This being my first post to Open Source for N00bs, I thought I might give you all a short piece about who I am. Feel free to skip the next paragraph if you want to just read the review of Jolicloud.
My name is Aaron Ball and I've been working open source for a few years now. I run Ubuntu Linux almost near 95% of the time. I run mostly open source applications day in and day out (Eclipse/Aptana for web development, Open Office for office related activities, Gimp for photo editing, KeePass for password management, etc.). If it is not obvious yet, I'm a huge proponent of open source software.
To preface, my test environment was on a laptop with 3 gigs of ram, an 320 gigabyte hard drive (not SSD of course), and an Intel core two duo 1.86 gigahertz. I ran Jolicloud from the live CD (hey now, I'm not about to mess up my nice Ubuntu install with a dual boot).
Now, let's get down to the good stuff...
I recently read an article on Lifehacker (I love that site) on the Five best Netbook Operating Systems. Amongst them were Windows 7 (of course), Jolicloud, Ubuntu, Mac OS X, and Linux Mint. Windows 7 and Ubuntu ranked as the top two and Jolicloud came in as the third most popular... it's time to try out something new I think. Besides, what could get more shiny, new, and exciting than a pre-beta release of an operating system? Buckle in everyone...
Upon initial boot, Jolicloud was quite clean looking. The interface is very intuitive and simplistic. Definitely good for people who want a computer that just runs nicely out of the box.
The inevitable next step was attempting to launch applications. Naturally, the first thing I wanted to do was surf the internet. I was saddened to find that despite the very attractive "desktop", the programs lacked similar styles. Rather, they looked much like a minorly styled Linux interface (no transparency, little shading, no shadows, etc.); very unattractive.
Also to my dismay, Jolicloud comes with quite the limited selection of applications. It does not come with a music player/manager (though there are several that can be installed, but we'll cover that later), office software (for documents, presentations, etc), or even an e-mail/calendar/contacts client. Fortunately for all of us, this is a predicament easily remedied. Once registered for Jolicloud, the computer is associated with your account and your application directory becomes available.
From here you can select from many different categories for an impressive number of useful applications (such as the previously mentioned music player, office software, movie players, etc). By default, applications are sorted by most popular which seems to accurately represent the most-useful applications (naturally). I was surprised at all of the applications available that seem to integrate many different cloud-based services into one's netbook (Gmail, Google Docs, Google Wave, FaceBook, Twitter, etc). Installation is very intuitive as well...click install. Whew *wipes sweat from brow* That was difficult.
Another cool feature of Jolicloud that I would just like to point out (it is of little consequence as to how the operating system runs) is it's window opacity changing to make computing easier on those of us with attention deficit disorder. Essentially what happens is when the user switched from one open window to another, the windows in the background become semi-transparent to make them less distracting. The desktop also does this. It's quite the nice feature (not to mention it looks pretty and that's what it's all about, right?).
Overall, I like Jolicloud. It is relatively intuitive and attractive. It runs relatively quickly. I would however like to see better integration of applications into the operating system. Currently Jolicloud looks much like a plugin for Linux rather than a separate operating system. Despite it's aesthetic qualities, it still runs fast and has implemented some new super cool features such as web-based installations, near-seamless cloud integration, and a really cool way to launch/organize programs (the desktop/"start menu"). Keep up the good work Jolicloud. I look forward to see the final product.
