Eswatini, mid-year report 2019

Mid-year report 2019: an insider's personal view

It's July 2019, and Eswatini resembles a boxer who has been hit with a succession of heavy punches, and is staggering unsteadily towards his corner, hoping to hear the bell that could save him.

Honestly, things are not looking good right now. Government says it is cash-strapped and needs to raise more from taxes; the few who have jobs and incomes are even more cash-strapped than government and wonder where they will find the money for taxes already levied. Almost everyone can tell you how desperate everybody is becoming.

At the same time, people are dying around us as they never did before: I don't just mean the big A but also cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and strokes; the cost of dying rivals the cost of living these days. Nurses are underpaid, medical supplies are reportedly non-existent, and the people talk of only going to the hospital to die. And this is in a country famous for its cannabis, which could be the cash crop (as medical marijuana) to save the nation--financially as well as improving the health of those living with HIV and cancer.

There's lots more that's failing of course, but what I want to do here is suggest a way forward; this is not a quick fix. The bottom line (to appropriately use a financial term) is that we need to kickstart the economy and rebuild community. And the best way to do that is to create entrepeneurs to grow the economy.

Ramaphosa, across the pond in SA, has spoken already about entrepeneurship being taught in schools, but that's not how entrepeneurs are created. Studies have shown that countries with lots of startups and entrepeneurs have readers, artists, and musicians. Without creative persons you won't get anywhere. That's also because all of the new jobs and careers of the future haven't been created yet, they can only be imagined. Obviously creative leaders are also needed.

So, let's start with education. Our schools are clearly failing to prepare our people for a post-school future. In the first place we are still educating for jobs that don't, and won't exist. Just this week, Deutsche Bank, one of the biggest banks in the world, announced it is cutting thousands of jobs because business has largely moved online; a recent study suggested that up to 51% of jobs at present available here in Africa will disappear due to automation and the Internet. Then, of course, there will be thousands of new jobs that haven't been invented yet. One of the ironies of our present situation is that Limkokwing's courses are a lot of what we seriously need right now, but few graduates from Limkokwing find suitable jobs after completing study.

Then there's still a prevalent 'white-collar' mindset that needs to be dismantled: we really do need people who are unafraid to get their hands dirty: not those guys and ladies with long fingernails that proclaim their owners don't do manual work. Sorry folks, but office jobs are disappearing because offices are disappearing; we can work from home these days. When you have a cellphone, and data in the cloud, why do you need an office? That's just unnecessary expense. Just as banks have been shutting doors and touting online banking, so the entire CBD of cities and towns will also shrink drastically.

Banking is an important sector to consider, actually for a variety of reasons: firstly, the banks have long been seen as a source of secure jobs for school leavers; obviously this is no longer true since banks are downsizing due to automation. But there's more. What of drivers in an era of driverless taxis? What of cashiers in cash-free shops and waiters in self-service restaurants? Cash-free shops? Yes, there are plenty. Amazon even has cash-free supermarkets now. Amazingly, ATMs are now over 50 years old but they needed big data and the Internet to really take off--we now have paypal, mobile money, and ... cryptocurrencies. Traditional banks are beginning to talk seriously about 'paper-free banking' which not only uses the cloud but also removes paper money and coins. This is not as far-fetched as it seems.

Think of it like this: a few years ago the municipality installed parking meters in the centre of town and people were coming up to me and saying, "Hey, we finally got first world status here at the car park!" Apparently people were excited by this innovation. I replied, "Yes, but what about school leavers who will no longer be able to get a job working at the car park?" In the same way, mobile money, ATMs and internet banking have removed the need for so many bank tellers, cashiers and physical business branches.

In fact, human societies underwent a seismic shift in 2006-2007, and the repercussions are still growing, rippling outwards from the innovations of that year. What happened in 2006-2007, you ask. Well, here's for starters:

1. iPhone
2. cloud data
3. facebook
4. twitter
5. git hub
6. youtube
7. Android
8. Kindle
9. Airbnb
10. AI
11. DNA sequencing
12. Intel achieved a major chip breakthrough
13. the Internet reached 1 billion users
14. increasing adoption of linux systems

Recognise any of these? You wouldn't have noticed most of them at the time, but we all know them now, some quite intimately. This is our brave new world.

