Last week, I was asked for help fixing a problem a coworker had with her portable computer. Apparently, she was trying to switch her internet provider from AT&T DSL to Charter cable, and they were unsuccessful getting her computer to connect to the new wireless router after several hours of troubleshooting by phone. As soon as she brought the computer in for me to look at it, I realized part of the problem. She was using a Dell Inspiron 910 netbook (also sold as the Dell “Mini 9”) with the original Ubuntu Linux distribution on it. The phone support folks at the cable company were trying to walk her through setup options relevant to Windows 7! Confounding her problem, though, was the fact that something had become corrupt on her Ubuntu installation, preventing the wireless card from displaying new Wi-Fi access points. After tinkering with her computer some more, I was about to resign myself to simply obtaining the original recovery disc and restoring her Dell to the factory defaults when I stumbled across the Jolicloud project.
The folks at Jolicloud have put together a front-end desktop consisting of third-party, web-based applications and tools, complete with a software installer that lets users browse a list of additional programs they can choose to add. Unlike a typical operating system, installation consists of simply adding a new desktop icon for the application and storing that preference as part of your user account on their server. All of this can be accessed from a compatible web browser on any computer, but the piece of the puzzle that really makes this project useful is their Joli OS. Essentially, Joli OS is a heavily customized version of Ubuntu Linux itself, with the Chromium web browser at the heart of it. Not only can an ISO image be downloaded and recorded to a CD-R disc as the installation media, but tools are also provided for Windows or Mac OS X machines to create a bootable USB memory stick based on the downloaded ISO.
I performed this particular installation from a USB memory stick and found the process to go quickly and easily. Joli OS boots to a login screen, where one uses the account initially created on the JoliCloud website or a generic guest account. The initial desktop gave me two screens full of application icons with such choices as Google Docs, Google Voice, Google Calendar, YouTube, Wikipedia, Newsmap (a Flash-based web site that presents news headlines from many sources in an interesting format on the screen), Flickr, and both Canvas Rider and Space Invaders games. Of course, the option also exists to simply launch the web browser. Additionally, I had the option to change the background wallpaper to any of a large number of images or to configure my account to auto login at boot. By clicking on a plus-sign in the top left corner of the screen, I was taken to a screen allowing installation of more applications.
It was here that I noticed several packages available for local installation and offline use, as well as all the internet-based options. These locally installable apps (including the AbiWord word processor, DropBox, and OpenOffice) don’t show up when accessing the Jolicloud account via a web browser session. Everything else was cloud based, with options ranging from a web-based version of Angry Birds to Jaycut, a web-based video editor.
Overall, I’m impressed with the whole Jolicloud environment. It might not be a viable solution for anyone who needs to use his or her computer frequently in places lacking an Internet connection, but it covers most of the bases of what the typical user does with a home computer. Jolicloud’s website claims their solution is “a free and easy way to turn any computer up to 10 years old into a cool new cloud device”, and I have to agree. If there’s a single suggestion or complaint I have with it, it would probably be about the lack of integration. The biggest problem I see with setting this up as the new operating system for someone is having to create all of the user accounts to go with the web-based applications installed on it. Obviously, a Google account goes a long way with all of the free services they offer, but then you have various options for online streaming music services, web backup or storage services like DropBox or Microsoft’s Cloud Drive, accounts for photo sharing services like Flickr, and more. Ideally, I’d like to see Jolicloud offer a one-stop method to create new user accounts for any of these providers when the Jolicloud account itself is set up on their web page.
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