Intel Releases New Moblin 2.1 Preview

Last month from the Intel Developer Forum a preview copy of Moblin 2.1 was released, which introduces the Moblin Garage and other new capabilities to this mobile Linux operating system that is targeting Intel Atom netbooks and nettops but will be moving to smaller devices too. The first preview spin of the next Moblin release was nice, but this week Intel has put out a new build of Moblin 2.1. Of course, we fired up this new release for a look.

The Moblin 2.1 Preview 2 announcement is scarce on details. The announcement simply says, "Many new features and bug fixes are available in this image." After testing out this build 2009-10-08 on a Dell Mini 9 it did seem to run smoother than the earlier preview copy and there were a few subtle UI changes.

Installing applications in Moblin 2.1 and later is done through the Moblin Application Installer, and in this new preview release, its user-interface was one of the areas that was revised. This and other areas are now much more polished and looking very sleek.

This preview release of Intel Moblin 2.1 is running with the Linux 2.6.31.3 kernel and X Server 1.6.2 RC2. It is a bit surprising that X Server 1.7 has not been pulled in yet, but we suspect that will be done prior to 2.1 final.

That's about it for now. Moblin 2.1 continues to carry forward the excellent boot times and Clutter-driven interface that were introduced with Moblin 2.0. Look for the official Moblin 2.1 release sometime this quarter. The latest builds of Moblin are available from their download page.