Comparison Test: Peppermint OS One 08042010 vs. Ice 10012010

One: Main Screen

(NOTE: I know a lot of commenters have asked for clickable thumbnails. Unfortunately, this appears to be an issue with Blogger, because when I initially upload pictures, they are clickable thumbnails, but a few minutes later, they magically lose their functionality. I'm not sure why that is, and the only workaround is to make the images the original size, which is huge (800 by 600 pixels each) and would drown out all the text, which isn't good. Unless you're OK with seeing smaller images (and they will have to be made this small), this is how it is for now. Sorry. I'm not too happy about this either, so I hope this situation will change soon.)
By popular demand, I am testing Peppermint OS (both versions). This is not going to be a completely in-depth comparison as in the comparison of KDE distributions, because the two versions of Peppermint OS differ only in the details; the way they work is essentially the same. I tested both in VirtualBox and allocated 256 MB of RAM to each version.
So what is Peppermint OS? It's not actually based on Linux Mint, as the name might suggest (more on that later); it's an LXDE distribution based on Lubuntu, with an emphasis on cloud applications. What does this mean? This means that Peppermint OS replaces many traditional desktop applications with web-based counterparts; it uses Mozilla Prism (One) or Ice (Ice) to essentially make the webpage like any other desktop application, without needing to open a fully-fledged instance of a web browser. This makes it possible to put things like Facebook and Picasa in the LXDE main menu (more on that later). Follow the jump to see how all this works out.

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