Linux Netbook Showdown: Ubuntu Netbook Remix vs. Jolicloud Pre-Beta

I recently purchased a pre-Black Friday sale cheapy netbook from NewEgg for $199. It’s a Gateway LT2022u, the same hardware as the low-end Acer Aspire Ones. This first thing I did with the netbook was install Windows 7. (I did some reading and apparently Windows 7 performs similar to XP on a netbook with only a negligible degradation in battery performance.) In any event, I was happy as a clam. Windows 7 performed well but I had to turn off certain features, many of which were meaningless (like Aero Peek), to really multi-task well. So… did some reading and decided to try out Linux operating systems just for giggles. I’m not an Ubuntu novice but I heard good things about both Jolicloud (Pre-Beta) and Ubuntu Netbook Remix (Karmic Koala). This is my assessment of the two head-to-head.

OS Installation. I found Jolicloud easier to install than Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR). It activated the right drivers for the Broadcom wifi card in my netbook. UNR did too when I ran it as a Live CD (off a SD Card) but when I did the full installation, the Broadcom driver was wrong. I had to troubleshoot the problem and install a driver off the Live CD manually.

A note on installation: right now, Jolicloud is only available as a wubi-like install — one big file on your Windows bootable hard drive that contains everything, dual boot, etc. You cannot install it into a separate partition, or at least it wasn’t obvious that it could be done. With UNR, you can wubi-install or partition your drive and run the grub bootloader to dual boot.

Interface. Same.  Tie. (If you’re bored with the interface, check out Gnome Shell 3.)

App Installation. Jolicloud has its own software repository where users are expected to find everything they need. It’s easy to navigate but not comprehensive yet (for example, Seemic is there but TweetDeck isn’t). Also, many of the apps are simply launchers for web pages. The generic Twitter app is one such example. I found this somewhat confusing because the launchers look like proprietary apps. With UNR, you use Package Managers and, if you prefer, shell commands to install apps. You can also easily add software repositories to UNR. Frankly, I prefer UNR’s method of installing software. As long as you add the right repositories to your list of repositories, you have access to just about everything. In the Jolicloud world, users are discouraged from installing software that isn’t included in their own repository… though nothing really prevents them from clicking on a Debian package off a website.

“Social” Operating System. Jolicloud is a “social” operating system. This is intriguing. You can follow people who use it, share app suggestions, etc. I suppose that is a neat idea but I didn’t find it particularly appealing… particularly during the pre-beta testing stage when very few users exist. This concept reminds me of the App Store and Blackberry App World. Perhaps it will catch on for the netbook. For UNR, you basically have the vBulletin forums online for support-type questions but no integrated social features except for the 2 gigs of online storage (called “Ubuntu One”) that you can share with friends.

Conclusion. For Ubuntu newbies, the Jolicloud experience might be better because it installed properly the first time… no hassles. For more advanced users who want to tweak their systems more (and live outside of the Jolicloud repository), UNR might be the way to go. In any event, it’s pretty darn cool that two Linux distributions are specifically designed for netbooks… the more competition the better.

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