Moblin V2.0 Beta For Netbooks and Nettops

superbubba writes "The Moblin steering committee is happy to release the Moblin v2.0 beta for netbooks and nettops for developer testing. With this release, developers can begin to experience and work with the source code of the visually rich, interactive user interface designed for Intel Atom based netbooks."

Comments

nice one kdawson

[gEvil (beta)]

Leave it to kdawson to post a story where the only link goes to digg....

Re:nice one kdawson

[morgan_greywolf]

Leave it to kdawson to post a story where the only link goes to digg....

I like his thinking anyway. :)

Anyway, the screenshots are visually stunning. The social networking aggregation tool looks like it might be Moblin's killer app...

Re:nice one kdawson

[Anonymous Coward]

lol gr8 post dugg!! XD

Re:nice one kdawson

[Amouth]

yes i too agree we should kill the social networks - and if it includes an app for it.. then by all means give it to the masses..

Re:nice one kdawson

[V!NCENT]

How about a top ten Moblin features that you should use with 1080HD res screenshots spread over 10 pages with each page consisting less than 3 sentences

*Ducks and runs*

Digg?

[jginspace]

So kdawson's attempting to Slashdot Digg huh? What's wrong with the actual link?

Significance?

[jginspace]

Why is this blog posting worthy of the Slashdot front page? The Moblin beta was reported 6 weeks ago (it wasn't actually a beta, the quality was shoddy). Since then they've decided they're having something called a 'beta refresh' program, with new releases to play with on May 29, Jun 07, Jun 16, and a new one today. That latter build is not actually linked from the download page yet so it's probably not what this breathless press-release is referring to. So, what's the significance of this "It's here" report>

Re:Significance?

[Sounder40]

I think Intel backing a Windows alternative is very significant for all the reasons as cited by Bob Cringely. I counted on Linux and even Apple to push Windows out, but Linux is too vague of a platform (Ubuntu? Fedora? SuSE? KDE? Gnome?) and Apple turns out to be every bit as evil as Microsoft. Of course, you could argue that Intel's anti-competitive past doesn't bode well for Moblin, and I think you would be right.

So I will choose to disagree with you that a Moblin beta release is a minor thing. I hope that we get more choices and not fewer. Something needs to do it for the sake of freedom.

Re:Significance?

[V!NCENT]

Intel emphasized in their presentation that it's GPL'ed and free for everyone to contribute. Yeah duh, but the first thing that went through my mind was; AMD, since Moblin is optimised for Atom CPU's.

I didn't RTFA but linux.com has a link to the flash video of that presentation on their website, posted on the front page. The presentation's video durance, I might add, is about an hour.

What the fuck is a moblin?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not messing around with digg or redditt or spankwire or whatever your affiliate links are to find out. Someone needs to just tell me.

Re:What the fuck is a moblin?

[gEvil (beta)]

I believe it's a cross between a moose and a goblin.

Re:kdawson

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be cannibalism.

But does it run Windows?

[westlake]

I believe it's a cross between a moose and a goblin.

Which pretty much sums up how this story will play out at Walmart.

The fundamental problem for OEM Linux in deep discount retail is that a competitively priced Windows product is never more than a few months down the road.

It will be a viable platform for older Windows games - and the games themselves are dirt cheap. Gog.com ["Good Old Games"]

Re:But does it run Windows?

[V!NCENT]

The fundamental problem for OEM's is that Windows means either +tax or -hardware spec.

Kinda redundant post if you'd ask me...

Re:But does it run Windows?

[westlake]

The fundamental problem for OEM's is that Windows means either +tax or -hardware spec.

There are enormous economies of scale in building for the Windows market.

The Atom netbook running Windows XP delivered solid performance at a very good price. It effortlessly drove Linux off the shelves of your favorite big box retailer.

There is no negative on hardware. Talk of the Microsoft Tax is nonsense. The OEM is crying all the way to the bank.

Re:But does it run Windows?

[V!NCENT]

LIAR!

I bought a Linux powered EeePC and like with all of them it was either Linux with larger SDD or slow-as-hell Windows XP with a smaller SDD for the same price.

Microsoft did not effortlessly drove Linux away, but Xandros, which sucks balls; outdated-, constantly crashing Firefox 2.x, shitty GUI, outdated OpenOffice.org and so on...

It is also the customer that would ditch Windows 7 in favor for XP because they are not familiar with that.

