July 27, 2009, 7:35 am
Jolicloud is a custom Linux distribution that is designed specifically for netbook devices. It uses Mozilla’s Prism Web runtime and Canonical’s Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) to deliver a Web-centric Linux environment that is easy to use. The platform and its associated Web service are at an early stage of development and are currently in closed alpha testing. We took the latest Jolicloud alpha release for a test drive to see how it stacks up against other popular netbook Linux distros.
The Jolicloud live installer is distributed as a 600MB .img file that can be written to flash media, such as a USB memory stick or an SD card. Users can boot from the removable media device and use it to install the operating system on a netbook. I tested Jolicloud in VirtualBox and on a Dell Mini 9 that was originally shipped with Ubuntu. The graphical installation program is the same one that is used in the conventional desktop version of Ubuntu.
