Rated
Nov 24
•
10 reviews
•
programming, internet tools, linux, mobile computing, internet
• moblin.org
Moblin
Best damn operating system I ever saw. ~ID

When ID got his eepc netbook several months ago, I asked "But why?" "I can take it everywhere!" he said. "Why would you want to?" I mumbled under my breath. And my fears were born out. It frequently lost its mouse, or froze to the tune of "It isn't responding", and I had time for my nails to dry between page loads.But I think Moblin is going to change all that.
Moblin is different. It's a friendly way to get the most out of your netbook. It doesn't work like most other computers because it's optimized for enjoying media, interacting with your social networks and the internet.
Great hype! So ID and I took it for a test drive. Cynics that we are, we loaded it on a flash drive. It booted in 11 seconds. We clicked like mad through the various screens with near immediate throttle response. Nothing hung up, not even Firefox.
Moblin stands for Mobile Linux and sits on top of the linux kernel that we know and swear at. The layout is made for social networking. ID logged into Twitter and he Twitter app will work for me, though; I'm too Tweetdeck.
We installed the SU toolbar on the streamlined version of Firefox that comes with and you can indeed use this for stumbling. There's also an API, developer toolkits and even documentation. No, I'm not kidding. (If you do want to develop for it, you'll want to stay with C for awhile though, as it doesn't have all the bindings. But the docs are good. You could learn to program here).
There an office documentation app and other apps you can download from the garage. I didn't find a spreadsheet, but there probably will be one. A presentation manager, while not strictly within the realm of internet app, would move Moblin into "business class" for those social sales and marketing folks who travel and won't want to cart along another device (i.e., creating solutions for types of people, not a type of product that people have to fit into). A painfree Skype equivalent app would also be good; configuring Skype for eeebuntu devices was traumatic, as would being able to play .mp3s out of the box (There's the Banshee app, but we think it should come standard).
The only downside I noticed is that there are some complaints in the Moblin comments that the core developers are unresponsive and don't communicate to the Moblin community. Gee, that must suck.
Moblin overview at Wikipedia
Screenshot - note the su.pr link
More screenshots
More information in ID's review of my review
Watch the little video (1:40)
There's a lot more to Moblin than I can review here, but I think it's very promising. I may buy a netbook. Or commandeer ID's. He's a moblin convert.