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Moblin 2.0 Released, Intel's Linux For Netbooks

Posted by Soulskill on from the new-and-shiny dept.

eldavojohn writes "Yesterday, Moblin, the joint OS project between Novell and Intel, was released as V2.0 Beta for netbooks with the image available for download. We've talked about Moblin before, but Computer World has an article speculating this is Intel's direct affront to Microsoft's Windows 7 by pointing out that Moblin is designed to optimally use Intel's Atom Processor and smaller screens so popular with netbooks. Windows 7's netbook competition doesn't stop there, as GoodOS's gOS3 Gadgets and Canonical's Ubuntu Netbook Remix are being designed to also take advantage of Intel's Atom, especially from a UI perspective. Ars has a look at Moblin's rich new UI as well. Back in April, Intel said it would support Windows 7 on the Atom later this year, and Intel also says Windows 7 is a good choice for Intel's netbooks, so it doesn't look like they're intentionally burning any bridges between them and Redmond."

4 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Very promising by javacowboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I looked at the screenshots, and this looks really cool. They've put a lot of thought into the GUI, which is not only designed for netbooks and small screens, but touch screens as well.

    Moblin is also totally open source, meaning that they won't charge for it and they'll get contributions from the larger open source community.

    Unless Microsoft has some secret feature in Windows 7 designed for netbooks that nobody's heard of, then Linux could reclaim the lead in netbook OS's. If somebody ports Moblin to ARM, then Microsoft is in even bigger trouble.

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    1. Re:Very promising by ducomputergeek · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's clear they did put a lot of effort in designing the UI. We've got a couple netbooks around the office and I'm tempted to try it out. But from another review, the reviewer noted that it's not packaged with binary drivers. So if you are stuck with certain Wifi cards it may suffer the same pain in the ass that linux generally does: having to track down a damned driver.

      That being said, using it with a netbook preloaded with Mobilin where all the hardware is designed to work with linux from the get go....it's worth considering.

      --
      "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
  2. Re:How, exactly by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Bypass all of the useless Web 2.0 Flash/Java/AJAX pushed by their marketing department:

    www.dilbert.com/fast/

    Seriously, if there's one website that should know better than to listen to their marketing department, it's Dilbert.com

  3. Re:cooperation between Intel and linux?!? by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I used the alpha. I am about to install it to my netbook's hard drive; hopefully it provides a way to upgrade. I would presume the answer is yes, but it's pretty rough.

    I kind of like XFCE, though. I hope this UI can be disabled easily. The second important note is whether (since this is Fedora-based) the Fedora repos can be enabled without making the computer do bad crashy things.

    The other point that the summary neglected to mention is that this project is the first real implementation of Arjan Van De Ven's work on fast booting. He's the guy that made his Eee boot in five seconds. Moblin can be expected to boot fast, which I think is necessary if we're going to recategorize netbooks from 'underpowered miniature laptop' to 'powerful internet appliance'.

    A friend of mine bought a macbook a few months ago because she needed a computer that was extremely simple and user-friendly. Macs are somewhat better in that regard than PCs, but the computer is still pretty incomprehensible to her. This new UI is probably not for the slashdot crowd (anyone who can tell you why it's important that Moblin has a (relatively) standard Xorg server is not really the intended audience), but I think for the common Joe or Jocelyn it's perfect. Especially if you were ever wanting to make a $100 netbook...if the price point is sufficiently low to the point where it's clear you're not buying a Real Computer, and stick this UI on it, you can both set new expectations for what the device is supposed to do and sell a lot of toys to people that don't really have any use for a Real Computer.

    Random points:
    Webcam support is essential.
    The social networking pane needs to be Facebook, not Twitter.
    um, End of Line?

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.