JoliOS the cloud OS

[MobileTechie]

Can someone explain what the point of JoliOS is to me?

I've loaded it up onto a netbook to see what it's about. Initially I thought it was quite cool. It looks nice and the promise of a "Cloud OS", albeit not really defined, sounds interesting.

What you get is a Dashboard (i.e. a desktop) with cloud apps and some local apps on it. It's a snap to add new apps from the lists provided. You can share your choices socially if like. You can also see the same desktop in your Chrome browser anywhere on the net too. I think this is so you can have a kind of Pageflakes sort of system where you define what apps you tend to use and get them anywhere you want be that your netbook, PC or public computer.

So far so good.

However when you unpick what you are actually getting it's less impressive I think. What you get is Ubuntu with an HTML shell. So it takes longer to load than Ubuntu which isn't very fast in the first place. The usual Ubuntu tools/apps are there but hidden a few menus down. There is no apparent way of getting these apps (like Gedit or Terminal or whatever) onto the Dashboard as it's not just a folder like Desktop. I guess this is part of the point of it - to keep the gubbins away from the user but it makes it pretty inflexible.

The "web apps" on the dashboard are just links to webpages which host apps or services or just websites like Wikipedia. These are not available, obviously, when you're offline. So if you only have web apps on it, you have nothing at all when you cannot get online. I thought Cloud was about taking resources and putting them in the cloud to reduce the computing requirements locally. But the OS is local, it's not cloud. Only some of the apps are "cloud" and they've all been available for years anyway.

So why use this rather than Ubuntu on its own? If you want links to webpages, you can put them on your desktop whilst also having all the local apps you like. if you really need a uniform desktop over all platforms then you can use one of the many web desktop system out there.

I want to like this and I want to find it useful but I'm struggling.

Anyone else been using it and finding it more of a revelation?

 

[Xander]

I've got it on my wife's netbook. It's a Fisher-Price operating system for those who don't want to see what's behind the scenes. It's for those who want simplicity and function over malleability and customization.

The vast majority of users do what? Web surfing, email, and a little word processing. I'd say that is what 99% of all users do. An OS like JoliCloud is made for them.

 

[gunslinger]

Played with it for about 20 mins. If this is the future I want no part of it.

 

[Bryce W]

You cant really compare it to Ubuntu. JoliOS isnt designed for us Techies.

Its like saying its the worst car ever, when it really is a bicycle. Think about what most family computers are used for:
Facebook, Chatting, Email and Word Processing. Email and Word Processing can be done with Gmail and Google Docs.

In our technician "cars" we want all the goods, 4 wheels, an engine, some doors etc.. but we need to remember that all our clients want to do is get from point A to point B. If a bicycle can do that then all they really need is a bicycle. JoliOS is the bicycle of OS's
It does what its supposed to do and most families would be happy with it and not care how much more powerful Ubuntu is. In fact, they'll probably get bamboozled with Ubuntu if they are used to JoliOS.

 

[14049752]

There is a "cloud" element to the OS, as well. If you reload it, or use it on another machine, or even log in to your account on their web page, you get access to all of your settings and everything.

I agree about how slow it is, though. I tried it out, hoping for something really fast to use on my netbook...and have yet to find anything that works as quickly as I think it should.

 

[gunslinger]

There is a "cloud" element to the OS, as well. If you reload it, or use it on another machine, or even log in to your account on their web page, you get access to all of your settings and everything.

I agree about how slow it is, though. I tried it out, hoping for something really fast to use on my netbook...and have yet to find anything that works as quickly as I think it should.

Try this: http://elementaryos.org/


I installed it on my daughters aging Dell desktop system and its pretty snappy.

 

[16k_zx81]

...on the subject of the brave new world of cloud computing, I came across this the other day, and thought it looked promising.

http://spoon.net/

The video on the home page pretty much says it all. Seems like a pretty cool solution for people who use a number of machines / or use want to use a lightweight hardware system.

