It seems that every man and his dog is bringing out a netbook OS of some description. Jolicloud another that looks interesting – it appears to be a Linux-based OS with a netbook optimised UI.

From their “First Look” screens, there appear to be a few interesting features that differentiate it from most netbook operating systems:

• Integrated social networking. Yes, Moblin has this, but Jolicloud seems to take it to the next level – showing you what applications your Jolicloud-running friends have installed as implicit recommendations for apps you might want to try
• There’s no real distinction between web-based apps and local apps – they all get installed in the same way, and all get a launcher icon. You can get a similar effect on a desktop PC using something like Prism, and Ubuntu even has a few web apps as prism bundles in their repositories already
• It claims to run Linux and Windows applications. It’s not clear how it runs the latter – the screenshots show a WINE launcher, but I’m not convinced I’d want to sell a new netbook OS on the back of running Windows apps under WINE, as it’s far from being 100% compatible.

I applaud the addition of another option for consumers in the netbook world, but I do wonder if Jolicloud has enough interesting features to stand out from the crowd.