The first netbook preinstalled with Moblin v2 for Netbooks will launch next week, possibly at Intel Developer Forum 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. Will Linux prove a viable alternative to Windows 7 on the low-powered, low-cost computing devices released for this holiday season? We should know pretty soon.
This quote is important:
“Very minor but critical bug fixes are being done based on input from OEMs and OS vendors.”
YES! OEM’s are 1) testing it and more importantly 2) providing input.
We need a second run of what Asus did with Xandros – one that isn’t abandoned right off the bat. Xandros userspace sucked, but everything related to kernel worked better than what we’ve had since.
It’s a great idea, and they’re definately trying to take the OS into a different direction and away from the (IMO pointless) desktop metaphor.
however, having played with moblin already, I think it’s just too restricted. Moblin decides what it thinks you might do most often with your netbook. For everything else… well it’s just not that easy.
I’ll keep watching this, and keep checking in, but ATM, moblin just isn’t for me. (although I think my Mum might love it’s simplicity)
moblin is too restricted like pirates of the caribbean
I hope that means fixing up the ath5k/ath9k drivers because currently right now they’re crap – and bugs I have reported as simply ignored by the maintainer of the said driver.
I like Moblin’s concept, but… I don’t like the fact that it doesn’t support the original (non-atom) series of netbooks.
This sucks for the early adopters (and no, I’m _not_ going to buy a new netbook just in order to run Moblin; Mint will do)
It’s an Intel product, so obviously they wanted to showcase what they can do with their compiler and SSE3.
Luckily, source is available, so it’s up to the community to build it without SSE3 requirement. Hopefully the ones who do that will still use intel’s compiler instead of gcc though…
So my 2 year old centrino duo isnt supported?
Possibly not. You have to check it yourself from /proc/cpuinfo (look for “pni” == prescot native (?) instructions == SSE3.
thanks… tried to mod you up with something like ‘insightful’ but the system doesnt let you(?!?!) weird..
I like the concept and it looks pretty nice, but the last time I tried using it (somewhere at the beginning of August, I think) on my Lenovo S10 it was still unusable
Extremely buggy, crashes, theming problems in applications like OpenOffice, etc. But I’m really eager to try it again once a stable version is released 
In the future we see a big battle over different Linux-based platforms. We already have, for an instance, Moblin, Maemo, and webOS, all doing basically the same thing.
I wouldn’t put my money on Moblin. IMO, of course.
While it is self-evident for companies to try to differentiate their product line, I find it funny that the situation is leading exactly to the same thing often complained in the field of traditional Linux distributions; differentiation and heterogeneous platforms with little hope of cross-compatibility in APIs, widgets, and in ever deeper parts.
How does this help the grass-root users? Or FOSS? In a sense I feel that these Linux platforms are a gate to a new kind of consumer lock-in. Even if Nokia gives you a root shell, can the next door hacker just flash the device and install a custom Debian instead? If a go and buy a webOS based device, could I install Maemo to it instead? I doubt it.
Comments?
EDIT: spelling.
Edited 2009-09-18 12:23 UTC
Yes. http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer
So instead of engaging in a conversation you give me a link to Nokia’s / Maemo’s advertisement material? Ehm. Alright.
I’m at the office, I only have time to check osnews when I compile or wait ;-).
“Mer” is an community-driven Ubuntu-based distro that you can use on Maemo devices instead of the official Maemo distribution.