- Image via CrunchBase
Finally got my turn to try out Jolicloud, a “cool new OS for your netbook“. I learned about it several weeks ago and it took quite a while for me to get a invite.
First off, I tried the live boot. I selected my native language etc. and while it was booting, I stepped away for a few. Upon my return I glanced on the screen and much to my surprise, it seemed as if the netbook just loaded my regular system, Ubuntu Netbook Remix.
No – wait. It was the new OS, but with only subtle differences separating the initial state from its parent OS. A quick glance trough the installed applications revealed only “facebook” to be added initially – a shortcut to a prism application.
Ok, time to try out the jolicloud applications. When I logged into the application with my user name - picked when I got the invite, I choose “MSI WIND 100″ as my notebook, as Medion Akoya e1210 was not on the list but afaik is just a re-brand of a WIND anyway.
The jolicloud application itself, as most of the applications it serves, is built upon Mozilla Prism. A “web OS” built upon the web itself – perfectly integrated in the social media system.
It synchronizes itself into your jolicloud profile – so couple that with a Dropbox and you have a notebook to carry around without having to think about the consequences of it being ( stolen or in any other way ) unrecoverable beyond losing a piece of hardware. No data or settings would be lost – or be easy to steal with some encryption.
One click is all it takes to install any application – native or web/prism. With my favorites like Google’s Picasa, Skype, Dropbox, Last.fm and Google Chrome already there – not to mention most of the biggest social media sites and web applications there as prism apps. Also there some Game and Education titles I have yet to see anywhere else. How to install the from the regular ubuntu stream – or adding more sources – is a mystery because no package manager is present. Besides that, system and application upgrades are fast – one click – operations.
Other changes might not be as apparent to the average user, but the kernel itself was – as I learned from one of the developers in #jolicloud – optimized for this specific use. Why this was needed and what this brings to the end user is – to me – unclear.
All in all, I can see a lot of this changes being up-streamed into Ubuntu Netbook Remix. The applications selection ( my personal favorite in jolicloud ) is something that could do Ubuntu (or Linux in general) a lot of good. Installing applications is easy in the Linux world but the hard part is actually finding a application to install. Did you know there are 5 excellent - insert appication type – to be installed on your system via the install system, but most actually just stick with the one that is already there and never even think there might be something out there that would suit them better ?
If you want to try it out yourself, you have to register for a invitation.
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