Netbook OS Roundup: Jolicloud

Last weekend, I installed Jolicloud, a Linux distribution (built on Ubuntu) that extols the virtues of a minimalist, cloud-based operating system. In a week of using it, I’ve found it to be very similar to Ubuntu in usability and performance, and not a bad fit for how I use the netbook.

Jolicloud markets itself as a dual-boot OS, intended to be installed side by side with an existing Windows installation. They are targeting netbook users with Windows XP or Windows 7, who are looking for a lighter alternative but aren’t quite ready to abandon the Windows platform. It’s also available as a stand-alone OS, though, installed into the primary partition of the netbook, which is the option I chose.

Ease of installation

The download and installation was pretty familiar. The Jolicloud ISO is made available over BitTorrent, which was a bit of a hassle for me: I had to download and install a BitTorrent client, and the ISO download was a little slow. I can understand the decision to use the BitTorrent model–it offloads the downloading costs from the Jolicloud infrastructure–but it did pose an additional hurdle for the casual downloader. After downloading the ISO, I had to download and run the Jolicloud USB creator to make a bootable USB drive.

The actual installation was identical to Ubuntu’s: basic configuration (user name, password, location, language, keyboard, etc.), snappy bootup, and then application installation. Jolicloud recognized my hardware, found my network, and within less than 30 minutes of running the install I had a fully-functional netbook.

Application Support

The Jolicloud application directory is a pleasing graphical environment, with applications organized into categories and represented by an icon and description. The expected tools are here: Dropbox, Wine, OpenOffice, and Gimp are all listed, and installation is quite simple.

Most of the applications in the directory, though, aren’t really stand-alone applications: they’re Mozilla Prism renderings of popular web sites, like Facebook, Twitter, and HootSuite. I installed a few to try them out, but found that they were more disruptive than useful in this format. On the netbook, my primary tool is Firefox, and I find it much easier to manage a collection of Firefox tabs than a collection of application windows. With bookmarks and plug-ins in Firefox, I can treat sites like parts of an interconnected application, which is a very different model than the iPhone-like site-as-application model. This may work for people who are used to the single-threaded iPhone environment, but I found it far less than useful.

Another innovation in the Jolicloud OS is a social network of its very own. When you set up your local account, you also have the option to establish a Jolicloud social account. Within the Jolicloud dashboard, you can find and “follow” other Jolicloud users, even seeing which applications they’ve installed. To be honest, this isn’t a selling point for me; Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn seem more than sufficient for my “social” computing needs, and I’m not sure that anyone should know or care that I’ve just applied the latest patches to Gimp. I can imagine that there are people who would find this to be a selling point, though (probably the same people who would like the Facebook and Twitter “apps” from the Jolicloud directory).

Stability

Jolicloud is comparable to Ubuntu Netbook Remix in the stability department. When in use, it tends to stay up and connected; when waking from hibernation, though, it frequently becomes groggy and needs a hard reboot to recover. My WiFi connection goes through phases–it is usually established soon after rebooting, but occasionally becomes unstable. Recovering the connection is usually automatic, though has required manual intervention and even a reboot in some cases.

Performance

Again, nothing special here; overall good performance, with occasional bouts of sluggishness when in heavy use. The OS boots quickly, usually in under 30 seconds, and Firefox starts up snappily. Some of the Prism applications can be sluggish, but after their novelty wore off (after about half an hour) I never went back to them.

Appearance

Ubuntu users will be right at home: the Jolicloud desktop is basically the Ubuntu desktop, with a few system icons reworked. Application categories are listed on the left, system resources (networks, disks) are listed on the right, and application icons are presented in the middle. There are tools built in for tweaking the desktop, and I suppose one could install a different desktop manager if one felt compelled, but it’s a functional and attractive look out of the box.

Overall Assessment

Jolicloud is a solid netbook operating system. It installs with relative ease, and does the basics that a netbook needs to do.

The “social” aspects don’t appeal to me, though; I don’t need to be “connected” whenever I use my netbook, and don’t need another social profile to maintain. And the Prism applications are largely superfluous; they don’t add anything to the experience that isn’t available in a more seamless, integrated way through a regular browser.

If I had to choose between Ubuntu and Jolicloud, I would probably stick with Ubuntu. If I wanted a Linux OS to run alongisde Windows, I would probably still stick with Ubuntu for its more advanced package manager. But Jolicloud is a good netbook choice, and a little slimmer than Ubuntu.

Fortunately, I don’t have to choose between Ubuntu and Jolicloud; the beauty of the netbook is that my choices are dizzyingly complex. And so now it’s time to wipe the flash drive clean and try something new.