Holy crap! Moblin Beta 2 is looking good!

[Deamos]

I don't know if anyone has seen this yet. Looks like Moblin got a nice interface update. Starting to look a lot like Jolicloud!

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/05/19/moblin-beta-2-evolves-into-a-capable-linux-alternative-for-netbo/

[zekopeko]

tried it on an Asus 1000HG. it's buggy in some areas but it's shaping rather nicely.

for those that want to install/try-it:

go to www.moblin.org and download the image file

install from synaptic usb-imagewriter

run it from applications- accessories and plug in your usb stick

note that the usb stick is going to be completely erased.

set your netbook to boot from the usb stick

enjoy

[Deamos]

Downloading it now. Will report when I get a good look at it :)

[gnomeuser]

I am planning to try this out on my laptop tomorrow. If I like it I will buy a netbook, probably the Asus Eee PC 1002HA, it looks like a sweet little machine.

[days_of_ruin]

Does the bootup really look like that? If it does that's sweet.

[olskar]

I tried it on my Asus and must say the interface is astonishing!

[OutOfReach]

wow that looks great...Must try this on my Aspire One :)

[sloggerkhan]

I saw the article on phoronix, I'm probably going to give it a go tonight. It looks almost exactly like what I've been looking for in a netbook interface.

Honestly, with a few additions and tweaks, I'd consider something like that on a desktop...

[zekopeko]

you might look at jolicloud. it alsoo looks amazing. can't wait for it to be released.

[dragos240]

tried it on an Asus 1000HG. it's buggy in some areas but it's shaping rather nicely.

for those that want to install/try-it:

go to www.moblin.org (http://www.moblin.org) and download the image file

install from synaptic usb-imagewriter

run it from applications- accessories and plug in your usb stick

note that the usb stick is going to be completely erased.

set your netbook to boot from the usb stick

enjoy

Well you can also extract it manually and partition the usb drive, I have debian on one partition and files on the other, the problem is getting wireless and xorg to work.

[joey-elijah]

Gnome steal this now >_<

[Jay_Bee]

I'm trying it out right now, it looks slick and has nice integration with web services, just as netbooks should have.
I don't use twitter or lastfm so a lot of the included features are not that useful to me. Clicking is a bit buggy too.
Other than that the system is fast and I like the UI, I think Moblin is shaping up pretty nicely and I would like to use it on a netbook device.
I must say this, even in this unfinished state, I just love the included web browser and it's integration with the M-zone, it's a pure WIN :D

[teh'p3nsi0n3r]

this looks awesome! would this work on Asus Eee PC 4G 701?

[hanzomon4]

Gnome steal this now >_<

+!

This is amazing.. I want this and the pre

[snowpine]

this looks awesome! would this work on Asus Eee PC 4G 701?

Does the 4g 701 have an Intel Atom processor?

[teh'p3nsi0n3r]

Does the 4g 701 have an Intel Atom processor?

i am not sure, i thought it was Intel Celeron M processor but i know some eeepc's models use a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor. So i guess not right? genuine question.

edit: checked the specs. thanks.

[solitaire]

Drat! I loved the look of this.

But it does not like my Laptop :D lol

Wish i had a netbook so I can use it ! lol

[Deamos]

I just played with it for a few minutes on my Asus Eee 1000HA.

Things of note:

Runs & Boots FAST About 15 Seconds off a USB Thumbdrive and not installed (Live CD)
The interface is nice. I have noticed a couple bugs, but they are few.
I definitely think they need to add more social networks and get the media player functionality 100%, however this is a beta so I understand :)

More to come as I play with it.

Edit 1: A few more minutes and I realized I can't find the bloody shutdown button. Did they forget it or am I just bugging? :D

[Changturkey]

Why can't GNOME look this streamlined?

[solitaire]

If I could get this to run on my HP 550 laptop... I might use it by default :D

[Jay_Bee]

A few more minutes and I realized I can't find the bloody shutdown button. Did they forget it or am I just bugging? :D
I also couldn't find it so I just started terminal and typed "reboot" or "restart", can't remember now, but it worked.
Strange that there is no way to log out, suspend or shut down :D

[motang]

If anyone is interested here is video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsCpIeLLoT8) of it.

