We’ve spent quite a lot of time on this blog trying to play down the hype of Chrome OS. This isn’t because we don’t believe in the platform or its potential, but rather because there is a long way to go in both its development and that of the mobile broadband sector globally to get the best of it. Chrome OS also faces an extremely competent rival.
Sneaking up on the inside of the rails is ‘JoliCloud’, which late last week launched its first major public beta. As with Chrome OS, JoliCloud has a Linux core and is focused on being lightweight (it is a mere 600MB download) and fast (boot times are circa 15 seconds).
Where the two differ, however, is JoliCloud isn’t an out-and-out Cloud specialist, since it also sports a desktop and will allow in the installation of native applications. Adobe’s popular Air runtime environment works too, and you’ll see a range of software, including the likes of Skype, Firefox, the VLC media player and Dropbox.
Consequently what we have is more of a hybrid OS which looks to marry the benefits of Cloud computing with the practicality of current offline friendly platforms such as Windows, Mac OS X and Ubuntu. Furthermore, JoliCloud will beat Chrome OS to market with an early 2010 timeframe put on the final version — and yes, it’s free.
So could JoliCloud actually be the best operating system for your netbook or smartphone? Right now it is too early to say, but it is clear that Google Chome OS won’t be having everything its own way…
Gordon
