First Look at Jolicloud

Productivity Sauce

Linux distributions designed for netbooks are a dime a dozen these days, so one really has to pull something extraordinary out of the hat to impress the mobile crowd. While Jolicloud's main goal is not to awe Linux geeks, the new distribution does offers a radically different take on a system for your netbook that might appeal to the non-technical user. Jolicloud has been in development for quite some time, and its developers managed to keep it under tight wraps, carefully dispensing invites to a few chosen users. Recently, yours truly found himself among the lucky ones. As an avid netbook user, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take Jolicloud for a spin. The currently available version of Jolicloud is labeled as Alpha 2, so obviously it's still a work in progress. But even in its current state, the distro gives a good impression of things to come.

Right from the start, it becomes clear that Jolicloud's developers don't try to reinvent the wheel. Jolicloud is based on Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) with a slightly tweaked visual theme. According to Jolicloud's developers, the system is based on the Array.org kernel which provides support for many popular netbooks, including Acer Aspire One and various Eee PC models. The innovative part of the distro is the new Jolicloud interface that runs on top of the system. When you launch it for the first time, you are prompted to link your netbook to your Jolicloud account. Once you've done that, you are presented with Jolicloud's main interface consisting of four tabs: Dashboard, Applications, Settings, and Lab (disabled in the current version). The Dashboard section, in turn, contains three subsections: Notifications, Updates, and History. The Notifications subsection shows -- among other things -- updates from users you follow. The Updates subsection provides a relatively easy way to update both your distro and the Jolicloud system, while the History subsection contains a list of all your activities.

As you might have guessed, the Applications section acts as a repository for the software available in the Jolicloud channel. You can think of it as a user-friendly version of your favorite package manager. All applications in this section are divided into groups, and you can install any application by pressing the Install button. Once installed, the application appears in the appropriate section of the UNR interface. Obviously, you can do that using the Synaptic package manager or executing the apt-get install command, but this functionality is designed first and foremost for non-technical users. Besides the usual suspects like OpenOffice.org, VLC, and Evolution, the Applications section contains a wide selection of Web-based applications, such as Twitter, Google Docs, Zoho, Flickr, Twitter, Wikipedia, and others. These applications are based on the Mozilla Prism software that allows users to run Web-based applications directly on their desktops. Again, this is something you can do yourself, but Jolicloud takes all the hassle out of the process.

In addition to modifying profile info and managing computers linked to your Jolicloud account, you can use the Settings subsection to subscribe to other Jolicloud users. This feature is clearly inspired by Twitter, but it's not yet fully implemented.

Of course, it's too early to draw any conclusions, but the current alpha version of Jolicloud does make a good first impression. The fact that Jolicloud is based on Ubuntu means that you can run it on pretty much any netbook and tweak the system to your liking. Jolicloud's slick graphical interface makes it easy to install desktop and Web-based applications as well as keep your system up-to-date, which can prove to be popular with average users. In addition, Jolicloud does a good job of providing seamless integration between your netbook and the cloud. Despite the recent progress, time is not on Jolicloud's side. The market for netbook-based Linux distros is rapidly becoming saturated, with Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Moblin gaining momentum, so capturing the imagination of netbook users could be a hard nut to crack for Jolicloud.

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