I was really looking forward to the ARM based netbooks but with this looking the way it does, I am currently rethinking that.

[damis648]

Good Stuff!:popcorn:

[ghindo]

Does the 4g 701 have an Intel Atom processor?Moblin doesn't exclusively work on Intel processors, does it?

[sertse]

It does afaik, since intel played such a huge part in it, and ARM is the looming threat against intel arch dominance...

looks good though, and I'm going to try it on my intel netbook, but ARM's hardware advantages still out weigh it.

[Maheriano]

I don't get it. I've been following the development of Ubuntu Mobile with anticipation because I want to use it in my car on my car PC. From what I've read, Moblin is simply the continutation of the Ubuntu Mobile project, am I wrong here? This doesn't look the same as what I've been following at all.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

Do you know that this is? This is THE answer to Windows 7's crazy claim that it will start to dominate netbooks. This annihilates W7!

Now I feel even worse about my netbook having an evil Broadcom chipset, though :(
Tempted to pull it open and install an Intel one. The only thing holding me back is I don't know how to work with notebook computer components :/

[hanzomon4]

This is the kind of idea that will put Linux over the top. Not only is it beautiful but it has nice, coherent, concepts driving the design. Projects like this and WebOS make me smile. When will Ubuntu adopt this as the base of UNR? When will we see something as well thought out on the desktop? Gnome and Kde4 are getting there but... this is just awesome

Great Ars article on Moblin beta 2 (http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2009/05/hands-on-intel-brings-rich-ui-to-moblin-linux-platform.ars)

[3rdalbum]

This is absolutely awesome. I haven't tried it yet but I will! The integration of the social networking and other web services reminds me of Flock (my browser of choice) and the slick, featureful 'home' interface is sure to win a bunch of converts.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

Why can't GNOME look this streamlined?

It builds on technologies that live in (or are being built with) GNOME, such as Empathy and Evolution. In fact, it shares pretty much everything in common except the launchers; GTK with a really nice theme, gnome-control-center (with some modifications), heavily modified Metacity, gnome-settings-daemon, pulseaudio, gstreamer etc... Just run ps -A and you'll see that it's basically GNOME with a fresh layer of paint.
This means that Moblin's magic is quite compatible, and vice versa; it's mainly an incredibly great, snappy replacement to the launcher, panel and window manager (which is, coincidentally, exactly what gnome-shell will give us as well!). Hopefully GNOME 3 will manage to blend in some of the ideas :)

Unfortunately, repo.moblin.org has been slaughtered, but here's an image from yesterday...
http://www.mininova.org/tor/2605675

[pwnst*r]

I am planning to try this out on my laptop tomorrow. If I like it I will buy a netbook, probably the Asus Eee PC 1002HA, it looks like a sweet little machine.

i'm looking at the same netbook. if you purchase yours relatively soon, could you post a short review on your blog?

[pt123]

Here is a more indepth review
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=moblin_v2_ui

with videos on the last page

[electricshoes]

Anybody know how to add repos to Yum? Would be nice to install some more apps.

[myusername]

it looks great. still a little buggy but runs VERY smooth. i've never had an DE/WM run so smooth. it lacks an actual office suite though. which is the only thing keeping me from installing it full time

[myusername]

Anybody know how to add repos to Yum? Would be nice to install some more apps.

you cant. if you did moblin would break. moblin apps have to be specially compiled for moblin

[SunnyRabbiera]

Moblin is very promising indeed

[bigbrovar]

This has once again showed the Power and flexibility of open source to adapt and meet the challenges that technology brings up. too bad i just took my compaq mini for repairs after a hard-disk failure :( should be getting it back in 15 days time. I hope we all contribute out quota and to join the moblin community, file bugs, make feature request.. and generally help out the best way we can with this beta so that many of the bugs i have heard people complain about can be fixed .. http://moblin.org/community (http://moblin.org/community)

[Bastanteroma]

If anyone is still wondering how to shut down or suspend their computer, check out the introductory video. For simplicity's sake, they've decided to rely on the physical power button for turning the computer off, and on the laptop lid for suspending it. Dunno about suspending a nettop.

