Peppermint Ice's main claim to fame is its use of a (SSB), dubbed Ice, which is based on Google's Chromium browser. Peppermint One, a fraternal distro from the same developers, uses (a project that, according , is now not being actively developed). An SSB is a stripped-down browser that lets Web-based applications and services be treated in a somewhat similar fashion to a standard application: instead of navigating to a site using your browser, you can simply click on an icon on your desktop/applications menu/taskbar and an independent browser session is launched for that application (with none of the usual toolbars and menus you find in a normal browser session).
For example, instead of the usual Openoffice.org or KOffice, in Peppermint Ice's taskbar menu you will find links to Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Calendar and Google Mail (as well as the lightweight, non-Web-based ePDFViewer). Similarly, instead of the GIMP, the Graphics submenu contains a shortcut for 's online image editor. Clicking on one of the links will 'launch' the app: opening a new instance of Chromium dedicated to that particular Web app. The advantage of using an SSB, instead of a standard browser with multiple tabs or windows, is stability: a browser crash means you won't bring down every Web app that you're using.
Installation was as simple as you'd expect for a modern Linux distribution. After inserting a USB thumb drive with Peppermint Ice installed on it using our trusty Lenovo S10 netbook swiftly booted up the OS (the Peppermint-Ice-10012010.iso file was used for this review). Installing Peppermint Ice on the S10's hard drive was then a matter of minutes. Shutting down the system takes a handful of seconds, while going from power-on to the log-in screen took about 30 seconds; log-in itself took less than five seconds. The times are excellent, and a reflection of the pared-down nature of this distribution.
The Peppermint Ice desktop is pretty standard: four virtual desktops, a taskbar and a menu for launching apps. The desktop system is provided ("Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment"), which uses the Openbox window manager by default.
Even on a netbook, everything felt reasonably snappy. Default 'Ice' shortcuts include, along with the aforementioned Google services and Pixlr, Dropbox, YouTube, Facebook, Seesmic Web, The Cloud Player and last.fm. Naturally, you can install a range of normal Linux applications easily enough using apt-get, the Synaptec Package Manager or mintInstall. Ice itself is a simple program that lets you create new SSB shortcuts quickly.