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First Moblin V2 Netbook Launches
nerdyH writes "The first netbook preinstalled with Moblin v2 for Netbooks will launch next week, possibly at Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco, or else the Linux Foundation's LinuxCon in Portland. Then, within the next couple of weeks, the Moblin Project will release the first stable release of the Moblin v2 Linux distribution, which began beta testing in May."
Instead of a distro, I'd rather see the Moblin concepts applied as a shell in Gnome and/or a containment in KDE 4. This is much nicer than the netbook containment concept I see the KDE 4 guys currently kicking around. However, as a complete distro, it suddenly requires package maintainers and much more support overhead. In that regard, Moblin seems to fall short.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Will it actually have proper drivers for newer netbooks when OEM didn't originally ship with Linux (such as... amm... ASUS 100X series?)
I read the article (I know that's a suprise to many) but didn't see it saying exactly *who* is going to be releasing this next week. If they don't know at this point, it would be safe to bet that someone next week may *announce* a release but there's no way we'll actually see a release.
Also, I don't know if I see a benefit in Moblin. It is so far removed from what we're used to after some twenty years of Mac and Windows and X guis.
I tried it back in may and thought it intriguing but very different.
http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/2009/20090526_moblin_browser.jpg
http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/2009/20090526_moblin_desktop.jpg
Also - do they have flash plugins for the moblin browser? Will people want to use Firefox? Wine?
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Moblin + GUI => Goblin
Coincidence?? I think not.
Moblin? What is it - a combination of "goblin" and a "mob"? No matter how I read it, the associations I get are just very negative. Can't sell a product with a name like that.
One of the main things I want in a netbook is *fast* boot/suspend/resume. I want to pop it open and use it right now, like a handheld consumer device. Same goes for opening the basic apps. Think iphone, it's ready *now* when you want it, Safari opens fast. You wouldn't want this as your office desktop, but you really do want this as your on-the-go experience.
IF Moblin delivers this where others have failed, all hail Moblin. I'll even run it on my older laptop -- one with a 1.3GHz Celeron and 256MB of RAM that is too painfully slow to use with GNOME. It's OK as a desktop where you don't need to boot or re-start apps often, but as a portable it's not acceptable to wait and wait and wait...
Now can I get that on a snapdragon 1.5GHz please?
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
So Intel developed Atom as an x86 processor because so much software runs on x86 and not, say, ARM.
Then Intel spends money developing a Linux OS for netbooks that's open source.
ARM just got free software from Intel and makes superior processors.
Did anyone read this as "First Mobile V-2 Network Launch", then followed with thoughts of Command and Conquer: Red Alert?
I have a netbook that runs Windows 7 just fine. I have a supply of applications that Moblin will not see in years (if at all). Yea, I have to pay for it eventually but I still have the huge base of applications that also run on my desktop. Just a waste of time, this moblin thing.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Wonderful! It's the year of the linux netbook ... long live 2007 and the eee 701!.
Euh, I mean, 2009! With Moblin!
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
I have a netbook that runs Windows 7 just fine. I have a supply of applications that Moblin will not see in years (if at all). Yea, I have to pay for it eventually but I still have the huge base of applications that also run on my desktop.
I don't care and I don't even bother to explain you why there is already a bunch of applications that just run on moblin. Would it be because Moblin is Linux? Maybe because applications are opensource and can already run on a lot of arches? Did this made any *Bing* on your head? Just do your homework if you care, if not, just continue swimming on your own ignorance.
Just a waste of time, this moblin thing.
You really sound like Joe 6-pack talking. You don't really have a clue about this *thing*, do you?
I looked at moblin a while ago and thought the design better suited for touch screens rather than keyboard/mouse inputs.
I tried Moblin on an Intel Aspire One D250 and on an Asus 701 4G with 1GB RAM upg. recently and it was a superfail. Just visiting the built-in applications would cause crashes and you'd have to reboot before they would work again. It's amazing how intel has managed to make the stuff horribly reliable on their own chips, when the systems it's based on work just fine on these machines.
If they can bring Moblin around to the point where it doesn't crap all over itself constantly I'm interested. It has a really nice interface. It's ungodly slow on intel graphics chips, though...