[Twitch6000]

I checked out a few youtube videos of this distro and the ui was just wow...

The next thing that popped in my head is this is the kind of distro I want to use.

Only problem is I am not sure if it can be used on a normal laptop :(.

[myusername]

I checked out a few youtube videos of this distro and the ui was just wow...

The next thing that popped in my head is this is the kind of distro I want to use.

Only problem is I am not sure if it can be used on a normal laptop :(.

it has to have an Intel ATOM processor

[zombiepig]

I'm interested to hear if anyone has any luck getting this to work with a broadcom wireless card. I've got a HP mini 1000 with a broadcom bcm4312, and can't get it detected in moblin. Tried copying the firmware to /lib/firmware/b43, but no luck.

All the tools I'd usually use to try and diagnose it are missing in moblin too! No lspci, ifconfig, iwlist, etc... :P

[Mr. Picklesworth]

Further impressions from a netbook without working wifi:

Beautiful Plymouthy boot screen. I didn't get the awesomely quick booting experience, but then again it's running off an old flash drive. Boot splash blends with the wallpaper, so it's impossible to even notice the change; as before, we can get flicker-free boot that means the user sees absolute perfection from Grub onward.

Full of good ideas. I witnessed a helpful bubble appear instructing me to move the mouse to the top of the screen to get the main menu.
Plain English galore. I like the low battery warning. (And it's a pretty notification bubble, too).

The window management is really neat. I love their Zones feature. The Zones pane appeares when you hit Alt Tab, and is also available with the mouse from the main menu. It presents workspaces (in a good, simple way) and all the windows in them, so you can switch between windows / workspaces in a single motion. Zones also replaces the window list. When you open an application, it asks what zone you wish to run it in (similar to gnome-shell), and when all windows in a zone are closed it closes the zone. The system starts off with no Zones (well, one) and you can add them as you load programs. Makes a lot of sense!
I like that it's all one single interface, instead of bouncing the user between sixty different techniques for managing windows.

There is a really nice clipboard manager type app, called Pasteboard. Keeps track of things you copy into the clipboard, with a search box even. It also lets you add highlighted text to the clipboard, if for whatever reason you need that. (It's cleverly done, so quite acceptable).

All the GNOME configuration tools work!

Really consistent. Awesomely so. For example, the different sections you get to from the Moblin launcher have different colours associated with them, cleverly applied in subtle but helpful ways.

Can't find bluetooth yet. I guess one can't have everything. Bluez-gnome has made leaps lately, though, so it should be nice when it hits.

Nice choice of games: Frozen Bubble, Neverball and Neverputt. Could do with a cards game.

[bigbrovar]

you cant. if you did moblin would break. moblin apps have to be specially compiled for moblin

Like what we currently have in maemo where the application has to be hildonized before it can integrate with the maemo interface.

one thing people should realise is that moblin is not just another netbook interface sitting on top on a traditional linux desktop platform like ubuntu netbook remix. its a platform on its own.. and applications has to be written to specifically take advantage of some of the clutter powered interface.. shouldn't be hard to port an existing gnome application though.

[gnomeuser]

it has to have an Intel ATOM processor

*cough* liar *cough* I just booted this on my core 2 duo, just to prove you more wrong I might do this here Via C7 chip as well.

Aside that it doesn't much like things like my nvidia card. This kinda makes the interface sluggish and it doesn't scale up nicely to a real laptop screen. These are issues that will be solved though.

I really like moblin, as it progresses I will be interested in seeing what they come up with. I keep my ear to the ground and I did know they were working on something based on clutter, but wow I did not expect this. Most of all I don't think I expected them to be able to drop such a feature complete GUI rewrite after only about a year in development. There must have been long nights.

It's solid, but it clearly not finished yet. For a beta it is really nice. It leverages much of Fedora and openSUSE for it's backend so you get well tested components underneath.

As Intel recently gave Moblin over to the Linux Foundation I wouldn't at all be surprised if more vendors got involved. Novell already announced that they are working on a Moblin based product and I am sure more will follow.

