Every year, millions of Americans get together with family on Christmas. Many adult kids return to a single parent's home to celebrate -- or a house shared by both parents if they beat the odds and aren't divorced. While there, if you know about tech, you may get asked to fix your mom or dad's computer. Be it malware or something else, this can be quite the frustrating task. Look, I know you are happy to help them, but you just want to relax and enjoy the holiday, right? How can you get the nightmare of fixing their Windows-based PC to stop? This Christmas, you should give them the gift of a stable and secure operating system that doesn't spy on them. Enter Linux.

Yes, a Linux distribution can stop this woe, giving your family member a more secure platform that is less susceptible to malware (and less likely to need your fixing). If they live in the web browser anyway, Windows is just a liability these days. What if I told you that there was a Linux distribution that you could loosely tie into the holiday? Well, candy canes are traditionally peppermint flavored, and wouldn't you know it, there is a new version of the excellent Peppermint OS out now! Called "9 Respin," it is a refresh of the previously released Peppermint OS 9 -- this time with many improvements and changes.

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"Team Peppermint are pleased to announce Peppermint 9 Respin, the latest iteration of our operating system. Still based on the 18.04 LTS (long term support) code base, Peppermint 9 Respin still comes in both 64bit and 32bit flavours so older hardware is still supported. We hope you enjoy using it half as much as we enjoyed creating it," says Mark Greaves, Peppermint OS.

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Greaves further says, "As with previous releases we invite you to compare Peppermint to other operating systems, we are confident you will be impressed. To take the Peppermint 9 Respin out for a test drive, please visit our website at peppermintos.com where you can download it for free. If you need help installing the Peppermint 9 Respin, or have any questions about using it, we have a second-to-none user support team at forum.peppermintos.com please drop in even if only for a chat with friendly like-minded people .. hope to see you there."

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The Peppermint OS devs shares the following changes found in the respin.

Swapped VLC for Xplayer (we’ve had reports that VLC has been getting a little ‘flaky’ for some users over their last few releases).

Removed the Linux Mint ‘Levels’ from mintupdate (in line with our update policy, not Linux Mints).

Fixed the ICE applications ‘Where in the menu ?’ category names, so they now match the Xfce whiskermenu categories (ie. ‘Sound & Video’ renamed to ‘Multimedia’, and ‘System Tools’ renamed to ‘System’).

Added ‘Accessibility Settings’ utility to the Peppermint Settings Panel ‘System’ Category.

Added ‘Enable/Disable Neofetch’ utility to the Peppermint Settings Panel ‘Tweaks’ Category.

Added ‘System Information’ utility to the Peppermint Settings Panel ‘System’ Category.

Added a ‘Transparent’ wallpaper (so users can now set solid colour backgrounds via the ‘Wallpapers’ utility).

Added back (by popular request) the Peppermint 7 respin ‘Peppermint-Sunset’ wallpaper (as an option, not as the default wallpaper).

Disabled ‘Switch windows using the mouse wheel’ in the ‘Window Buttons’ panel applet preferences out-of-the-box (it can easily be re-enabled should you want it, but it could be awkward for touchpad users).

Disabled ‘Show frame’ in the ‘Notification Area’ (system tray) panel applet preferences.

Additional wireless drivers out-of-the-box.

Added ‘build-essential’, ‘rename’, ‘printer-driver-cups-pdf’, ‘cups-browsed’, ‘pmount’, and ‘ntp’ packages.

Added support for mounting LUKS encrypted volumes (libblockdev-crypto2).

Added wacom tablet/touchscreen support (xserver-xorg-input-wacom).

Changed chess game SSB to ‘Better Than Chess’.

Squashed a few minor backend bugs.

All updates to date (including the latest versions of mintinstall 4.6.7, Kernel 4.15.0-43, and Firefox 64.0)

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Before you make the journey to a family member's home for the holidays, be sure to create some install media so you can easily overwrite Windows 10 with Linux while there. To download an ISO of the Ubuntu-based Peppermint OS 9 Respin, simply use one of the below links. Unlike many other distributions, there is even a 32-bit version too. Of course, before you nuke Windows on your mom, dad, or grandma's PC, be sure to get their permission first and then backup their data before proceeding!

Image Credit:3D character / Shutterstock