To suggest that we must invest heavily in traditional schooling is pointless; to chase only an IT education is reactionary, a knee-jerk reaction to what is already here. What we need to do is to start talking and create a present that can ensure survival in the future. We must not blindly rush in where fools are afraid to tread and not all be gung-ho for a situation that cannot work for us. In particular, we must remember to build community into all our equations and machinations because the bottom line is that we are all people and need each other. Truly, we must value each other as unique resources. The promise and potential of a nation (as a wider community) is its people.

Peppermint 9 review

Peppermint 9: June 2018

A new Peppermint release is always welcome; we've all been at this for a while now.

I began my linux adventure with Linux Mint Bianca [back in February 2007] and dual-booted with Peppermint Ice [2010 https://www.geek.com/…/peppermint-ice-a-faster-lighter-clo…/]... now we're up to Peppermint 9. Great stuff.

Is it any good?

Well, yes, it is. It's fast, lightweight, reliable, and (so far) works straight from the box. I haven't yet found a problem with this release (3 days now) but there will always be something to fix when you're updating distros. Which, paradoxically, is actually another advantage of Peppermint and its big daddy, Mint, on which it's based (Mint, in turn, is based on Ubuntu). Linux is all about community and sharing, so there's a large, worldwide, usually friendly and helpful bunch of people willing to help if you have a problem and are prepared to ask.

I use my distros for lots of things, like most people and, like most people, I have my favourite programs so there's always a bit of setting-up that needs to be done with any new installation. I'm a novelist, editor and musician so I always add programs like Mixxx, Calibre and Sigil, SoundConverter, Handbrake and FocusWriter to whatever is already there. I did that, installed and ran the programs, and everything was and still is hunky dory. Using Mixxx I created a new smooth jazz mix for Mixcloud; with Calibre I turned an epub into a mobi [I'll tweak it with Sigil]; with Handbrake I converted an old DVD movie into an mkv file; and I wrote the first draft of this article using FocusWriter.

As you can see from this screenshot, connecting to the net and downloading from the repos was straightforward; the connection was strong and fast.

Peppermint differs from Mint in more ways than one. It's not, and never was intended as, a cut-down version; no, Peppermint was conceived as a cloud hub back in the early days of big data and the promise of cloud computing. Originally the OS was called Ice after the little site-specific cloud apps that are Peppermint's characteristic feature.

An Ice dialog. This is where you add the URL for your SSB app. Once set up you will see your app listed in the menu.

Cloud Apps

Peppermint comes pre-loaded with useful cloud apps like Google's Drive, Calendar, and Mail; Microsoft's online suite of Office tools, including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Skype; graphic editing is handled by Pixlr, etc. Obviously the included apps are only a suggestion and because Peppermint is based on Mint, based on Ubuntu, based on Debian, etc there's an incredible wealth of free software available for download. With Peppermint, customisation is only limited by your imagination and skill.

Verdict

Peppermint 9 is a winner.

A highly-recommended instalment in an ongoing series, it can do most of what you want with considerable ease.

{Ken Rowley}

Mr Robot: Gnome or KDE? A review.

Mr Robot: the new TV series

There's a moment in the pilot of the upcoming Mr Robot TV series when the protagonist and his future supporter/ antagonist/ nemesis (we don't as yet know exactly how this relationship might pan out) look at each other and have a brief conversation that includes something like "I see you use Gnome. I'm a KDE man myself."

It made me smile (I'm a Gnome man here) and I assumed it was in the show to give Mr Robot some tech credibility, but really I'm not so sure. Later, there's a lot of quick linux scripting to block malicious code, and that's obviously more tech-cred. Yet the more I think about it, "Gnome or KDE?" really is something that we linux guys say to each other. I realise I've had that conversation quite a few times over the years.

The pilot is engaging and full of promise. Elliot is a young programmer by day and hacker by night. He's also deceitful, distrustful and a social misfit; in his isolation his mind is apocalyptic-sharp and he sees through the world system's fronting in a way similar to the premise of the successful Matrix films of yesteryear. It seems he has an overarching desire to destroy what he sees as the facade of the normal, so early on we see how he hacks the overlord of a child porn group and passes on the information to bring the man and his business down, rather than use the info to extort blackmail money. In this, Elliot is a modern-day Robin Hood or Batman, seeking to right wrongs when he can.

But porn sites are small change compared to what the mysterious Mr Robot offers him. This gives the show much potential. Elliot's dysfunctional personality also offers plenty of plot direction and character development.

