with cloud-based applications. The advantage of such a setup is a very lightweight distro (407MB) using some of the most popular online applications. Peppermint hides the fact they are cloud-based though, by taking advantage of Mozilla Prism to make them look and act like desktop apps.
Such a lightweight OS was fast, and in the 2 months it has been available more than 250,000 downloads have been logged. But the team behind Peppermint haven’t stood still, and now a new even lighter, even faster version has been created.
It’s called Peppermint Ice, and puts even more of an emphasis on using cloud-based applications. Ice also uses Chromium as a default web browser instead of Firefox, and a new Site Specific Browser (SSB) for running cloud apps. What that means is every cloud app launched gets its own browser instance and therefore is immune to other browser-based apps crashing.
Peppermint Ice includes automatic updates, a new interface, a step-by-step installation guide
, and is completely free to use. You can download it now.
If you are currently using Peppermint One then you have already been exposed and are using Prism. If you haven’t, then let us take a second and explain what Ice is.
Ice is, by definition, a Site Specific Browser [SSB] that Peppermint creator Kendall Weaver wrote himself as a means to launch Web Applications and/or Cloud Applications [SaaS - Software As A Service] from the new Peppermint Ice OS. When you launch a web based application using Ice it will call up a custom SSB using the default Chromium Browser. So, essentially, the Ice SSB acts as software that is installed locally but is actually delivered via the Web.
The difference in using an SSB as opposed to using a tabbed browser is that only one function is assigned to the Ice SSB. In a tabbed browsing system, with several open for example, if one service or site in any given tab crashes you run the risk of losing data by crashing the other tabs and potentially the browser itself. since an SSB is isolated and dedicated to only operating the web application of your choice, if it crashes or hangs, it does not effect the rest of the system. And, because the Ice SSB’s are so sleek, they are perfect for running apps that display better using the most screen area as possible.
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