With that said, I'm running Windows 7 Enterprise on my lt3103u and could not be happier, except for compatibility problems. I hope Microsoft can iron them out. Dungeon Siege doesn't work, that's pretty sad considering it's a Microsoft-distributed game. I know that if I were Microsoft I would demand that games I will distribute call my APIs properly so that they will work on the next edition of my OS. Civilization 2 Gold doesn't work either, but at least it doesn't require a 3D accelerator and so I may be able to play it in XP Mode. If I can't, then the value of running Windows is diminished; backwards compatibility is a loss, so I might as well run Linux on the metal and run Windows inside of VirtualBox or VMware where I will have at least cursory 3D support.
If I do end up back on Linux, though, it'll be Ubuntu Karmic x64, which I know supports all but my wifi without so much as a repo change (drivers are available in backports or something.) It's not going to be moblin, which Intel has taken some pains to alter to not work well on anything but their chips. It's unfortunate that, in their incompetence, they made it not work well on theirs either. Oh yeah, the interface doesn't fit on the screen of my EEE 701 either. You'd think that an OS for netbooks would work on small screens. Maybe that's fixed now, though. I know they don't actually care about you if you don't have an Atom chip, which just makes me more miffed at Intel... Since I put XP back on the Atom-based system I've got, and gave it to my Lady to replace her stupid failing Dell Vostro 1500. Hmm, that's a Centrino system, too... IntelFAIL
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've got Fedora on my laptop. It probably boots about as fast as windows without crapware would, which isn't terribly quick ~1 minute. But it comes back from suspend like lightning and uses virtually no power on suspend.
I really like it for homework, because I can look something up quick, then suspend, work for another hour, repeat. I rarely run low on battery that way. I can't really give a time (like 4-5 hours) because each time is a little bit different with my usage, but there is more of a lag in me figuring out what to type in google than there is in it coming back from suspend.
Failure formatting five FAQs of financial facts.
I don't know if Moblin will succeed or not, and I suspect many variables will play into that but am I the only one that sees their attempt at different as a rare but positive move? So far from the desktop-Linux world we've seen distros patch, compile and configure all the same pieces of open source software. This gives us a vary organic and grass-rootsy environment, and for familiarity and compatibility that's really great. But on the same note there's very little to differentiate one desktop distribution from another and I've typically made my decisions based on package manager and the size of the user base (popular distros/ good community support).
On the server I really think that all the above is important, and I'm in not hurry to see any of that change. However on the desktop all these marginally different distributions provide very little compelling reason to use one over the other and honestly without the branding (or having installed it myself) I'd be hard pressed to tell you which distribution I might be using at any given instance.
In the cases of commercial distributions aiming at the desktop, like Ubuntu or Mandriva I really see this a failure build on the advantages made available by open source software. Canonical could risk designing an operating system based on this wealth open source software, but instead they choose to focus on packaging and polishing disparate pieces of existing software, designed my a multitude of people for a for an even greater variety of reasons.
Distributions succeed at being usable collections of polished software, but they fail at being what I'd consider true operating systems because of the nature of their design and I for one hope that we continue to see more movement in projects aiming at the mobile and netbook market where it seems to be considered more important (or more plausible) to design the operating systems interface.
Granted, I'm not suggesting I'd like to see change for the sake of change but I would like to see a more serious attempt at OS design coming from somewhere in the Linux distribution space and right now that seems to be happening in the mobile space on platforms like Android and Moblin and I believe that the risk of good design could be a sea-change that doesn't just push Linux onto the desktop, but answers the question once and for all about the idea of a widely used free software platform. It simply makes too much economic sense.
Quack, quack.
And I had Fedora on the system I mentioned until about F9 or F10 when the installer stopped working with my 256MB of RAM.
Fedora worked fairly well at suspend/resume on my hardware, (except that the wireless card hung on resume) but cold boot was really slow, and overall the desktop responsiveness was not up to par with what I want in a portable device, so I never carried it with me.
(And gads, 1.3GHz isn't enough to run a snappy desktop? BeOS would fly on that.)
I also tried Ubuntu 9.04, which ran similarly well for non-portable use. But Gnome and Firefox are RAM pigs, they're never going to be happy in 256MB. Something like Moblin that is targeted for the portable use-case is really needed.
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OMG another liberal freetard!
I'm running Fedora 11 on my Samsung N140 netbook and it wakes from suspend almost instantly. I can't see any reason to shut down and reboot when the battery will last quite a few days in suspend. With 2GB RAM, apps start and run nearly as fast as they do on my Core 2 Duo Thinkpad.
It looks nice, but I question the value of lowing a netbook's capability to toat of a smartphone/pda.
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