I bought a netbook about a year ago, mostly because of their size but also because with a bit of work you can get Mac OS X running on them. Of course, this article isn’t about OS X, it’s about another operating system which is a bit easier to install and made just for netbooks.

A lot of these netbook OS’ are really just regular distributions of Linux which have had their UI updated for the smaller screens found on netbooks, Jolicloud is no different. It’s based on Debian and has some UI tweaks which makes navigating around the system a bit easier.

The reason I chose Jolicloud over the other netbook-friendly operating systems was because it looked like it had a special application which focused on social-network connectivity. Nope. I believe the application I was looking at was the main little portal to Jolicloud but the little updates and all from one of their screenshots on the Jolicloud website were just of other people using Jolicloud. The updates were just of what these people had installed on their own Jolicloud netbooks (sounds dull) and not of updates from services like Twitter and Facebook. That said, they do offer easy installs for “apps” like Facebook and Twitter.

And by apps I mean simply links to the Twitter and Facebook web pages…yeah. Pretty dumb if you ask me. Why would I want to open separate application instances of a web browser (eating up more memory) when I could just open a tab in Google Chrome or Mozilla FireFox? I am just not sure I really understand the point to this netbook OS. It really has no apps specially made for it. I really thought the main feature or point to this OS was to take your social networking accounts and feed their information through a main application.

I must admit, it does make the installation of some applications really easy though. Installing Dropbox and Google Chrome was quite simple. I enjoy using Google Chrome on here more then Mozilla FireFox, in fact FireFox is not fun to use anymore anywhere (OS X, Linux and now even Windows). The OS also comes with options to set how your processor is utilized (however I have a feeling this little application is available regardless with what flavor of Linux you choose to use). This is great for when you need to conserve battery.

I should also mention, installing Jolicloud to your netbook is relatively easy as long as you’ve got some competence about you. You can download the Jolicloud ‘install image’ and copy it to a flash key (I believe you need a flash key of at least 2GBs). Pop the flash key into your netbook’s USB port and then just follow the on-screen instructions to get it installed. It took me about an hour from downloading the image to booting into the system.

All in all Jolicloud is a decent little OS for your netbook. Of course it doesn’t come close to running OS X (which is way more fun)! If you’re looking to get rid of that default Windows XP or Vista install that likely came on your netbook, Jolicloud is a great alternative. Quick and easy to install and very simple to update (via their built-in updater) it’s definitely an operating system to have a look at. If you end up giving it a a go feel free to add me, my username is ‘jimmyb’.

[Jolicloud.]