i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

Imagine my surprise when I logged into Chrome after installing Jolicloud 1.1 to see an entry, apparently some several days old, indicating I could now UPGRADE from Jolicloud 1 to Jolicloud 1.1.  (And that there are Jolicloud reps. in Vegas at CES.  I might have zipped over there if I knew ...)  Odd that they informed me of the UK release of the Jolicloud netbook, but not of their CES appearance, which is in my backyard, comparatively.

...

But anyway.  I've been waiting for 1.1 eagerly for 1.1 ever since it was announced.  My 1.0 continued to report that 1.1 update would be available "soon."  I gave up.  I reinstalled.

Naturally, I did not want to do this, because I have a highly customized Jolicloud install.  And the point is, 1.1 brings Jolicloud forward to Ubuntu Lazy Leopard, or whatever the "L" version is.

Jolicloud is advertising 1.1 as "bring your old computer back to life" or some such thing.  And let me tell you.  I have a e-Machine, circa 2006, that runs like absolute CRAP with the native Windows XP.  It ran fine, of course, when I bought it -- though I will admit it was at end-of-life-cycle on the cheap shelf at Best Buy at the time.  So, it limped along in "sort of ok mode" for a number few years, answering my phone and running my music collection.  But finally -- and the computer is less than five years old, with at least a year of not running all that well under its belt -- it is just too crappy to run in WindowsXP. Plus, I should note that it is virus-free AND I remove a lot of slow-down-the-computer apps and resident apps.  It just don't work no-mo.

Still, I keep WindowsXP on it, at least it is a licensed version that in a pinch I can run some Windows program if I have to.

Sooo ... the Jolicloud INSTALLER ran about 10x faster than BOOTING into WindowsXP.  Are you kidding me?  First run, it told me to remove Jolicloud 1.0.  Wow, sure hope I don't have anything on there I can't replace ... GO.

Second run, zip, installed.  It tells you to go get a cup of coffee while it does everything, but there's no time for coffee, let me tell you.  There was some sort of error -- both times it reported an error of not being able to find a disk(?) -- but I hit continue and there seemed to be no problem with the install.

One very nice feature of the Jolicloud install is that it puts itself into the Windows boot menu rather than requiring a Grub install.  Just me, but that is my preference on dual boot machines.

One "defect" in my opinion is the failure to put /home on a separate partition.  Had this normal linux setup been followed in Jolicloud, I could have changed the O/S without losing my existing configurations.

Unlike 1.0, 1.1 found my Nvidia driver, installed, re-booted and we were up and running.

Because Jolicloud is cloud oriented and designed to synchronize your various computers, right away it came up with my previously designated screen saver and proceeded to load all of my regular applications.  While it was doing this, I went through the entire set of Apps -- there are a ton more than were in 1.0 -- and picked out some new stuff.

But, unfortunately, Jolicloud limits its apps largely to Web applications, and beyond that, largely to commercialized products that (I assume) provide Jolicloud with financial support.  It's probably a good financial model for Jolicloud and has assisted it in putting out a very good version of Ubuntu.  BUT, it worries me with respect to the future of linux, because why program for the free world when you can get an advertising supported version that works pretty well.  (I would say the same for ChromeOS -- which according to the Jolicloud blog from CES will run Jolicloud just fine.)

Unfortunately, the bigger linux projects have not understood the importance of webcentric computing.  I think Jolicloud "gets it" in a next generation way.  Or, in any event, they have streamlined and done something very nicely that I have been trying to accomplish via my personal computers and website for some time.

Well ... and second part of "unfortunately," is that I'm not really an webcentric social animal.  So, the reality is most of the apps I want to run are still to be found in Synaptic Package Manager and not in the far more convenient Jolicloud apps.

But, they are there -- and for now, that's the point.  In 1.0 Jolicloud provided a "legacy apps" folder, which I believe merely connected to /usr/share/applications.  Not so this time out, so it took me a moment to go get what I needed.  But, it's possible to drag a link into the left side of the file manager, so once found, easy to return to.  You fire up "Control Center", which is the normal Ubuntu control center, and add stuff.

Well, the first thing for me -- and I notice there is now a Lubuntu (lxde) to go along with Kubuntu (kde) and Ubuntu (gnome) -- is to add all of the lxde packages.  As I have documented here, I have never been able to get KDE 4+ to function in a stable manner on any of my computers, so I was pretty happy when lxde came along.

Once installed, typing <alt><f2> and then running "lxpanel" puts an lxpanel across the bottom of the Jolicloud screen.  So, now we have a nice menu system and are ready to go.

I don't really know what-all I installed.  I just started putting in things that I know I use a lot, which also give me a bunch of other dependencies, but if you are playing along, here's what I think I did.

The quick search now works (it wasn't working for me in 1.0), so I searched on "lx" and added all the lx packages that seemed relevant to a full lxde install.  This is a major part of the upgrade, because the old Gusty based Jolicloud was somewhat back in the dark ages on lxde and some other stuff.

Then I added:  dolphin, konqueror, some konqueror plugins, both qt and gtk google-gadets ... and well, I don't remember what else.

Now, I like a clock screensaver and I have usually run xdaliclock.  I noticed on the lxde system preferences menu that I now had two screensaver items.  One was the gnome screensaver that Jolicloud installed and the other was the xscreensaver system that I use to run xdaliclock.  I then installed xdaliclock, but I don't have it running as a screensaver because you have to manually create some entries to get it to work as a screensaver.  But, I discovered that the GXL-Text screensaver could be switched over to a pretty reasonable clock display, so at least for now I will just go with that.

As usual, I prefer qt google gadets to gtk ones.  But, at the moment I don't have any transparency.  In 1.0, I had compiz and cairo-dock running.  I'll be installing those, just didn't do it yet.  I chose at the moment to run on the "slim" window manager rather than the "lxde" one, though I don't know which is better optimized -- and I also know that compiz will run just fine on this computer.

I ran dropbox to get the proprietary dropbox widget downloaded and quickly had my dropbox shared files downloaded.  I will have to do some linking now, because I have my normal lxde setup shared in dropbox.  Except, however, I don't put into dropbox anything that has passwords or the like included -- so at the moment, I have lost access to my office Windows Server.  I'll have to copy that set of files off my other computer via flash drive.

So, that's it.

The change over has gone pretty well.  So far I haven't seen any degradation from the 1.0 version to the 1.1 and I'm happy to have the new set of repositories for my non-Jolicloud (that is Ubuntu) add-ons.  Good to go, and thank you, Jolicloud!

Now ... all you 20 y/o college linux programmers, hey!  Get with the program -- we need a sync system and one click install that works like that Jolicloud is providing.  Or, or, or ... we are all going to be using Jolicloud.

Later:  compiz and cairo-dock now running.  Everything is working GREAT!  (Send Windows XP to the Smithsonian.  Please.)