[bigbrovar]

Further impressions from a netbook without working wifi:

Beautiful Plymouthy boot screen. I didn't get the awesomely quick booting experience, but then again it's running off an old flash drive. Boot splash blends with the wallpaper, so it's impossible to even notice the change; as before, we can get flicker-free boot that means the user sees absolute perfection from Grub onward.

Full of good ideas. I witnessed a helpful bubble appear instructing me to move the mouse to the top of the screen to get the main menu.
Plain English galore. I like the low battery warning. (And it's a pretty notification bubble, too).

The window management is really neat. I love their Zones feature. The Zones pane appeares when you hit Alt Tab, and is also available with the mouse from the main menu. It presents workspaces (in a good, simple way) and all the windows in them, so you can switch between windows / workspaces in a single motion. Zones also replaces the window list. When you open an application, it asks what zone you wish to run it in (similar to gnome-shell), and when all windows in a zone are closed it closes the zone. The system starts off with no Zones (well, one) and you can add them as you load programs. Makes a lot of sense!
I like that it's all one single interface, instead of bouncing the user between sixty different techniques for managing windows.

There is a really nice clipboard manager type app, called Pasteboard. Keeps track of things you copy into the clipboard, with a search box even. It also lets you add highlighted text to the clipboard, if for whatever reason you need that. (It's cleverly done, so quite acceptable).

All the GNOME configuration tools work!

Really consistent. Awesomely so. For example, the different sections you get to from the Moblin launcher have different colours associated with them, cleverly applied in subtle but helpful ways.

Can't find bluetooth yet. I guess one can't have everything. Bluez-gnome has made leaps lately, though, so it should be nice when it hits.

Nice choice of games: Frozen Bubble, Neverball and Neverputt. Could do with a cards game.

any idea what filemanager it uses .. and are you able to easily access the shell ?

[Mr. Picklesworth]

any idea what filemanager it uses .. and are you able to easily access the shell ?

It uses Nautilus, of course :)

File management is held at a safe distance, which is quite far from everything else. The system's focus on searching (keeping very good track of recent items) feels like a good thing for its usage scenario.

[ghindo]

you cant. if you did moblin would break. moblin apps have to be specially compiled for moblinNot true.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2009/05/hands-on-intel-brings-rich-ui-to-moblin-linux-platform.ars
Unlike Android, Moblin's graphics stack includes a standard Xorg server and can run conventional desktop Linux applications. Much of the software that is available today on mainstream Linux distributions can be brought to Moblin without requiring any porting effort. In fact, the beta includes quite a few standard GTK+ applications, such as GEdit.
it has to have an Intel ATOM processorNot necessarily. Moblin is optimized for the Atom, but it doesn't have to run on an Atom.

[sertse]

double post, see below

[sertse]

Aside that it doesn't much like things like my nvidia card. This kinda makes the interface sluggish and it doesn't scale up nicely to a real laptop screen. These are issues that will be solved though.


I'm sure you know this, but moblin is designed for netbooks, and umm netbooks don't have nvidia cards and big screens. :) It can't really be a fault that moblin doesn't do them nicely. Maybe it was even some of the things they sacificed in order to be optimised for netbooks...

On the other hand, you may be right, and that there's a way to solve them, so everyone wins.

Btw: anyone else having issue d/l the image? It seems too many people are trying to d/l at once, and the server ain;t coping.

[ghindo]

Btw: anyone else having issue d/l the image? It seems too many people are trying to d/l at once, and the server ain;t coping.The site is being hit pretty heavily right now - even the front page takes a while to load.

[gnomeuser]

I'm sure you know this, but moblin is designed for netbooks, and umm netbooks don't have nvidia cards and big screens. :) It can't really be a fault that moblin doesn't do them nicely. Maybe it was even some of the things they sacificed in order to be optimised for netbooks...

On the other hand, you may be right, and that there's a way to solve them, so everyone wins.

Btw: anyone else having issue d/l the image? It seems too many people are trying to d/l at once, and the server ain;t coping.

It was what I had handy to test moblin on. Aside that netbooks do have nvidia cards, nvidia have a platform called ION of which the first consumer products have just started arriving. I am hoping that the nouveau guys will make the ION platform a primary target. It's one gpu so it should be a small target and the benefit would be a whole range of netbooks and nettops working out of the box.