The pilot is a good start. I'm already hoping part two will be just as good.

Heads & Tails (1.2)

Facebook has now embraced the Tor network

HUMAN LIFE is full of ironies. A friend of mine, who lives in Europe, is terrified of identity theft and religiously shreds his snail mail and deletes his email. Another friend, this time in the states, is angry at his government's Big Brother approach to citizen management. He's especially upset by the NSA's mass-monitoring of electronic communications. But of course it's a world-wide phenomenon: under the umbrella of 'anti-terrorism', governments everywhere have been inventing ways to spy on people, and been trying to control what a person can or can't do on the once-freer Internet. As an unexpected result, we are being collectively taught to think like activists and hackers.

Now private networks and the murky dark corners of the web are beginning to appeal to us all -- those of us with dark hearts and also those of us who breathe in the light.

The TOR network is not new (it already has around 2.5 million daily users) but it has been gaining popularity for a while, especially because of governmental attention paid to wikileaks, sharing sites, and the emerging acceptance of bitcoin. This morning TOR became famous (or infamous) because of the news that Facebook has embraced it.

TOR is an anonymising platform, one designed to protect you whenever you go online. Your name and details can be hidden, as well as your address and location. By address I mean not only where in the world you are, but also the mac address of your machine.

The accommodation by Facebook would seem at first to be odd, since surely the whole purpose of using social media is to be social; but there is of course a difference between social and sociable.

If you're interested in trying out the TOR browser, I suggest you download and install a complete OS that sets it all up for you: Tails. [This is why this article is named Heads and Tails (1.2); Heads is Facebook and Tails is... duh...]

Tails and the new Facebook portal work fine together. Tails is a live OS: it's designed to run from a flash drive and when you go offline it removes all traces of your online activity. Tails can be found here.

Peppermint 5: I'm disappointed

I was an early adopter of Peppermint OS, and a big fan. This was in the days when Peppermint was not numbered, but known as Ice, and other innovative browsers like Flock were recognising that the mushrooming of social media sites and the emergence of cloud computing were going to take us all into regions that we hadn't even thought of. Ice had a small footprint, the Ice app, cloud-centric design, and was fast -- even on under-powered machines. I loved it. I loved One, Two, and Three as well. But then came Peppermint Four and Peppermint Four was ultimately too finicky and frustrating for me to use. I I always seemed to have problems with panels and the Chromium browser the OS was built on. Well, I was triple-booting as usual, so I just stuck to Mint and whatever else I was running as an alternative. I was sad to lose Peppermint but content. Yet I wanted Peppermint to do well.

Recently Peppermint Five was released, to some acclaim. Most reviewers wrote as if Peppermint Five was a new OS, not a revamped one, and I was encouraged enough to download the ISO and run it. The live CD worked well and so I installed it...

But for me the same problems are there. Compared to Mint and elementary Freya (my current first choices) Peppermint 5 is sluggish, crash-prone, unreliable and user unfriendly. It doesn't help that Mint (Cinnamon) and elementary Freya look better too.

I'm very disappointed, especially since I believe the real mobile revolution is not in hardware but a move away from desktops to browsers (as in Google's Chromebooks) and Peppermint could be a real leader here.

One final word. On Mint and Freya I use Mozilla's Firefox, and with the power of its add-ons, these have become very browser-centric for me and easy to sync with my android phones. Perhaps Peppermint could try using Mozilla again?

How to disable Windows 8 'Secure Boot' etc and install Ubuntu, Mint or Peppermint

You've bought a laptop that came with Windows 8 pre-installed on it and now you're tearing your hair out? There's hope (though maybe not so much with the hair replacement). Although Windows 8 ships with a 'Secure Boot' setup that suggests you can't install anything else on the machine (not even go back to Windows 7 or good ol' XP heehe) it's actually quite easy to disable this and install whatever you like. All you need to do is turn the computer off and restart it with the F2 key held down. This will active the BIOS, where you can switch off the 'Secure Boot' and switch to Legacy OS, which means you can use your installers CDs just like you used to, or gparted or whatever. It took me just a few minutes...

I'm posting this from a Lenovo G580 running Linux Mint 14 (Maya). No problems.

Why Windows is in trouble...

Many commentators think Windows is in trouble because Windows 8 is proving so unpopular that some companies are making money by uninstalling 8 and replacing it with 7. Others point to the fact that Microsoft's Secure Boot option (sic) is really a way to try and stop users dual-booting their machines by installing linux, for example, on a new partition. Still others claim that desktop machines are already obsolete and Windows has very little mobile presence.

