When comparing Peppermint Linux OS vs Lubuntu, the Slant community recommends Peppermint Linux OS for most people. In the question“What are the best Debian-based Linux distributions?” Peppermint Linux OS is ranked 24th while Lubuntu is ranked 62nd. The most important reason people chose Peppermint Linux OS is:
The XFCE Whisker menus and dark theme are well designed. Easy to move the panel to the top and add plank on the bottom.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Looks great
The XFCE Whisker menus and dark theme are well designed.
Easy to move the panel to the top and add plank on the bottom.
Pro Friendly and helpful forum
Pro Fast and light on resources
RAM consumption is the same as LxLE, but more efficient and because of Whisker Menu and other tweaks that let us feel more like we have a XFCE desktop environment, as keyboard shortcuts, for instance, it looks like we got here the fastest and lightest, globally speaking. Very good on performance. Download Respin 7 (March 2017), install Libreoffice and then compare, for example, opening Libreoffice Writer inside Peppermint 7, Extix 17.04, Lubuntu 16.10, Xubuntu 16.04, Backbox 4.7, Linux Mint 18.1 Xfce an Mate or Linux Lite 3.4 (and others). Finally, you'll find out that after opening a few apps in Peppermint it remains smooth and light. Nemo file explorer on Peppermint is incredibly faster than on Mint Cinnamon; lx terminal is very fast when opening; updating is fast. And after all this, distro keeps working and working very solidly and consistently along the time. And yet the look and feel of the environment is pleasant.
Pro Comes with a variety of helpful tools
Works great with Teamviewer, Synaptic, XNview, KODI, and Pdf-Xchange editor (via playonlinux). Netflix works awesome with Chrome browser. The ICE SSB tool is great for creating web apps that run as if you installed them locally.
The Software Boutique (packaged with The MATE Welcome software Center) recognizes all software and installs it with one click.
Pro It works well "Out Of The Box"
There are enough useful back end packages installed by default to make the system useable for normal use right after the installation of the base distro.
Pro Peppermint 7 is stable
Peppermint 7OS (32 and 64 bit) has been updated to the Respin PPA . Kernel updated to 4.9.24 on 23-April -2017 with no issues and all software still runs great.
Pro Peppermint 10 is Stable
Pro Peppermint9 is stable
Peppermint 9OS (32 and 64 bit) has been updated to the Respin PPA.
Pro Part of the Ubuntu family
Being based on Ubuntu (which itself is based on Debian), there's a good amount of information and support to be found when searching for it, both on Lubuntu specifically and Ubuntu that also applies to Lubuntu. It also means that there are certain security and usability standards enforced and you can use Ubuntu .deb packages.
Pro Lightweight
By utilizing minimal software Lubuntu is able to use less resources and power.
Pro Stable
Pro LXDE desktop
Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment performs fast and conserves resources.
Pro Offers a long term support release
Lubuntu offers a long term support release with their 14.04 Trusty Tahr based version.
Pro Uses Openbox as the default window manager
Lubuntu (LXDE) uses the lightweight Openbox window manager to manage its windows. By using Openbox by default LXDE is able to remain lightweight as there is no built in composite manager in Openbox to take up resources.
Cons
Con Since it is based on Lubuntu, the double click speed needs to be slowed down
It's false that Peppermint 7 is tout court based on Lubuntu. Take a look at this: "Peppermint Seven makes use of the Xfwm4 window manager and Xfce bottom panel in the LXDE desktop environment. This is unlike other Linux distributions that use LXDE as the default desktop environment where it is common to use the Openbox window manager and lxpanel." And more: "Peppermint Seven is built on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS code base and makes use of its package repositories." Contrarily to other Linux distributions, Peppermint creators never said Peppermint 7 is based on Lubuntu, like LXLE. Using LXDE and being based on Ubuntu is very different from being simply based on Lubuntu. In fact, Lubuntu is not faster than Peppermint and has loads of lacks for a nowadays OS experience.
Con No composite manager
Being a modern desktop many users expect compositing, even on lightweight systems. Without compositing there will be screen tearing, a lot of it. Though there is built in support for users to add their own compositors such as Compton.
Con Long term support not as long as other Ubuntu spins
Lubuntu has not always had LTS support. Luckily they do offer a 3 year LTS now but it is shorter than other Ubuntu spins that receive a full 5 years of support.
Con Clock in panel is broken currently in LXDE
The clock panel applet does not work as expected in the newest versions of LXDE. If the clock is set to not show seconds in the display when waking from suspend the clock will not update until the time actually changes in the applet which means it can take up to a minute for the clock to update when seconds are not shown. The work around to this is to display seconds on the clock which allows it to update after suspend within one second. Sadly the clock does not display seconds correctly as it skips them by one to three at least once a minute, often more.
This is also not the first time there have been problems with the panel clock which clearly illustrates this to be an ongoing problem for the developers.
Con Lacks some window management features
There's no built-in way to snap windows to the sides, re-size them by double clicking the bar, or dragging to the edges.
Con Redundant
There is absolutely no reason to install it, since it uses the same package repositories as Ubuntu and you can transform any Ubuntu install into a Lubuntu install.