There is also no reason why the interface shouldn't scale up nicely (though I believe this to be related to the nvidia card not the interface itself).

I am sure you can find the image on mirrors or on linuxtracker as a bt download.

I sure do like what I see, aside being a touch slow for my machine, but that is a solvable issue and surely will be handled by the time Moblin2 is available in it's final version or at the very least in OEM deployments. I will order an EeePC 1002HA today to run this on, I have been looking for an excuse to get a netbook anyways.

[wipeout140]

for people who like OpenSuse -
Moblin v2.0 Beta on openSUSE (http://news.opensuse.org/2009/05/19/moblin-v20-beta-on-opensuse/)

There also hosting there own version of Moblin - installable ISO (http://forgeftp.novell.com/moblin/iso/)

[Taiebot65]

I hope this will be integrated in the Ubuntu netbook remix..

I ve started downloading the iso..

http://moblin.org/community/blogs/imad/2009/moblin-v20-beta-netbooks-and-nettops-its-here

[frustphil]

can't download :(

[frustphil]

Could it drive Canonical to base UNR on it???

[olskar]

Comparing this to for example gnome-shell makes me feel that gnome should hire some designers.

[Taiebot65]

can't download


Me too my download stopped at 30% i think there was too much request the sever is down....

I'm looking for torrent

[BazookaAce]

Jeez, their server is really slow right now! Can't we make a torrent or something?

[Luffield]

Yeah, it looks like everyone in the east coast woke up and started downloading Moblin 2.0 beta :)

I liked what I saw in the reviews and I don't have a netbook. Anyone knows if Moblin works in Virtualbox?

[Orlsend]

Unless Moblin boots and its ready to use in less than 21 seconds I am not trading my Eeebuntu install on my EeePc 900HA.

[bapoumba]

Threads merged.

[solitaire]

I can get it live CD to run but the GDM fails (tries 5 or 6 times to start then just gives up) and i get dumped at the CLI.

But I'm on a laptop (with a Celeron and intel onboard graphics) I thought it would run :(
Think i need to fiddle around with the GDM config somehow!

[hanzomon4]

Comparing this to for example gnome-shell makes me feel that gnome should hire some designers.

Indeed...this proves that Linux has no excuse for being so butt ugly

[puelocesar]

I can get it live CD to run but the GDM fails (tries 5 or 6 times to start then just gives up) and i get dumped at the CLI.

But I'm on a laptop (with a Celeron and intel onboard graphics) I thought it would run :(
Think i need to fiddle around with the GDM config somehow!

It seems that it doesn't support celeron laptops, it needs SSE3, so no lucky for us.. Let's hope someone releases a version that doesn't depend on sse3

[jespdj]

As far as I know, Moblin is heavily optimized for the Intel Atom processor. Don't count on it that there will ever be a version that runs on Celeron laptops (which don't have SSE3).

I haven't tried Moblin myself yet but it sure looks good: Hands-on: Intel brings rich UI to Moblin Linux platform (http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2009/05/hands-on-intel-brings-rich-ui-to-moblin-linux-platform.ars)

I'd love to read about people's experiences with it.

[mtron]

To clarify the supported Hardware:

System Requirements:


CPU: Intel Atom or Intel(r) Core(tm) 2 CPU (support for SSSE3)
Note: Moblin will not work on non-SSSE3 CPUs
Graphics: Integrated Intel graphics (915/945/965)
Network Adaptors:
LAN/Wired:
+ Intel e100/e1000/e1000e/iXGB
+ PCNet32 (Vmware)
+ RealTek 8139/8169
+ SIS 900/190
+ Broadcom ATL1/ATL2
Wireless/Wifi:
+ Intel 3945/4965/5000
+ Atheros 5K/9K
+ Broadcom 4300
+ RealTek 8180/8187
+ Ralink 2400/2500/61/73
Moblin also supports various external, USB-based Wifi devices.

Tested Platforms:

Acer AspireOne
Asus eeePC 901
Dell Mini 9
MSI Wind


taken from: http://moblin.org/community/blogs/tshureih/2009/moblin-v2-alpha-2-release

[solitaire]

Thanks!

