When it comes to lightweight operating systems for a netbook or smartbook (which is basically a netbook that runs an ARM processor — expect to see them early next year), much of the recent buzz has centered around Google’s Chrome OS.
However, if you have a netbook and you want to try something that has a lot of the Web-integration features that Chrome OS promises ASAP, check out Jolicloud. Jolicloud is a Linux-based OS designed specifically for netbooks. The pre-beta is now available and it looks pretty great.

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Look and Feel Jolicloud

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I’ve only had a chance to play with Jolicloud on a virtual machine (I hope to try it on a netbook sometime this weekend), but I’m impressed with the look and feel. The problem I have with many netbook-specific Linux distributions is that, although the application launcher and desktop might be well-formatted for a small screen, the apps themselves still don’t take advantage of small spaces as well as they should.
Thus far, only Intel’s Moblin project has really addressed the issue of small spaces. Jolicloud was started by Tariq Krim, the founder of Netvibes. This is important because Netvibes has always had a good sense of UI and space allocation.
Jolicloud has a slew of Web and native applications. It can also run Adobe Air apps and play back many types of video.Jolicloud Rocks!!!
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The Future

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Jolicloud hopes to have it first full version out in early 2010. From the looks of things, they are really close to an official release.
How Jolicloud will hold up against competitors like Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Intel’s Moblin, and, of course, Google Chrome OS, has yet to be seen — but for users of netbooks, the options for browser-centric, low-profile operating systems are growing.