But the real reason that Windows is in trouble is that OS X and Android are close cousins.

Consider, for example, a mobile programmer. Let's say he writes his new app in python, a flexible language for such apps. He writes it first for iPhone and iPad; which means it will run on a UNIX core. If he then wants to release an Android version, it's not that difficult (I'm not saying it's easy) because Android is a LINUX flavour, and linux derives from unix. But if somebody then asks him for a Windows version...

This is the main reason why Apple and Google are the two giants fighting for mobile dominance at the moment.

Apple struggled prior to OS X, but the switch to a UNIX core helped reverse its fortunes. And Windows 8 boxes-- such as the Lenovo Thinkpads--are ideal platforms for running linux.

Peppermint 3 has arrived!

Finally, Peppermint 3 OS has arrived... it's what I'm using right now and so far, so good. It's built upon Lubuntu and Mint and looks and feels great (I'm not a fan of the new Ubuntu desktop at all). I've installed it on an old 256 RAM machine, but everything is working at the moment and I particularly like the fact that this Peppermint is not overloaded with programs I won't use. Since the early days of the Mac I've really enjoyed customising what I'm using and Peppermint 3 gives me that option from the get-go.

After 3 days, Peppermint 3 is still working really well. I had the usual odd window behaviour as with Peppermints 1, 2 and Ice, but that was easily fixed.

Webian OS: the future?

As you know, I like variety and also like trying out new operating systems, such as Jolicloud OS and Peppermint OS, both of which have been compared and reviewed on this blog before. My opinion was, and still is, that Jolicloud is perhaps the best bet for a netbook and Peppermint for an under-powered laptop. Well, now there's a proof-of-intent prototype, Webian OS, which is available as a live CD.

The live CD lets Webian piggy-back on top of your existing OS without modifying it, and also gives you the opportunity of doing a normal boot if you wish. What you get is a browser instead of a desktop-- i.e., your 'desktop' is now a full browser window: there are no icons, no menus, or anything else to click on.

Is it any good? Well, it's refreshingly different and it does force you to start thinking in a 'cloud' way. For me, that's a blessing since I'm not distracted by 'desktop' tasks while I'm doing 'cloud' stuff. It's also very fast (even running from a disc)-- it makes Joilcloud, for instance, seem like it's stuck in a jar of treacle or molasses.

But this is just an incomplete prototype at the moment, so it does lack necessary things. Just what is necessary is part of the reason for the shell being released right now-- the only add-on built into Webian at the moment is the ability to send feedback and suggestions to its creators. What is necessary for me is the ability to save bookmarks, the ability to save a page on the web (i.e., dropbox or Ubuntu One or 4shared etc), the ability to print a page or a document, and a proper exit from the shell rather than having to reboot to access the desktop (a logout perhaps).

Webian OS, I think, shows enough promise to excite.

Peppermint 2 vs Jolicloud 2 (1.2)

My previous assessment (1 vs 1) was that Peppermint was the OS of choice for a laptop but that Jolicloud was pretty good on a netbook. Both OSs have seen changes since then so it's time again to go head-to-head.

Peppermint used to come in two flavours: One, built upon the Firefox browser; and Ice, built upon the Chromium browser. Jolicloud 1 was built upon Firefox. Now Peppermints One and Ice have become a single entity, Peppermint Two, built upon Chromium; and Jolicloud is now at version 1.2 and also built upon Chromium. For the last few weeks I've been alternating both OSs on the same i386 256 RAM laptop (a cheap Proline machine bought by the company I work for). 

What I've noticed so far is that Peppermint is amazingly fast on this limited hardware, attractive to look at and to use, and very open in its design. By contrast, Jolicloud is sluggish, obviously requiring more RAM than this laptop can deliver. Jolicloud's design is also compromised by the bigger-than-netbook screen and gives the feeling of being a more closed approach than Peppermint. This makes sense really, since Jolicloud is trying to give bigger devices a similar look and feel to mobiles.

I think therefore that Peppermint Two will remain on my laptop while Jolicloud relocates to my netbook, for which it is no doubt better suited... although I have  a sneaking suspicion that Peppermint Two will do better there as well. 

