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."

Comments

Um...who?

[filesiteguy]

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?

No - we need a speedy handheld device experience

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Ditching Windows on Netbooks

[imgod2u]

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.

Re:Concept best applied as a shell/containment

[Aphoxema]

I really liked MoblinV2 when I tried it on my wind but it seemed to keep falling short of my needs. Pairing my bluetooth mouse more than once was too much trouble, and I had all sorts of little nags. The way the bar at the top popped up every time I tried to close a window or anything was a nuisance.

So many things right are easily undone by the problems underneath. I'd just like to see the Clutter interface for Ubuntu, and more unique interfaces in general.

Re:Concept best applied as a shell/containment

[Enderandrew]

Reading up on community responses to Moblin, it seems like many are not quite satisfied with the package selection, stability, and overall polish of the distro.

I'm certainly not an Ubuntu fan by any means, but one thing they do well, is have ten million packages ready for their distro. The more new distros out there that pop up, the more we fragment the community on packaging for each of these distros, and providing community support for each distro.

Conversely, the benefits Moblin provides is not suddenly primarily offered up only to those who are willing to migrate away from the distros they already enjoy, and give up the opportunity cost those distros might currently provide them.

Moblin is open-source, but if they focused their energy on simply providing a shell and optimizations for the Atom processor, that code would more easily directly benefit all existing distros, while requiring less effort on Intel's part, as opposed to creating an entire distro.