At the recent Linuxcon Conference in Portland, Oregon, there were hints of new Moblin-powered hardware being announced at the upcoming Intel Developer Forum. Normally, this would be moderately interesting news, but some of the ambitious comments made by Linux luminaries at Linuxcon merit further examination. People from the Linux Foundation, Intel, and IBM spoke at the conference, and it's evident that they see the netbook market as the epicenter of the movement to raise Linux's profile in the consumer space, and whittle away marketshare from Windows. Update: Intel has also announced Moblin 2.1 for phones.
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Member since:
2006-01-04
For your usual netbook I find it lacking. Taskswitching was way too slow and I don't need all the social stuff.
For a touch based MIDs Moblin might be even better than Android, but very similar to Maemo.
I think you cannot forget Google in all this. They wanted to bring out a OS for a long time, way longer than Intel and I think they decided once XP is off the market for good will be the right time to do it.
Chrome OS probably has a much stronger technological basis than Moblin, although it is all vaporware at this point.
I think one Chrome OS sanctioned by Google will have a stronger marketing pitch than a lot of Moblins from Canonical and Novell and Xandros and ..
Member since:2006-01-02
Member since:2009-04-17
For a touch based MIDs Moblin might be even better than Android, but very similar to Maemo.
Well it definately is. Both Moblin and Maemo are part of the Gnome Mobile initiative and work and use all of the same technology. In the future they will be quite difference since Maemo is moving to QT.
I think you cannot forget Google in all this. They wanted to bring out a OS for a long time, way longer than Intel and I think they decided once XP is off the market for good will be the right time to do it.
Chrome OS probably has a much stronger technological basis than Moblin, although it is all vaporware at this point.
I think one Chrome OS sanctioned by Google will have a stronger marketing pitch than a lot of Moblins from Canonical and Novell and Xandros and ..
The deal is is that Android and ChromeOS are going to be a much more radical departure from the traditional Linux/Unix model.
This means that Moblin, being based on Gnome and GNU/Linux (as in not Android) is a hell of a lot mature then anything Google could hope to produce.
There is the ideal "new from the ground up" and wart-free software that people want.. but then there is the years and years or real-world usage and development that you simply can't pay for or replicate for any price.
Member since:
2009-05-20
Using a phone is now "computing"? A proud day for computing and computer science.
Maybe I've missed something, but practically all netbooks (with maybe some minor exceptions) are PCs. Nothing have changed except power consumption and price (both more than healthy), but under the hood all netbooks are basically PCs, typically equipped with cheap Intel chipsets.
Dear Mr. Zemlin. You have made quite a few venturesome but delusional comments in the past. This goes to the end of the list.
But if Mr. Zemlin's views are right in some distant future, perhaps the most fundamental change in computing will be the separation of consumer-users (locked bulk products, phones, gadgets) and the rest (everything else). Which is kind of sad.
Edited 2009-09-24 03:25 UTC
Member since:1997-10-01
It sounds like you've never used an iPhone or any other advanced smartphone. You know, these things can do a lot more than just make phone calls. I've been using personal computers since 1985 and I didn't have a computer as powerful as my iPhone is until 2001. Aside from the user interface limitations, there's nothing to prevent you from using the iPhone or a similar handheld computer for "real computing." What do you consider computing anyway?
Member since:
2009-09-24
Intel is poised to steal a major portion of market share if they can continue to offer their OS in the face of Windows 7.
I hope that the system's development community will get SSE3 optimized compilations of this OS to increase the speed and efficiency of netbooks.
My ASUS 1005HA netbook is fast, but Windows XP Home is slowing it down. http://bit.ly/44CHFm
Member since:
2008-12-26
As always when Mono flamefest is heating up, I took a quick peek at Boycott Novell (who love this topic).
I bumped into this:
http://boycottnovell.com/2009/09/24/moonlight-maybe-dead-now/
It seems they have/are doing a Silverlight Linux port (er, "Moblin port") based on original Silverlight code, NOT Mono and Moonlight.
Member since:
2005-07-06
I used to work at Intel (and would like to again, with all this cool Moblin stuff) and there was one interesting point that I picked up whilst I was there that helps you understand the way they think. My boss told us this during a meeting and it rather helped me make sense of things.
They're not a CPU design company. ARM is a CPU design company, they license their designs to manufacturers based on their technical strength. Intel *does* do CPU design - and do well at it - but unlike ARM they don't make their living by selling intellectual property. Intel is primarily a manufacturing company; they really want their factories to make lots of stuff and for the stuff to get sold. That's the way they operate.
From this perspective, Intel's investments in Open Source make somewhat more sense. They're not being altruistic - Intel have presumably identified an opportunity to increase their sales if certain software exists and works well on their hardware. It makes business sense. No reason *not* to Open Source the code, since they don't (generally) sell intellectual property. One assumes that they've simply decided they ought to "help along" the state of the art a bit, so that there will be better software available, sooner.
Nb. I'm not informed by any insider policy knowledge on this one, beyond knowing their mindset is purely "sell lots of devices".
You might note that they do sell *some* intellectual property, for instance they sell compilers and have been involved in IP licensing deals. So they do sometimes work in IP, just that IP sales aren't the core motivator.
Member since:1997-10-01
Thanks for including that insight. I think there's a similar story over at IBM, which over the years has become more-and-more a professional services company. To some extent, for them, even selling IBM hardware is secondary. They'll sell other people's hardware and software as long as they're the ones to get to run the multi million dollar decade long implementation. And that explains why IBM has turned into a Linux booster too.
Member since:2005-07-06
Amuses me how things have come full circle in a way - back in the day they used to sell you a mainframe and software to do what you want was part of what you were paying for AFAIK.
A big period in the middle where the software companies (MS in particular) were vastly more powerful than the hardware companies. And now it seems like the hardware companies have - through Linux and Open Source - found a way to bring it back to the original state of affairs where they can be complete system vendors (and, as you mentioned, in IBM's case that "system" extends waaaaaay beyond the devices and into all kinds of other services).
