Internet Devices Get Their Own Ubuntu Version

Barence writes "A version of Ubuntu targeted specifically towards mobile internet devices (MIDs) has been released by Canonical, although there is presently only one product on the market which can use it. According to the company, the pithily titled Mobile Internet Device Edition 8.04 has been optimized for use with handheld internet platforms, and designed to run smoothly on Intel's Atom chips as well as with small touchscreen displays. This follows Canonical's announcement earlier this month that it would be creating a version of Ubuntu for netbook devices such as the Asus Eee PC and the Acer Aspire One called Netbook Remix."

this is great

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

Canonical are one of the big movers and shakers in the OSS world, and that they are putting so much effort into putting OSS on as many devices is possible is good to see. Of course it could be a futile effort IF Nokia buy out Symbian and open up it's source.

Re:this is great

[Xygon]

Symbian's OS might be great once open sourced, but the breadth and depth of applications built for Linux, as well as the design of Symbian OS for handhelds, not MIDs, says to me that it's a long ways from being better for this type of platform. Symbian can grow from small to larger, but I myself would rather have a full featured OS on my MID than a phone system turned OS.

I would be curious...

[toppavak]

to hear from someone with a bit more understanding of the reason the builds posted for MID are specific to Menlow and McCaslin and whether / why these builds would or wouldn't work on more generic intel hardware such as present in the current eeePCs not to mention how difficult would it be to get it to run properly (just install the generic i386 kernel?).

Re:No good OS has been released since late 2007

[Calinous]

Windows 2000 still has one update or another from time to time. It's totally off the update map, but my Win2000 workstation still announce me of some update or another once a month or so (true, they are critical security updates and might only be for IE, Media Player, and other Microsoft applications, not to the operating system proper)

Re:No good OS has been released since late 2007

[Bert64]

What i want to see, is an OS which is compiled specifically for the Atom CPUs...
As i understand it, these processors are in-order processors, and therefore rely on the compiler to schedule execution correctly for their internal resources, as opposed to a full blown core2 which will reorder the instruction stream on the fly and thus compensate for less optimal compilers.

Doing this should yield quite significant performance improvements on the Atom processors...

Re:No good OS has been released since late 2007

[Anonymous Coward]

Sound not working properly (stutters). Maybe related to the fact that pulseaudio was rushed into the release...

Pulseaudio sucks bigtime. Got a new PC and as a result had to upgrade from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 to support the hardware, and this bought in Pulseaudio and the 'stutter'. I tried various how-to instructions to first get it working, then remove it but couldn't get it sorted and ended up switching to Ubuntu Gutsy, which worked perfectly (no pulseaudio). But the next release of Ubuntu (Hardy) has pulseaudio, so I'm going to wait until next year and hope it's useable by then...
It's one thing Fedora using pulseaudio; it's supposed to be bleeding edge. But I think it was a big mistake putting it into Ubuntu well before it was ready.

Re:No good OS has been released since late 2007

[Brian Gordon]

Oh I don't dispute that out of the box, vista is absolutely terrible. In order for it to be remotely usable after a reinstall, I have to:
-Disable the indexing service
-Disable all the other crap services I don't need like the diagnostic service
-Turn off slow Aero transparency and just use opaque Aero
-Run the registry tweaks to get sane folder type identification (make EVERYTHING "all items" by default)
-Disable all MRU features and make my start menu all pins
-Disable IE and WMP.
-Disable sidebar.