Reading books on a cellphone

Have you ever tried reading a pdf book on a cellphone? It's truly an off-putting and frustrating experience: you are always trying to adjust the size of the text, scrolling from side-to-side and so on. Yet I have persisted; one of the things I want to do is read books on a cellphone-- there are often situations when I am waiting for someone or something or even when I'm so into a book that I 'can't put it down'.

Well, one of my cellphones is an android phone and, although pdf's are still a pain, I have discovered epub files and some really cool readers for them (one is even called Cool Reader). The problem is that most books are in pdf format. Enter Calibre, a linux program that does a good job of converting from pdf to epub format! I downloaded and installed Calibre via synaptic and have been converting my pdf books and reading them comfortably on my phone since then. Pretty cool.

Peppermint-One Jan 2011 respin is the biz!

Yes, this post is slightly late... well, I was actually looking for a torrent of the latest Peppermint Ice respin (March 2011) but couldn't find one, so I tried the latest Peppermint-One edition instead. I was happily surprised.

My preference for Ice over One was simply related to the underlying browser-base of each of the distros; the Mozilla-Prism combo of One was often slow and unwieldy because Firefox had itself become bloated. So I preferred Peppermint Ice since it was built on a Chromium-Ice combination. Now, ironically, I find that Chromium has begun to show signs of bloat, and that the new Peppermint-One uses the sleeker and much faster Firefox 4.0 (Beta 9).

In other words, get your copy of Peppermint-One's 01042011 iso, burn it to disc, and install it today! You won't be disappointed. It's fast, efficient, and a real pleasure to use, even with limited RAM. Well done to the Peppermint team.

aDeskbar!

my desktop with aDeskbar on the right

I should have posted this earlier, but... well, anyway. aDeskbar is a perfect solution for those of us who are really Mac users but have migrated to linux for whatever reason (I use linux at work mostly). As you can see from the screenshot it can sit anywhere you want it to, it can autohide, and it works seamlessly and trouble-free with the lightweight distros out there (in this case, Peppermint-ice). If you are interested, read the original post on OMGubuntu and download the deb file by following the links. I'm finding aDeskbar a valuable utility at the moment. Enjoy. The link:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/11/adeskbar-dock-panel-replacement-for-ubuntu/

A quick meerkat (Lubuntu 10.10)

As you know, I'm using a minimum-ram laptop at work so the full-blown-bells-and-whistles (read bloated) OS-es are not really an option for me right now, especially as it's the desktop environment that typically hogs the available RAM.

Peppermint's two flavours -- Standard and Ice -- are great, as is Jolicloud 1.0. To these I can now add Light Ubuntu (Lubuntu). Lubuntu is another LXDE environment (the Peppermints are too) with Openbox but the newest release is built upon Ubuntu's meerkat (10.10) whereas the Peppermints are using lucid (10.04).

Lubuntu 10.10 is fast, attractive, and pretty much ideal once you've installed it and added a few tweaks. Since I always use more than one partition on my machines, I encountered a GRUB problem after installing Lubuntu in that I could access other OS-es but not boot from them. The problem was that Lubuntu doesn't install osprober so the startup sequence doesn't see the other partitions. The way to fix this is simple, however. Open a terminal, type

sudo apt-get install os-prober then
update-grub

and the other systems will be available to select from at the next reboot.

The other tweak is to download a new lubuntu add-on, lubuntu-control-center_0.2_all.deb which is available from the web: http://www.mediafire.com/?3kyy21ubztiki0c. This gives you a gui that you can use to modify much of lubuntu's interface.


But there's more:

If you like Peppermint Ice's respin cursors, you can get them from synaptic -- search for dmz-cursors, download and restart.

An easy way to get a terminal is to add (again through synaptic) a little app called guake, which allows you to utilise F12 for this purpose. I've found it very handy.

There's no need for Peppermint's Ice web-app creator, since Lubuntu comes with Chromium as default and you can create your own web-apps by going to a site with the browser, selecting tools, create application shortcuts, and saving the new app directly into your Applications menu.

And, of course, if you choose to add Firefox (not installed with Lubuntu) remember to add my Sifundzani1 Firefox Persona!

Overall, I like the new Lubuntu; and I think its menu behaviour is actually better than Peppermint's at this point. It's also of course very fast.

