of web applications. In a sense, the distro is similar to things like Jolicloud or Chrome OS, but it takes a different approach to the cloud.
It tries to work web applications into a familiar desktop environment and have them look and feel like a native app, through the use of the Ice application and the Chromium engine.
Ice SSB has now added support for creating and removing SSBs, enabling users to create new ones for their favorite web apps and remove the ones they're not using.
Some new example SSBs have been added in the default configuration and some of the native software has been changed as well, Guayadeque is used as a music player, for example.
Peppermint Two, 32-bit and 64-bit versions, are available for download here on Softpedia.