Thoughts, anyone?

 

[Xander]

I posted a few months ago about Spoon (I think I'd seen it on Lifehacker). It's pretty cool but didn't find much that I, myself, would find very useful.

 

[MobileTechie]

The simplicity of it I like. I can see it being pretty good for my mum actually, who really just wants web and email and get confused as to what is on the PC and what is internet and so on.

I guess it's the cloud bit that seems a bit of sham really. I'm not sure what I expect a cloud OS to be like but more than another well known OS with some links to well known web service sites like Gmail.

One nice thing is the sleep and wake speeds which are like 5 seconds on my old eeepc 901. if you don't mind topping the battery up every now and again you really do get instant computing.

 

[gunslinger]

I really think for those people who only use a computer for Facebook, Chatting, and Email , most would be better served with a smart phone. In fact I can see this being the direction some will go with. I have two friends who recently gave up their home desktop computers for a smart phone. Does everything they need done.


I'm not a fan of a smart phone OS on the desktop system. That seems to be what certain flavors of Linux are trying to do as well as Win 8.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

I'm not a fan of a smart phone OS on the desktop system. That seems to be what certain flavors of Linux are trying to do as well as Win 8.

Now that I think of it I would have to say that's the best way to describe Windows 8, can't stand it.

 

[gunslinger]

Now that I think of it I would have to say that's the best way to describe Windows 8, can't stand it.

Yep. Windows 8, Unity on Ubuntu, and to a lesser extent Launchpad on OS X. I strongly dislike the direction of the modern desktop OS.

 

[MobileTechie]

I've been running it for a bit now and I'm beginning to see the point. It makes using web services easier and faster and if you leave in on all the time, just using the lid to sleep it, you get instant gratification like you do with an ipad. Being able to install from a list of apps is appealing and makes me try new things out when I'm bored.

One bizarre omission is a proper file manager in the joli shell. You can view but not move or delete files. I've no idea why but you are forced to use the native Nautilus to do this. Since you cannot add native apps to the dashboard, this involves launching it from Alt-F2 (Run Application...) or browsing down to it using Other Apps and so on. I get the KISS idea but I think even the lowliest user will want to move or delete the odd file here and there.

I've installed Jupiter on it which saves a fair bit of battery life making my eeepc 1001P last all day with no problems.

If they sort the file manager out and allow the creation of links to native apps then I could see myself using it as my netbook OS

 

[16k_zx81]

customer approached me with an old celeron 1.something ghz with 256 ram asking if I could fix it.

My immediate response was "dont bother" but then I thought about the references here on TN to JCOS and thought I might see if it would suit her.

Anyhoo, it turned out she only wanted a backup machine for internet access if something went wrong with her desktop.

I explained all the pros and cons to her and she was keen to try it so nuked the hdd, whacked it on and booted

... and it was awful

Like completely unusable ... too slow

Checked the docs - it needs 384mb ram to run. So I threw in 1gb for good measure and rebooted and was actually very impressed with its performance.

I didnt find the boot speed issue at all. Boot was snappy (probably equiv to a fresh win install), but the OS itself is actually very fast on this old machine.

Im looking forward to see what she thinks of it. Just thought I might jot down the experience here for anyone interested. From what I have seen, for an internet-only old-machine invigoration it looks like a pretty solid option.

 

[MobileTechie]

Joli's boot speed isn't horrific, it's just not as quick as some other distros and since it's a netbook OS, I'd expect it to be faster than Windows. That certainly seems to be a goal of netbook distros. Xandros, that came with the first eeepc's used to boot in under 15 seconds.

There is xPud which supposedly loads in under 10 seconds and is super small (10s of megs) and very fast, but I've never tried it. Joli is about as fast as Ubuntu when it was running Gnome which is a say quite fast but nothing special in the scheme of things.

I've tried my Mum who's in her 70s and my son who is 7 and they both could use Joli OK to access the net and open email etc so it passes the simplicity test.