Jolicloud alpha 1 release has been tested by approximately 100 people. Their feedback has been crucial to improve our service, correct a few bugs and add some useful features. The installation documentation has also been improved thanks to early user feedback.
As we launch invitations, we want to share information about this alpha program.
As you join the alpha program, you will be using a product that we hope you will like very much, but that is also going to evolve a lot. We have integrated a web-assisted update system that is super simple to use. As we regularly produce new features, improvements, fixes, you will have to check for updates every week. As a member of our community, your feedback is vital to us. We are also dealing with a Linux UI and features legacy that we will improve and optimize.
If you are a Linux expert, developer and can help us with netbook and device compatibility, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via the wiki. You can also chat with the development team on our irc channel.
You might be a designer or web developer who shares our vision that the web, and especially HTML 5, is the future. If you want to adapt your web service to netbooks screens (1024*575 pixels), please contact us to join our early bird developer program. Our full web apps technology relies on Mozilla Prism and we support Flash and Gears.
If you are a Jolicloud user, please give us feedback, we still have a lot to do before updating to beta status, and your input will help us prioritize developments.
We are looking for community leaders to help us with support and localisation. Interest in getting involved? Contact us, we’d love to hear from you!
Few things to know before joining the alpha program:
Jolicloud is designed and optimized for netbooks, but not all netbooks work with jolicloud yet. If your netbook is not on the list, it means that:
- Your netbook has not been tested with Jolicloud: N270 or N280 Atom processor based netbooks with a GMA 950 should work however as we have not yet had the opportunity to full test them we prefer not to add them to the list.
- Your netbook might use hardware we don’t support yet: for example some netbooks are using the GMA 500 graphical card from Intel (such as the Sony Vaio P, the Dell Mini 10 (not the 10v), the MSI U115 , etc. This processor that is shipped with the atom Z520 has not yet updated Linux drivers (more details on this epic story here). We hope that this will be resolved soon, but until then we cannot support GMA 500 Poulsbo machines. Some other platforms like MIPS, via C7-M, and ARM are not supported yet.
Our goal is to get as many netbooks supported but in any case, if your netbook is not on the list yet, you shouldn’t install Jolicloud. If you do you are on your own, as we won’t be able to provide technical support.
If you are using a computer that is not a netbook, or a desktop or a tablet computer, we will not provide support either. As our system is derived from Ubuntu, it should not be impossible to run Jolicloud on another device, but we don’t have the necessary resources to provide assistance. If you manage to get Jolicloud to run on a cool device like a PS3 or a MID, we are very interested to hear about it and we will have a dedicated section in our wiki.
Building the coolest app directory for netbooks
We have built our own application directory combining web and native applications that can be Linux or Windows if you use Wine. If you have any questions regarding these applications you will have to contact the developers responsible for them directly. Jolicloud is not locked so if you have advanced knowledge you will be able to add native applications that are not in our directory.
We are interested to hear about any cool web application that has been optimized for a netbook screen and will replace existing native software. If there are applications you would recommend and would like to see in our directory, please let us know.
Building global support for 3G cards
Jolicloud has been designed to use 3G cards and we will focus our efforts to provide the widest support. We want to hear about your experience of using 3G USB dongles and internal 3G modems. Your ideas and feedback on compatibility and on how to optimize the use of 3G with Jolicloud will be very valuable to us.
Media, video and screenshots
If you write a review or a create a screencast of Jolicloud, please let us know and add it to the wiki, don’t forget to tag your photos and videos with “Jolicloud”.
On Twitter, Jolicloud alpha testers can use the #jolicloud tag so we can track your feedback there as well.
We hope you enjoy Jolicloud and look forward to hearing from you very soon!
Thanks to the team for all the hard work, can’t wait for my invite. Looking forward to making Jolicloud the best netbook OS ever seen!
Regards
Niks