"We first got excited for Moblin 2.0 back in January when seeing how fast this Linux distribution had booted on Atom-powered netbooks. This Fedora-derived distribution booted even faster with a newer development release that came out this past March. While Moblin 2.0 final is not yet released, there is now more to get excited over than just amazing boot times. Moblin 2.0 will introduce a Clutter-based user interface and from our initial encounters with this release, it is very impressive! In this article we have more information on this new Moblin UI along with screenshots and videos."
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2005-09-27
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2006-01-04
Just running it now on my netbook. I love it, and want more!
From a UI perspective it tries a lot of things I've never seen before, but I've never had a smart-phone so maybe they're inherited from there. Nevertheless, it pulls them off extremely well. Even the implementation of virtual desktops seems very intuitive. It's very polished even at this stage.
Technically it seems good too. It's lean, fast, works with all my hardware.
I could totally see myself using this as a full time UI on my netbook when it's done.
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2005-08-07
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YEPHENAS informed...
Interesting. I hadn't been paying attention and I missed that announcement! The videos make it look intriguing despite my preferences for the way things currently are. I hope the Gnome developers will at least make it possible to choose between styles if they go this route.
The funny thing is if they do end up going this route and manage to keep the hardware hit down and the code bloat low, if...if...if...then the Gnome team will have delivered on the promise of those Longhorn mockups!
--bornagainpenguin
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2005-06-29
...played with it for a bit now and like it quite a bit. A few thoughts:
* no Email app? -> Anjal will probably make it into Moblin2 final and it looks promising already.
* no word processor? -> I would expect at least Abiword... maybe something is being worked on? Abiword already runs great on X0.
* no Tomboy. Absolutely needed with nice integration like the dates stuff.
* the IM stuff did not really work for me but I'm pleased to see Telepathy/Empathy being used
* the application starter needs some love... it works, but it feels slow. The settings category should be its own thing IMHO.
* The over-all look is nice but the icons look a bit dull. App icons are too similar IMHO and many of the black/white glyphs (see GEdit toolbar for example) are not clear enough. The GTK widget theme could be a bit more interesting as well.
* the window switching is just *fail*. It is actually a total show-stopper for me. Why not just have some autohide bar on the bottom for this?
Edited 2009-05-19 22:58 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
You've hit the nail on the head and it's certainly what struck me when I tried it out myself after becoming curious over anything else I encountered. Where the hell are the applications?
Yes, it's attractive, but as I've said time and again around here if you don't have the applications and the functionality that people want, and have them built for the environment in mind, you're heading to a place called nowhere. What do they do? Yes, integrating Abiword would be nice but it has got to work well enough for people buying into devices with Moblin installed and trying to integrate beefy applications like Open Office and Evolution with the functionality most people expect into that is going to be a very tall order. Pulling in Mono for Tomboy is also going to be another unknown in the environment. Things diverge pretty quickly.
Beyond the exterior french polishing the interior needs a hell of a lot of thought and work before this ever amounts to anything.
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segedunum posted...
I really don't know why people think that "Oh, you just run rpm -....." is a real answer.
Apparently when Xandros delivered their version to ASUS that was good enough for them...
(I'm not saying this was good mind you, just that I wouldn't assume corporations care as much as about users installing nonbundled apps as you're making them out to be. Also, I think if it hadn't been possible to get Ubuntu or some other distros or even Windows XP on the EeePC it would have failed. Hard.)
--bornagainpenguin
Member since:2005-07-06
Xandros didn't need to. They have something Moblin doesn't right now - applications. At least some anyway. If you then added additional repositories yourself then you were on your own.
1. I don't know why you're talking about corporations.
2. Corporations care just as much about applications as users, because they consist of........users. Organisations install a wide variety of applictions on their desktops every single day.
Well yer, because.........nothing would have ran on it.
Member since:2006-01-03
This is not a Linux distro; it is something else. It is Moblin that will be added in the existing distributions, and then stirred in order to get new and vastly improved mobile linux flavors.
Soon, when you get your next Ubuntu Network Remix, or a Fedora Network Spin, it will be Moblin based, with the apparently missing apps coming from the standard existing repositories, mostrly from those of Gnome and GTK+ software.
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I don't see mono as a problem. Even with this dependency, Tomboy starts up quicker and it is well maintained (I bet gnote will be dead in a few month!)
But just starting some app is no use here, it needs integration love. Just like Banshee is getting a totally new GUI just for this... (and it's using mono as well)
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