Reticulating Splines

Acer Aspire One model 751h with 11.6” widescreen (1366x768 resolution), Intel Atom 1.33GHz processor, 1GB memory (expandable), and 160GB hard drive.

A friend of mine owned this netbook and through careless downloading had infected it with so many viruses that it was rendered unusable. I tried reinstalling the stock Windows XP operating system from the restore partition; this failed because because the partition itself was infected. As luck would have it, she wound up buying a new computer and giving this to me, and it became a project of mine for the spring of 2011. I initially installed Ubuntu (a Linux distro) on it and spent some time learning it, then experimented with Windows 7 starter edition and a Chromium build (basically a clone of the Google Chrome OS which a lot of netbooks are starting to come pre-booted with), but I wasn’t really satisfied with anything until, at the suggestion of a friend, I tried Jolicloud, an open source, cloud-based Linux distro built around Chromium. I am truly amazed at how robust and full featured it is because it’s so streamlined and lightweight. This netbook hasn’t run this quickly or smoothly since I initially helped set it up back in September ‘09 when it was purchased.

I would describe Jolicloud as a sort of combination of Linux and the Mac iOS used on iPhones and iPod Touch devices. Unlike Ubuntu, you needn’t spend time hunting down packages or writing code. Jolicloud uses an App Store approach to installing programs…you simply search for compatible programs (of which there are many, and more are continually added), click “add,” and they appear on your desktop, ready to use. Likewise, external hard drives and other peripherals are readily accessible as soon as you plug them in. In addition, you can sync your desktop to your online Jolicloud account and access it from any computer, and you can use the built-in Dropbox and Google Docs apps to upload files you can access from anywhere. Another big advantage it has over the Chrome OS (and what developers of the upcoming “Chromebooks” should seriously take notice of) is having a full-fledged file management system with access to customizable file directories.

Jolicloud has breathed new life into this netbook, which is now one of the best hand-me-downs I’ve ever received. It’s a joy to use with a wealth of customizable features and expansions beneath a deceptively simple interface. It’s the most streamlined and user friendly Linux-based OS I’ve ever worked with, and it’s ideal for netbooks (much more so than Windows) as they have limited processing power and this requires very little to run. I could’ve dual-booted it with any other of the operating systems I’ve tried, but I liked it so much that I just wiped the netbook’s drive clean and used it as my sole operating system. I highly recommend it to users of netbooks, tablets (it has touch screen capabilities), and even Windows-based laptops and desktops, as it takes up very little hard drive space and is easy to dual-boot. There are some bugs and issues I have with hardware compatibility, but according to the developers I’ve talked with (who are helpful and quick to respond), those will be fixed in future updates, which I am very excited about. Best of all, like all Linux distros, it’s completely free. I give Jolicloud a full five star rating.