Jolicloud pre-Beta out – Good improvement over Alpha2c

Many small subtle changes makes the upgrade worthwhile

Jolicloud is a Linux-based operating system optimized for netbooks. It is built on a Linux kernel, and aims at having a simple, clean but feature-rich OS experience. The Alpha2c has got good reviews, so Jolicloud is out with their pre-beta. I have gone through a hands-on by Netbooked yesterday and quite satisfied with the results.

First of all the pre-Beta comes with GMA 500 support which was very eagerly anticipated. The issue with GMA500 in many Linux Operating syatems is that the codes were never known. So it was always going to be hard to build drivers that support this combination. Joicloud reportedly invented a method that work directly on integrating the original Ubuntu v8.04 binaries into the newer Jolicloud kernel.

The Express installer that comes along lets the OS install alongwith Windows through a very user-friendly wizard-like interface. You can install it like any other software and uninstall it from the Add/Remove program menu. This means no data loss on the previous Windows version, also the hassle of formatting an OS and having to install all the application all over again less. I personally feel the installer is very simple and asks only the minimum needed settings. Also you don’t need to burn it on a CD or an USB to be able to run it. Just double-click the EXE file and you’re good to go. Once you restart after completing the installation, you’ll be able to see the option of Joicloud and the Window you already have.

Although the pre-Beta promises a faster bootup, I calculated almost 1:35 minutes before showing up anything from the time you select Jolicloud over Windows. It maybe this long because, as the reviewer points out, was the first bootup for Jolicloud on this machine. Usually the bootups took less than 30 secs – as revealed by the reviewers’ test.

Once on, the pre-beta shows a pretty similar desktop screen like in Alpha2c, barring a few cosmetic changes. One welcome change from the Alpha2c is the glowing of the active apps icons – there was no way to know it by looking at the icons alone in Alpha2c. Overall there are many small changes here and there that made the GUI more user-friendly.

It is definitely worth updating from the Alpha2c version, and I expect to see lot of improvement by the time the more stable version becomes available.