Another Cool Cloud based Linux for Netbooks


UPDATE 2023: Jolicloud no longer exists, try something like Chrome OS Flex instead.

After looking into the Chromium OS Cherry yesterday, I saw some articles touting another Ubuntu based netbook distro which is more general purpose called Jolicloud. This looks a lot like the Ubuntu Netbook remix and comes in a JolicloudExpress.exe format that will let you install it on your system along with Windows, but being the Linux geek that I am I chose to just download the pre-beta ISO image instead so I could boot the system directly from CD or a USB drive. Then I just used dd to copy the image to a spare 2GB flash drive and boot up my Latitude D630 using it. It did take a little longer to boot than Chromium Cherry since it does load a bit more into memory at boot. But still overall it took less than 40 seconds to come up to the desktop. It auto-detected my wired Ethernet fine, but like Chromium Cherry it also had a little trouble with the Broadcom wifi card in my laptop. However, it has a "Hardware Drivers" app in "Administration" and when I looked there the Broadcom driver was detected there, but the network icon in the upper right did not allow me to select a wireless network. I had to deactivate and then reactivate the driver, and then it did work properly and I could set up my wireless networking. I signed up as a member on the Jolicloud site and I then had access to their repository of Apps. I installed Chrome and my son wanted to try out some games so we installed Quake Live and Extreme Tux Racer from their "App store". Everything installed just fine. Whereas Chrome ran fine, the Quake Live complained about the browser and the Extreme Tux Racer ran very slow because I do not think it recognized my graphics adapter. Personally, I really do not care about the games, and browsing on Firefox or Chrome seemed to work very well. I could use common sites like GMail and Facebook fine and the Flash plug-in was already installed and worked well. Isn't that all you primarily need a netbook for anyway? I think this distro would work well not only in a netbook or laptop, but also as a diskless kiosk type system at a university or other public access site.

Speaking of public access internet, I had heard that Google was paying to have free wireless Internet available at a bunch of airports (including St. Louis's own Lambert Airport) over the holidays. That would be a good place to test out your netbook while you are waiting for your flight or to get through security. I am glad I do not have to fly anywhere over the holidays though! I will just stay here happily in good old St. Louis!

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