First Moblin V2 Netbook Launches 70
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."
Um...who? (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
NOT READY, DO NOT WANT (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:Concept best applied as a shell/containment (Score:5, Interesting)
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.