The first thing I did was install Ubuntu Linux on the EeePC with Compiz and all that stuff, and friend of mine even asked; "Wow is that the new Windows 7?" -"No, it's Linux". Too bad KDE4 is too much of a slowdown, otherwise I would have installed that. See also; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPIgEFIv5MI

Re:But does it run Windows?

[pavithran]

I run KDE4 on my EEE 901 effortlessly .

I am using the packages from Debian KDE4 project and Debian eee-pc project . Check my blog post on EEEPC with KDE4 on debian lenny

It's been 7 months I dont have any complaints on the speed but I am irritated with the resolution . Most desktop apps dont render properly in the small screens .

Hence I am waiting for Moblin to be usable

Re:But does it run Windows?

[V!NCENT]

I run KDE4 on my EEE 901 effortlessly .

You can't do that on a EEE 900...

Great new idea!

[malevolentjelly]

Hey, I've got a great new idea! What if the interface allowed for some way for minimized applications to notify the user of something! It would be awesome if--get this--when someone IM'ed me, I would have some way to know, so I could switch to that window and respond!

Ooh! And another! What if they made it so every time I tried to reach the upper toolbar of my application, a giant black bar didn't come down, grey out my screen, and interrupt me!

Wait... what if I had some way of knowing which applications were open and where they were located at any time, instead of having to manage my desktop in my mind??

What do you guys think? I'm going to submit these to the Moblin team straight-away!

Great job on an easy to use desktop, guys!!!!

Re:Great new idea!

[V!NCENT]

Are you trolling? Anyway great ideas...

Re:Great new idea!

[malevolentjelly]

Have you tried Moblin? All these things are missing. I kid you not.

Re:Great new idea!

[Tenebrousedge]

Hey, I've got a great new idea! What if the interface allowed for some way for minimized applications to notify the user of something! It would be awesome if--get this--when someone IM'ed me, I would have some way to know, so I could switch to that window and respond!

It does support notifications, through libnotify. It didn't have an IM client last I checked.

Ooh! And another! What if they made it so every time I tried to reach the upper toolbar of my application, a giant black bar didn't come down, grey out my screen, and interrupt me!

Waaaaah, I don't like the UI!
Deal with it, rewrite it, or use the terminal like God intended. It may also still have Xfce running underneath the Clutter UI. If not, you could download the alpha, which was perfectly functional.

Wait... what if I had some way of knowing which applications were open and where they were located at any time, instead of having to manage my desktop in my mind??

What, did you miss the pane that was intended for that purpose?

Question: do you actually own a netbook? If so, you probably are all too familiar with full-screen mode in your web browser of choice. 600 vertical pixels is not a whole hell of a lot.

The point of a netbook is primarily to get on the internet. How you can be railing against a project designed to make that easier is somewhat bizarre.

Re:Great new idea!

[Tenebrousedge]

Ah, so you are trolling. I have both the alpha and the beta installed on my Eee. On the whole, I like the alpha better, but I'm keeping track of where the beta's headed.

The alpha's repo file is incorrect and needs to be edited to get updates. Otherwise, it's an XFCE spin of Fedora that boots in 8-10s.

Re:Great new idea!

[malevolentjelly]

How can you not know it has an IM client, then? Empathy is integrated as one of the main components of Moblin.

Here's an experiment for you to try in the Moblin beta: open up an IM and go along and do something else. Someone might IM you. The only way to know is to occasionally check the desktop with the IM window.

I am not trolling. I tried to use it and its interface was missing very obvious things, like basic window management. It requires the user to actually poll their windows for state changes manually.

Despite being very technically well contructed (like ConnMan vs NetworkManager), there's such glaring usability holes that it literally bewilders me.

Once I figured out how to get Windows FLP running properly on my 900a with its molasses slow SSD, Moblin seemed like some sort of bad dream I had.

I have a Windows desktop in classic mode with the start menu on the side of the screen (to capitalize on the form factor), NTFS access time disabled, page file disabled, and Opera with file caching disabled. The battey life is nuts, it boots/sleeps/wakes super fast, applications are aware of the network state, etc... then everything is faster, especially graphics/sound intensive things like Flash. It's pretty luxurious.

I struggled with linux on this thing for months and Moblin was my last hope. I am pretty bitter about it. It's such a near miss.

Re:kdawson

[e9th]

You seem angry. Why not go here, uncheck kdawson, and you won't be bothered again.

