Pinguy OS is based on Ubuntu,[2][3] a GNOME-based desktop environment, which was discontinued in 2019 due to it no longer being financially viable.

[4] Despite no longer receiving any major version updates, a few of the previous LTS releases are still maintained.

Pinguy OS focused on enhancing Ubuntu's user-friendliness and was tailored towards users unfamiliar with UNIX operating systems.

For users that had less available hardware, there was another version made specifically for these older machines to work with less resources.

While it uses a GNOME desktop environment, users had the option of also using a navigation bar on the bottom of the screen, similar to Elementary OS and macOS.