Campbell: Linux presents a competitor to Chrome OS

An operating systems war has begun.

The possibility of a series of netbooks available for bargain-basement prices became realistic in the minds of computer buyers because of cloud computing and its lack of hefty hardware requirements.

The war might prove not nearly as bitter as the war waged between avid Windows fans and die-hard Apple supporters, but considering the jabs between Google’s Chrome OS and Jolicloud — a new Ubuntu Linux-based cloud operating system for netbooks — the battle looks like it could get pretty heated.

Private invitation-only users currently test Jolicloud, but some people arguing on Computerworld.com’s blogs have, as well.

The approaches that Google and Jolicloud have taken in developing an operating system for “The Cloud” seem to create the main source of contention.

The two operating systems are similar in that their respective developers designed them for low-cost netbooks. They also both rely on Internet applications to provide most of their functionalities.

Both operating systems will allow users to function without a large hard drive, as servers on the Internet store all the data — hence the moniker “cloud.”

Both machines rely heavily on Internet technologies, specifically HTML, JavaScript and CSS, for user interface function and are geared toward running Web applications.

Both operating systems will sport user interfaces that allow quick and easy access to Internet-based information.

Not surprisingly, both operating systems’ developers cite the separation of the Internet and the local machine, prevalent in modern incarnations of Windows, Mac OS X and traditional Linux distributions, as problematic and inefficient.

They differ in underlying platform and generic outlook on the way to look forward for cloud-oriented netbooks.

Google, according to an article on Computerworld.com describing Jolicloud, will actively prevent users from utilizing hard drives on its Chrome OS-enabled netbooks.

It will instead utilize smaller bits of on-board memory for temporary storage, and it will rely completely on the cloud for long-term data storage and application support.

Jolicloud will more resemble traditional Linux, specifically Ubuntu Linux, in that it will include support for hard drives and will gear users’ activities toward the cloud.

Eric Lai, the author of a Computerworld.com article about Jolicloud, described Jolicloud’s approach as allowing some limited local storage, using hard drives within Jolicloud-enabled netbooks, for saving data that users feel reluctant to publish to the cloud.

Jolicloud will also allow users to run specific applications — Lai specifically cites Skype — from a local machine, rather than relying on the cloud to provide application support.

Its developers have also started promoting Jolicloud’s inherent graphical abilities.

Jolicloud has support for the graphics chips that are common among the industry’s top-selling netbooks, allowing them to display high definition graphics. Jolicloud also trumpets a complex, Mac-like user interface.

Tariq Krim, the CEO of Jolicloud, described Google Chrome’s user interface alternatively as “generic.”

In this way, Jolicloud appears to promote itself as a Linux platform first and a cloud solution a close second — Google’s Chrome is comparatively uninterested in pure graphical ability, insofar as it exceeds the requirements of attractive, efficient Internet rendering.

Google plans on aggressively going after the netbook market, while Jolicloud seems to plan to taking over the netbook market by evolution.

Google has started actively seeking contracts with various netbook manufacturers, Lai wrote, to have Chrome shipped with many netbook devices.

Jolicloud’s makers seems content to provide users with a free download of its eventual final product, making it simply to dual-boot machines for users who do not wish to convert entirely and permanently to Jolicloud.

Jolicloud might ultimately prove to be a legitimate competitor to Google’s previously-published plans to take over the netbook market.

Its course seems less severe than Google’s in that its design doesn’t force users to abandon locally stored data and applications.

Ubuntu, the underlying distribution that led to Jolicloud, is also extremely popular. Jolicloud might gain market share simply by having loyal Ubuntu users switching to it on their machines to take advantage of cloud-centric features.

The graphical abilities of Jolicloud and its inherent hardware support of the graphics chips on many popular netbooks will also make the operating system a less painful, and possibly beneficial, transition for users accustomed to traditional Ubuntu distributions on their netbook devices.