Dell To Ship Ubuntu Moblin Remix Netbooks

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Dell To Ship Ubuntu Moblin Remix Netbooks

Dell and Canonical have been collaborating on Ubuntu Moblin Remix, which is a mix of Ubuntu, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and Intel's Moblin 2.0 platform. Moblin 2.0 offers a very impressive user-interface and great boot times for use on Intel Atom-powered netbooks...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzU1Mw

[hybridr6]

Phoronix: Dell To Ship Ubuntu Moblin Remix Netbooks

Dell and Canonical have been collaborating on Ubuntu Moblin Remix, which is a mix of Ubuntu, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and Intel's Moblin 2.0 platform. Moblin 2.0 offers a very impressive user-interface and great boot times for use on Intel Atom-powered netbooks...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzU1Mw

This is one of those few and rare occasions I'm glad I bought a dell. Trying it out on my 9 asap.

[Kano]

I would never use Moblin and great in the same sentence. Moblin 2 is so stupid that it does not even activate vesa driver when you try it with VirtualBox (do not use 64 bit setting, that will not work, but enable NX then press ctrl+f1 when you see a black screen, then login as root with pw moblin, after that startx). The gui is like the XO - and it lets you feel that you are an absolute beginner.

[jeffro-tull]

how, exactly, does one combine Gnome and dpkg with a special Clutter-based UI and RPM?

[drag]

how, exactly, does one combine Gnome and dpkg with a special Clutter-based UI and RPM?

I don't understand what your asking.

Clutter is a Gnome 3.0 feature and is used in the UNR interface and Debian has had RPM support for several years now. It's part of the LSB and both Debian and Ubuntu are compatible.

This is one of those few and rare occasions I'm glad I bought a dell. Trying it out on my 9 asap.

Ya. I've been using the UNR version of the Karmic Alpha release on my mini9 and its fantastic. Network-Manager latches onto networks faster now. Windows file sharing through GVFS is faster. OO.org starts up faster. etc etc etc.

I am really looking to the Gnome Shell though. Looks very slick.

[thefirstm]

I would never use Moblin and great in the same sentence. Moblin 2 is so stupid that it does not even activate vesa driver when you try it with VirtualBox (do not use 64 bit setting, that will not work, but enable NX then press ctrl+f1 when you see a black screen, then login as root with pw moblin, after that startx). The gui is like the XO - and it lets you feel that you are an absolute beginner.

I fully agree with this. I looked at a moblin system once and the only positive thing I could find about it was the fast boot speed. It felt like I was using some sort of toy rather than a PC.

[drelyn86]

Interesting... I can already tell it looks a little better than the weird Ubuntu interface that shipped with my mini 10v, but then again... netbooks don't always have to look like Fisher Price toys!

Gnome, KDE, XFCE, and even Windows 7 are all suitable for netbooks. Right now I've got my 10v running KDEmod on Archlinux and couldn't be happier with the interface, usability, and performance.

Still, it's good to see some big companies collaborate on such a product...

[jeffro-tull]

I don't understand what your asking.

Clutter is a Gnome 3.0 feature and is used in the UNR interface and Debian has had RPM support for several years now. It's part of the LSB and both Debian and Ubuntu are compatible.

Maybe it was a little vague. What I was getting at is the following:

1) regardless of the toolkit/libraries used, the Moblin UI is substantially different than Gnome. Even the "normal" Ubuntu Netbook Remix user interface doesn't really feel too far removed from just-plain-old Gnome (yes, it's different, but it behaves similarly). Moblin 2 is a completely different beast.

2) It seems all I hear from the *buntu crowd is how vastly superior apt-get and dpkg are to everything else on the planet. With that (and the fact that I don't use any Debian-based distros on my personal machines), I'm honestly not sure how the Debian-based Ubuntu will behave with all the RPMs that, collectively, make up Moblin. Apparently that has long since been resolved, so I guess it's a non-issue.

eh, whatever. I'm with drelyn86 anyway - Arch linux + KDEmod 4.3 behaves pretty much exactly how I want it to on my Aspire One. I'm sure I'll try UMR at some point, but I can't say I'm excited about it.

[Amaranth]

I fully agree with this. I looked at a moblin system once and the only positive thing I could find about it was the fast boot speed. It felt like I was using some sort of toy rather than a PC.

That's kind of the point. They're not marketing netbooks as mini-PCs, they're marketing them as toys you use to get on the web.

[drag]

Maybe it was a little vague. What I was getting at is the following:

1) regardless of the toolkit/libraries used, the Moblin UI is substantially different than Gnome. Even the "normal" Ubuntu Netbook Remix user interface doesn't really feel too far removed from just-plain-old Gnome (yes, it's different, but it behaves similarly). Moblin 2 is a completely different beast.

Moblin is a specification for desktop application environment. It has all these requirements for libraries and versioning to make something "Moblin compliant"

The intention of it is that companies and distributions can make their own stuff based off of "moblin" that will have a high degree of compatibility and whatnot.

Its not about a particular look-n-feel. The moblin demos released by Intel are much more about simply showcasing what is possible with their specifications and gnome technology and is not something that is really going to go anywere, although I suspect it may end up getting used in phones or something like that.

Its up to companies to take that and run with it. Its up to distributions like Suse and Ubuntu to make Moblin systems.

2) It seems all I hear from the *buntu crowd is how vastly superior apt-get and dpkg are to everything else on the planet. With that (and the fact that I don't use any Debian-based distros on my personal machines), I'm honestly not sure how the Debian-based Ubuntu will behave with all the RPMs that, collectively, make up Moblin. Apparently that has long since been resolved, so I guess it's a non-issue.

Moblin is not made up of RPMs. Its just made up of Gnome libraries and other things. It's a _specification_ and part of it is RPM compatibility so that when people produce software targeting the moblin they do not have to make a bunch of different installers and packages for different things. If somebody produces software that complies with Intel's specifications then it should run without any problem on any OS that is tested and complies with with the Moblin specification.


You know how people complain about how the desktop is fractured and ISVs and game designers have a hard time with programming for the desktop due to all the fracture and they are not sure about what tools and libraries and other things to use?

Well Moblin is designed to solve this problem and create a common platform for running software on netbooks and other mobile Linux devices.

eh, whatever. I'm with drelyn86 anyway - Arch linux + KDEmod 4.3 behaves pretty much exactly how I want it to on my Aspire One. I'm sure I'll try UMR at some point, but I can't say I'm excited about it.

You guys can continue to do whatever you want. Personally I've never understood the point behind people's obsession with bringing up their preference of KDE everytime something Gnome-related is mentioned on the internet. Not that I really understand the point behind KDE either.

Moblin, from Intel's perspective, is about bring up a competitive, useful OS that can be used by third parties to promote their Intel-based mobile devices.