Ice prevents freezing!

peppermint ice

Although I have a variety of computers, I mostly use three: a Macbook, a Samsung NC10, and a generic laptop that comes with my office at work. I use the generic laptop a lot, especially since I maintain a LAN in the school's admin block. But it came with only 200+ MB of RAM. Needless to say, the new releases of Ubuntu and OpenSUSE hardly get out of their starting blocks on this machine.

Enter Peppermint and especially Peppermint Ice! Instead of waiting, with mounting frustration, for the bigger distros to actually do something on this machine I can actually do my work through Peppermint without hassles. I prefer Ice since it's browser back-end is Chromium rather than Mozilla, and I also think it's slightly faster. Printing doesn't come with Ice initially but CUPS is easy to install via synaptic. All-in-all, I'm a fan.

Ruby Shoes!

Everyone knows of course (or should!) about Dorothy's famous ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz:

they are justly iconic.








But have you seen this icon before?

These are also ruby shoes! 

Let me explain. From time-to-time I do some coding/programming, since I began using computers in the days when computers came with built-in programming languages; in those far-off days the only way you could have a program is if you wrote one (my first computer was a ZX-80, R50 at the time from South Africa). The languages I learnt back then were BASIC, LOGO, and PASCAL. Later on, I actually posted a few programs online for Mac OS 7,8, and 9. 

Well, recently I've been tinkering with PYTHON and RUBY. RUBY... aha! RUBY is quite special I think.

It got me considering how I might be able to teach some RUBY at school to the students. Surfing the net I came across SHOES, which is a mini-GUI kit for RUBY. When students start learning something they want to see quick results, and SHOES certainly provides quick results. Like RUBY itself beginners can see results from the get-go. I think it might be what educators are looking for. And it's not even difficult to get hold of. It's already in the Ubuntu/Mint/Peppermint repositories, works as call-to app, and (obviously) runs on ruby. More on this next week...

Mxit is great on linux

Mxit, as many of you know, is the messenger of choice for thousands of Southern Africa's teens; and boasts millions of subscribers world-wide. Here in Swaziland it's used by every teen who has an internet-usable phone. Mxit distracts students during class at school and keeps them awake at night, long after the time they should have been asleep. We adults use it too. Of course: a single sms using Swaziland MTN costs 80 cents, but you can text to many friends using Mxit for three hours for just 60 cents.

There is no reason not to use Mxit.

But Mxit works on a laptop or desktop too-- at least it does using Linux and Pidgin. I use Pidgin (for Mxit) on Mint, Peppermint, Jolicloud, and even TinyCoreLinux, and it works seamlessly and without ever crashing.

Tiny Core Linux!

Well, this is fun. I'm posting this using Tiny Core Linux: an OS that works 'out-of-the-box', has a GUI, and is only 10MB in size! Downloading and installing apps is a breeze... now, if Prism or Ice was available as an extension, so I didn't have to even fire up Chromium...

Why Jolicloud is the new Holy Grail

The biggest reason why I'm keen on Jolicloud 1.0 is because its interface mimics those insanely great Apple iPhone, iPad, and other mobile interfaces. As I've remarked before, the future of the Internet/Web/Mail and the rest is how well desktop environments integrate with mobile environments (this is, for example, why google's WAVE didn't catch on). Jolicloud is built upon Ubuntu so there wasn't much danger of it not working-- but the interface has given it the edge over its competition.

Way back in 1984, when the first Macintosh computer was unveiled to an unsuspecting world, I became an instant fan. Apple's approach has been, indeed, insanely great. But it isn't the hardware or the apps that have brought about the revolution: it was the Human Interface Guidelines that did it. In other words, Apple realised that the user experience is at least as important as the quality of the hardware and software involved. Most users aren't geeks or nerds and don't want to be: they'll happily settle for less speed, power, or whatever, as long as it looks good. The equation is: If it works and it looks good, then it is good.

[At the moment I'm running Jolicloud 1.0 on my Samsung NC10, OSX (of course) and Ubuntu Lucid on my MacBook, and Mint Isadora, Peppermint, and Peppermint Ice on my run-of-the-mill laptop.]

Jolicloud 1.0 Final verdict!

Well, I must say I'm impressed. On my Samsung NC10, Jolicloud 1.0 reigns supreme. By comparison, Windows 7 runs like it's moving through molasses, and the snappy i-phone, i-pod, i-pad, i-everything interface works well and also looks way cool on my blue netbook. The only rela gripe I have is disappointment that I can't get the Jolicloud OS to load onto a regular laptop :(