Jolicloud is one of the best operating systems for Netbooks and now they are making their move to be ready for the tablet wave by adding in touchscreen capability.  At this point it won’t work on all touchscreens but I think it is safe to assume they will be expanding the list of capable devices.  The following is a short video of their new HTML 5 interface on a Samsung NB30.

Check It Out> Jolicloud Blog

Looking to try out a new operating system for your Netbook?  MeeGo has just released version 1.0 of their Netbook OS and it looks very promising.  With its Moblin like interface it is relatively intuitive and caters to the small form factor that typically makes Netbooks hard to use.

Check It Out> MeeGo via Liliputing

Microsoft has been trying to convince people that Windows 7 Starter Edition is different, and today they may have.  Paul Thurrott has posted (albeit briefly) that Microsoft has removed the 3 application limit and hopefully we will get a confirmation next week on whether or not this is true.

One thing is for sure with Netbook users, Microsoft is doing everything they can to make Windows 7 attractive to them.  Linux has been making some very serious headway in the last couple of months with Ubuntu Netbook Remix and now Moblin 2.0 but Microsoft is not sitting idly by.

Windows 7 has been engineered to be Netbook friendly but they have had a huge problem, Starter Edition screams “Crippled” and that is bad for marketing.  It is the only version of the operating system they can give away relatively cheap with a Netbook.  If Microsoft does proceed and takes away the 3 application limit they will succeed in winning over more users.

Check It Out> SuperSite, Techarp

If you happen to be one of the lucky individuals running OS X on your MSI Wind, today just got even better for you.  Thanks to the VoodooProjects team there is now a fully functioning audio driver available.  Not everyone has had the greatest success in getting it to work correctly but so far the reports are pretty possitive.

The driver itself includes mute controls, separate left and right audio level controls, auto-mute when plugging in a device into the headphone jack.  After downloading the driver just install it to /System/Library/Extensions and everything should go smoothly.

Check It Out> MSI Wind Forums, VodooHDA

Netbooks are currently the hottest selling computers on the market right now for good reason but something is still missing from them, a good interface.  Still in the Alpha stage is Ubuntu’s Netbook Remix (UNR) but its pretty much just a skin for the standard Ubuntu.  HP also has a Netbook interface but again it is basically an over sized taskbar.

Thankfully the makers of the K Desktop Environment (KDE) for Linux are not satisfied with simply re-skinning a user interface and actually want to make a true Netbook interface.

• We aren’t making an interface for a “smaller laptop” or a “larger handheld”; the interface is for a netbook, which has a unique set of use cases and should have a unique, if familiar, user interface. To our knowledge, nobody is really doing this yet. We feel that just as Apple made popular an interface style on handhelds that is for handhelds with their iPhone/iPod touch interface, netbooks deserve a similar treatment.
• Being based on libplasma, we don’t have to start from scratch. In fact, the bulk of the work is already done. This will give us a nice showcase for the concept of a “primary user interface framework” and how it can be used to reapply existing work to new physical form factors with minimal investments.
• Being based on libplasma, it will automagically work with other Plasma tools. This will make working with a Plasma netbook and a Plasma laptop together easy and coherent, especially when the SoC projects on things like network transparency in libplasma come to fruition in KDE 4.4.
• Being part of the Plasma project, it will share the visual identity of the Plasma desktop shell: you will be able to put your netbook next to your laptop/desktop and they will look like they belong together. Only Apple manages to do this with their products right now.
• Because it’s not some esoteric software stack all welded together with a kernel and various “made for mobile only” toolkit work, it will be easy for people to get involved and work with it.
• The emphasis in the design is on full screen usage, speed to information, integration with applications and visual beauty.

The new version of KDE 4.2.2 is really a good interface and it is starting to look like KDE 4.4 will be a really good release.  The one thing that I think KDE has been missing is a Windows version that would replace the standard Windows shell (Start menu, taskbar etc.).  They do currently have a Windows version but it is only the applications that come with KDE and not the actual interface.  If they did make a version of KDE that could also run on Windows based Netbooks they might find that they could dominate the Netbook market with this.

Check It Out> aseigo via Netbook news and Liliputing, Ubuntu Netbook Remix