Jolicloud 1.1 is the latest stable release of Jolicloud, the cloud-based, Ubuntu-based distribution. Other than being a cloud-based distribution, the most distinctive feature of Jolicloud is the netbook-optimzed interface, which is one of five netbook-optimized interfaces available on Linux and BSD distributions.

We have seen plethora of Linux variants based on Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch and so on. The people behind JOLICLOUD, a Linux OS say that we, the netbook owners will soon be ‘Jolicloud-ed’. But, is being Joliclouded beneficial at all?

This weekend, I installed Jolicloud on Leslee's netbook. Jolicloud is currently in private alpha. Wow, Jolicloud is phenominal.

If bookmarking a site in your web browser sounds like rocket science to you then you're probably the perfect candidate for Jolicloud, which dumps a bunch of shortcuts for social networking sites and such onto your netbook screen.

Jolicloud is a respin of Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR), with the addition of significant new functionality through a slick and shiny menu system which incorporates a point-and-click method for system updates and the adding/deleting new software.

For those who are sick of using Windows XP on their netbook and wanted to try out a netbook-efficient and more user friendly OS, then Jolicloud could well be the one heading to your netbook.

Linux distributions designed specifically for use on netbooks is nothing new. Canonical produces the Ubuntu Netbook Remix version of Ubuntu for these small-sized devices, Intel has their Moblin distribution that is very fast and offers an attractive interface, gOS has their own netbook distribution, Linpus has QuickOS, and the list goes on.

Linux has been making some pretty decent progress toward becoming a people's operating system, spearheaded by Ubuntu, it is still a domain of computer freaks, savvy ego-centric hackers and advanced users with a knack for software. But what does Jolicloud tell them?

Jolicloud is a Linux-based netbook OS that is built on top of Canonical's Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It uses Mozilla's Prism environment to make Web applications accessible outside of the browser.