Jolicloud, a Web-centric Linux distribution for netbooks, reached an important milestone this week with the launch of version 1.0. The platform, built atop Ubuntu, offers intriguing synchronization capabilities and comes with its own distinctive user interface shell that is constructed with standards-based Web technologies.

We first looked at Jolicloud last year when the original alpha version was made available for testing. The software has matured modestly since that early preview release, but there isn't quite enough differentiation from the underlying Ubuntu environment yet to make Jolicloud truly compelling. Still, it's definitely headed in the right direction.

Look and feel

Unlike the alpha version—which used Mozilla's Prism Web runtime environment and the classic Ubuntu Netbook Edition Launcher—Jolicloud 1.0 uses Chromium and provides its own launcher that is built with HTML5. It still uses some key components of the GNOME desktop environment, including the Nautilus file manager and the conventional GNOME panel.

The Jolicloud 1.0 look and feel is considerably more polished than previous versions. The launcher has a very smooth Web-like aesthetic with lots of gray gradients and shadows. The distro comes with a matching set of Gtk+ and Metacity themes that have a charcoal color scheme. The icons in the native applications look like a custom variant of the GNOME Colors collection, but tinted to match the blue shade of Jolicloud's cloud logo.

It's clear that serious effort went into designing the launcher and furnishing it with professional artwork. This is much more than just an aesthetic overhaul, because the change in style also brings some usability improvements. The result is an environment that looks impressive, but there is still some inconsistency between the appearance of the launcher and the native applications. That issue really highlights the limitations of native Gtk+ theming.

The launcher

Jolicloud's Web-centric philosophy puts Web applications front and center. The environment consists of a launcher and a software manager (built almost entirely with HTML) that presents native programs and Web applications as equals without distinction. When you "install" a Web application like Google Docs, the launcher will display an icon that can be clicked to load the associated webpage in its own process and chrome-less Chrome window.

You can switch between Twitter and Facebook windows, for example, as if they are individual applications. Users can also run the full Chromium Web browser for regular surfing. Native Linux applications, such as Pidgin and VLC, can be installed and used alongside the Web applications and used normally as you would on any conventional Linux distro.

The application manager is one of the key features of the Jolicloud launcher. It gives the user a listing of available native and Web software categorized by groups. When you click the "Add" button next to a native application, it will be installed from the package repository and will be made accessible from an icon in the launcher. Installing a Web application will simply add a launcher shortcut.

The application manager is social by design. The software is sorted by the number of "likes" each application has received from the Jolicloud user community. You can optionally choose to "follow" other individual users and see a stream of the software that they are liking. This stream is accessible by clicking the satellite icon in the launcher toolbar. The social networking features are still pretty slim and don't really offer any support for integrating with other social networks yet.

The "liking" mechanism would make a lot more sense if there was a way to broadcast it on Twitter or expose it through Facebook. In the long-term, I'd like to see Jolicloud's social features eventually evolve into something a bit like Wakoopa, but it's not really clear yet if that is the direction that Jolicloud is ultimately going.

The Jolicloud launcher has gained a storage interface in version 1.0, but it is very simplistic and doesn't do much. It provides shortcuts to several cloud storage services as well as your own local folders and drives. I tried clicking on the Dropbox item, but all it did was open up a Chromium window and load the page on the Dropbox website that displays your files. It was a bit anticlimactic, but I'm hoping for something more impressive in the future, like maybe a FUSE backend that lets you mount the remote storage services and interact with them through the launcher's interface.

When you click on one of the local folders or drives in the launcher, it will simply open up GNOME's Nautilus file manager. It's not particularly impressive, but it does have one nice touch: the drive page shows little pie charts next to each drive to indicate the remaining storage capacity.

Sync

One of the key features of Jolicloud is synchronization. The software lets you link multiple Jolicloud computers to your account and will keep your launcher configuration in sync between all of them. It keeps track of what software you have installed and the order in which you have arranged the launcher items.

When you install an item on one, it will be added to all of the Jolicloud computers that are linked to the account. The synchronization system doesn't appear to be using a push mechanism, however, so the updates aren't delivered instantly. You can force a system to synchronize by logging out and logging back in.

You can access your launcher configuration on any computer by visiting my.jolicloud.com, which provides a perfect replica of the Jolicloud launcher interface. You can even install software from the website and have it propagated to all of your Jolicloud computers. When you use the my.jolicloud.com site in a regular browser, you can click the Web shortcuts in the launcher to open the associated Web applications in new tabs.

The synchronization system is clever and implemented in a relatively intuitive and transparent way, but I'm not convinced that it's a killer feature. I doubt that a significant number of users have multiple netbooks, but the feature might have some practical value in cases where users want to buy a new netbook and migrate an existing Jolicloud software environment without having to manually install and configure their software.

It's worth noting that Canonical's OneConf system will soon bring similar software synchronization capabilities to Ubuntu One users.

Under the hood

Jolicloud is built on top of the Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) Netbook Edition. As many Ubuntu enthusiasts likely realize, version 9.04 is quite old now and will reach its end-of-life in October—meaning that Canonical will no longer support it with updates. It's a bit puzzling that Jolicloud would choose to issue its own 1.0 release on top of Jaunty instead of rebuilding on top of the more recent Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid), which will have a longer three-year support cycle.

Jolicloud is designed to cater to non-technical users, but Linux enthusiasts will be pleased to learn that the underlying system is still largely intact and easily accessible. It uses APT for package management and provides full access to Ubuntu's standard main and universe package repositories in addition to its own official Jolicloud repository. It also has a few PPAs plugged into the APT sources list with backports of newer versions of popular applications like Pidgin and OpenOffice.org.

Conclusions

There are a lot of good ideas on display in Jolicloud 1.0, but the nascent product still feels incomplete. If the company behind Jolicloud can expand on the current implementation and fill in some of the gaps, it has the potential to be a real winner. I like where they are taking the user experience and I think that there are a lot of great things that they can do to make the launcher richer if they take full advantage of HTML's inherent strengths.

The real challenge will be continuing to expand the scope of Jolicloud's differentiating features while keeping pace with Ubuntu and ensuring that Jolicloud users will benefit from Ubuntu's steady stream of new features.

Some of the technologies that Canonical is developing for Ubuntu's own Unity environment (particularly the D-Bus-powered messaging indicators and application indicators) could potentially make it much easier for third parties like Jolicloud to ditch the conventional GNOME panel and integrate the underlying functionality into their own custom user experience in a more seamless way. It would be great to see the functionality of Ubuntu's messaging indicators, for example, woven seamlessly into the Jolicloud launcher.

Linux enthusiasts and existing Ubuntu users don't really have much reason to adopt Jolicloud yet. Ubuntu's own Unity environment is more sophisticated and has much better integration between native applications and the underlying platform. Jolicloud is possibly a better choice, however, if you are more interested in Web applications than native applications.

In my original review of the alpha release, I remarked that Jolicloud could potentially be a good choice for OEMs that are looking for a more intuitive and Web-centric Linux platform to ship on netbooks. That still holds true for version 1.0.

Users who want to try the software can download it from the Jolicloud website. An official release announcement can be found in the Jolicloud blog.