BF2S Forums Jolicloud, A new OS for your netbook

Finray wrote:

Jenspm wrote:

Finray wrote:

I think they're dumbing it down for the average user.

no, I mean this part

boots pretty fast

Should be, yaknow, "blazing boot speeds", "boots incredibly fast", etc

I know what part you meant, I think they were dumbing down the marketing for the average user, to make them feel more connected with their customer base by using words they use everyday, verging on slang.

no, he means they're being hesitant to brag up the virtues of their product. they're hedging it in their language. "pretty fast" isn't good marketing. good marketing is THE FASTEST OS EVER SO FAST IT'LL WHIP THE PANTS OFF YOUR GRANNY AND MELT HER FACE! he's not talking about their choice in semantics.

OK - running Jolicloud and posting from it right now.

First impressions:
IT'S FAST!!! WOW! Just really snappy, even on this 900MHz Celeron M processor that I have on my EEE 900. I've found my new favorite OS. It's somewhere between Ubuntu and Android. It has an app catalog, so you don't always have to do stuff using the browser to use popular web apps, but there are so many normal apps, too. Works just like the software installer in Ubuntu, just looks like the Android Market or the Apple App Store. Very good. It has Open Office Writer and Calc along with MS Powerpoint Viewer for office work and VLC and Boxee and Youtube, then loads of Twitter apps if that's your thing, Opera and other browsers if you don't like Firefox (though FF is like lightning on Jolicloud). Then there is also Wine. It has, literally, everything you could possibly need on a lightweight machine.

If you are going to install it, use the ISO. Like I already said, the EXE is a joke. I've installed it on the slower MLC SSD on my EEE 900 and it doesn't lag at all. I was also able to maintain the WIndow partition that is on there that has all my XP programs and such. During install, choose "Install side-by-side" and then change your drive letter. It won't overwrite your data at all, it'll just use the free space, which you can determine yourself how much Joli has to itself with a handy little slider. Installation is just like installing Ubuntu - which means VERY simple.

I've yet to have to install a driver. It just works. You also need to create your own user account to use the apps and stuff and you can tie it into your Facebook, Twitter and there was one other. I used the Twitter one to pull my profile image off it and that was really it.

Needless to say, I'm in love.

One thing that is really growing on me about this OS is the fact that it is being so actively updated. There are just constant system and security updates, it's great. I really hope this gets out of pre-beta and advances more, this thing could really change the netbook market with the right business strategy.

I would even go so far as to say it's better than Chrome OS in the fact that Chrome OS doesn't allow you to access the data stored on your hard drive, because everything on Chrome is done in the cloud. Jolicloud, on the other hand, does a mixture of both. Your apps seem to be a mixture of both, but you have all the access to your physical device that you would have with a conventional OS. It's the best of both worlds. A lot of the apps also give you free (or paid, depending on how much storage you want) storage in the cloud. For instance, Picasa or Google Docs or Photobucket. The apps work just as if you're viewing them in a web browser, but some of it is certainly stored within the OS, but it doesn't seem to be very much.

Probably the best thing about it, though, is its simplicity. Anyone can use this. The buttons are also all very large and easy to see and read, so if you want to get your grandma or someone introduced to computers and the Internet, this is a very easy way to go about doing so.

Sorry I keep bumping the thread, but I think it'd be nice to keep a kind of running review of this. Has anyone else installed this thing on their netbook at all? I know we have quite a few users here that use netbooks...

Zimmer wrote:

Don't be sorry for bumping, your posts are very very informative. I'm going to see if I can install this on my desktop computer, just to play around with it. I've had an invite since the very beginning, but I don't have a netbook to try it out on. It looks incredibly promising, and much nicer than Chrome OS.

I've been toying with the idea of installing it on my girlfriend's Acer Aspire (not the netbook model). The only thing is that I am afraid the drivers in Jolicloud won't run on this machine (tried to play with Ubuntu on it, but the Live CD just wouldn't work; pretty sure this thing is slowly giving up the ghost). I'm guessing, though, that if you can find drivers for your hardware under Ubuntu, you could more than likely install them into Jolicloud, seeing as how Jolicloud is based off of Ubuntu.

I have no idea how to go about doing that, though, since I am a complete and total Linux newb. If I had the time, it would be an interesting project to try, but sadly, I don't. Let me know how you get along with it, Zimmer. It'd be nice to be able to get Jolicloud running on any desktop, even a gaming-type rig as a nice, instant-on application.

@ghetto

I'd imagine functionality would be about the same, as they are both using the same architecture and are built for the same style of computing... however Aesthetically, Jolicloud wins hands down.

I may try putting this on my macbook...

I had real issues getting ubuntu to work on it... like srsly fucking with the bootup

Played with the CPU clocking utility last night: Switching to power-saving mode drops the CPU (for an EEE 900) to 333MHz and I switched between a few other clock speeds and it didn't crash at all or create any obvious instability with the OS, so that seems to work like a charm. I didn't have a chance to play with the on-demand feature (which would be REALLY nice, because that's one feature that allows Atom processors to get such amazing battery life), so if that works, then I think we have a winner here.

does winamp work?

More impressions on Jolicloud: As far as basic web browsing tasks go, turning the CPU down to 300MHz doesn't seem to hurt overall performance at all. YouTube videos don't seem to play very well, but for truly basic tasks, it works just fine. The battery meter also doesn't give any accurate measure of time remaining... it gives a seemingly accurate percentage meter (certainly better than WinXP), but a timer like on the Atom processors would be nice. Pretty sure this is one aspect of the motherboard and chipset where ASUS skimped on when they built this machine...

I bet this would be nice on a slate.

yea it needs to do that.. (touchscreen)

More thoughts on Jolicloud:
A new kernel was sent out today (now up to version .6) and so now I had three kernels on the drive. Neither takes up very much space (less than 100MB as I found out), but nonetheless... it's annoying to have the kernels all sitting there in the boot list. So I did some searching around and found out you had to use Synaptic to get rid of the kernels. OK - but how to get into Synaptic? Did some playing and you have to open the terminal and use the command to get into it. Apparently sudo means that you want to do something as an admin? Seems to be that way.

Then you have to type into the search bar at the top "jolicloud" and then arrange the list by what is and what is not installed - it's a really long list. A green box means something is installed and a gray box means it isn't. OK. Just find the kernel out of the much shorter list of green boxes and select "remove". Then up at the top you need to click "Apply". That's it.

The new kernel is much more stable (for my EEE 900) it seems than the last - less hang ups and odd beta behavior. Also got my Huawei modem finally working. To do that you have to go into Network Connections and then follow the short wizard to add a 3G connection (there's a tab called 3G Connections and you just click the ADD button). Then you have to edit the connection and put in the necessary PIN code (if your modem requires one) and check the box for "automatically connect". Now restart the computer with the modem plugged in and it should ask you to add the PIN to the Keyrings. Once you've done that, it will connect automatically.

One thing I did notice with the 3G is that it needs to be plugged in before beginning the boot-up sequence. If anyone knows a way to fix this odd behavior and always have the 3G show as an available connection in the little drop down menu at the top, that'd be great. Being that this is based on Ubuntu, I'm sure someone here knows how to do this via the terminal. Setting up a 3G connection on my friend's Ubuntu laptop was much easier than this, but still easy - just needed a restart in this case.

So is it worth it to install over XP at the moment?