Moblin and Ubuntu Netbook Remix

[Taxman415a]

So after reading both Wikipedia pages for Moblin and Ubuntu Netbook Remix I can't really tell what the difference is. Are they just two different attempts at the same thing? As I recall Netbook remix came first, then Moblin came out, but that may just be what I recall being anounced.

Either way it certainly is a big deal that Intel is supporting the development of a Microsoft competitor. Mobile computing is an area where Microsoft is very weak. The big problem with Moblin is that it is focused on Atom and the Atom requires an order of magnitude more power than current ARM solutions. It's no wonder that Intel based MID's haven't been able to come up with any decent battery life, the chip plus the chipset and graphics drawing multiple tens of watts is simply never going to be compelling for a mobile device. But when you can put in something that uses milliwatts, then it becomes possible. Of course, it's no surprise that Intel doesn't want to help the competition, but not that Moblin is at the Linux foundation, they really should seriously look at an ARM port.

Re:Moblin and Ubuntu Netbook Remix

[gbarules2999]

Are they just two different attempts at the same thing?

Yes. You have Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which is an official Ubuntu project that takes Ubuntu and slaps a netbook GUI over the top. Then you have Moblin, the Intel-funded program, which does the same thing to Fedora (or has it changed?).

Re:Moblin and Ubuntu Netbook Remix

[meson_ray]

Moblin and UNR are quite different. I've tried both of them on my eee. Moblin is specifically written for intel architecture, and takes advantage of atom/core2 (sse3) so it has a lot of eye candy that runs well on low performance hardware. There aren't very many applications in the repositories for it yet, but there are some neat built-in twitter/last.fm/gchat programs. UNR's main advantages are that it runs on any hardware and it has ubuntu's repositories, so you can install many more programs on it with the package manager.

Moblin seems to run really snappy, even with all the eye candy. The interface (I think they call it clutter) is kinda weird, and it's got a different feel than most other linux distros, but for a netbook it works well.

I look forward to them adding more programs to Moblin, and stop it from crashing as often as it does...

Re:Moblin and Ubuntu Netbook Remix

[msimm]

The moblin UI looks interesting (when will Ubuntu stop making brown and orange interfaces?):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAG2VyKaxCk

The Ubuntu Netbook Remix looks like it's trying to stuff too much into the interface:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9iOIVnrMt8


Personally I'm really hoping that between Android and Moblin we'll see some attempts at user interfaces that seem to have a cohesive plan to them. Ubuntu Netbook Remix seems to have stayed closer to the franken interface design we've come to expect on Linux desktops.

Re:Moblin and Ubuntu Netbook Remix

[ahfoo]

Moblin is limited to Intel video drivers and that means it is very limited in regards to 3D. This is an intentional move on Intel's part in order to enforce product category distinctions.

Re:kdawson

[sexconker]

I prefer to lash out for no reason.

Re:FIrst

[V!NCENT]

C'mon this is a topical Digg comment being not the first post. Mod this guy up funny.

Re:WTF is a nettop?

[hairyfeet]

Nope, wrong, that is the Netbook. The nettop is an underpowered desktop with no DVD player. Basically it is like you ripped the guts out of an Atom based netbook and stuffed it into a mac Mini box. except of course you actually get a drive with a mini.

What I don't get is why folks would spend hundreds of $$$ on one. The Netbook I get, it is small and easy to carry, but the nettop? hell I paid a whole $50 for the 1.1Ghz Celeron with 512Mb of RAM I'm typing this on years ago, and it gets better performance that a nettop. Hey I can rip out the drive and I'll be hip and cool and happening and....wait...damn. According to my oldest I'm still old and creaky, I'm just power conscious as well as being old and creaky. Damn, just when i thought I might be hip again. Now get off my lawn!

MOD OP +5

[Ant P.]

I had kdawson blocked for two months, then I came here and realised I was missing out on all the great kdawson-bashing.

Re:WTF is a nettop?

[Abreu]

Maybe I'm gettin' old, but I don't know what the hell a nettop is.

It's sort of like a "desktop netbook"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettop

Re:WTF is a nettop?

[V!NCENT]

[...] hell I paid a whole $50 for the 1.1Ghz Celeron with 512Mb of RAM I'm typing this on years ago, and it gets better performance that a nettop.[...]

Intel Atom CPU's do not have out-of-order execution which makes it in a way slower than celerons, but my EeePC has a celeron, 1GB RAM and an onboard Intel graphics card and although KDE4 is too slow, Gnome with Compiz runs just fine...