Moblin 2.0 Released, Intel's Linux For Netbooks

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."

Comments

Very promising

[javacowboy]

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.

Re:How, exactly

[Yvan256]

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