Gives me an added urge to upgrade the CPU in my laptop :D lol!! Well once I can afford a Core2Duo for it. The fit is the easily bit! lol :D

[snowpine]

I spent some time with Moblin 2 this morning. Here's the verdict: Shows a lot of promise, very very buggy, wireless does not work on the Dell Mini 9 (broadcom bcm4312). I am optimistic that its various features will trickle down into future releases of Ubuntu NBR. :)

[meeples]

i tried beta 1 on my AAO


and teh interface was one of the things i didnt like so im downloading beta 2 right now becoz it looks amazing :O


i'll check back once im on it with screenshots :)

[meeples]

I spent some time with Moblin 2 this morning. Here's the verdict: Shows a lot of promise, very very buggy, wireless does not work on the Dell Mini 9 (broadcom bcm4312). I am optimistic that its various features will trickle down into future releases of Ubuntu NBR. :)

are ubuntu not working with moblin atm actually?

[billgoldberg]

Why can't GNOME look this streamlined?

This might look good on a netbook, but wouldn't work on a production machine.

[meeples]

is anyone else having really slow download speeds tryin to get moblin?

i have a 20 megabit connection and im downloading moblin roughly 20kb/s :(

is there any torrents? that would be much faster if the server is busy.

[billgoldberg]

Could it drive Canonical to base UNR on it???

UNR is based on Ubuntu, not another distro and that will never change.

They might borrow the interface though, even though they got a good thing going with there own interface imo.

[BazookaAce]

is anyone else having really slow download speeds tryin to get moblin?

i have a 20 megabit connection and im downloading moblin roughly 20kb/s :(

is there any torrents? that would be much faster if the server is busy.

Same here! It's downloading a couple 50MB before it stops. It's freakin' annoying!

So peeps, torrent? Anyone?

[meeples]

Same here! It's downloading a couple 50MB before it stops. It's freakin' annoying!

So peeps, torrent? Anyone?

ive found one torrent but it only has maybe 2 seeders and about 200 leechers so its not moving haha.

i'll keep looking...

[meeples]

found a nice torrent :

http://www.torrentreactor.to/torrents/view_1867486/moblin_netbook_ux_beta_20090518_004_img.html

going at about 250KB/s for me:)

[zekopeko]

Unless Moblin boots and its ready to use in less than 21 seconds I am not trading my Eeebuntu install on my EeePc 900HA.

why don't you try it? it boots in under 20s from a liveusb image for me.

[JK3mp]

why don't you try it? it boots in under 20s from a liveusb image for me.

Thats quite impressive for a liveusb boot :D

[BazookaAce]

found a nice torrent :

http://www.torrentreactor.to/torrents/view_1867486/moblin_netbook_ux_beta_20090518_004_img.html

going at about 250KB/s for me:)

NICE! Thanks bro!

edit: Going at 1500KB/s here! Yey!

[bigbrovar]

UNR is based on Ubuntu, not another distro and that will never change.

They might borrow the interface though, even though they got a good thing going with there own interface imo.

even though moblin is based on Fedora, the project itself is Platform transparent, Ubuntu can always have their own adaptation of Moblin just like opensuse version, and i see this happening if not with Karmic, then with 10.04 .. UNR is a good job .. but its more of a hack of gnome even though a good hack .. The moblin interface is a comprehensive ground up approach which makes the interface very integrated.. also while UNR is based on standard gnome which based on the i386 architecture ... under the hood Moblin is optimized for the atom processor. and built to boot very fast. just the way a netbook should be. In the end i thing canonical will have no option than either to based their netbook version on moblin and depreciate the UBR, or have a version of ubuntu which is based on Moblin which will run concurrently with UNR

[BazookaAce]

Have tried Moblin now, and i can't say that i'm impressed. I can't get online, MSN isn't yet supported, it refuses to log into my LastFM and Twitter-account, i can't browse my music and movies, from my main partition. And that's weird, since i can do this in almost every other distros.

But it looks very good! And that's it!

Edit: btw, i installed it on my Aspire One A150.

[joey-elijah]

Have tried Moblin now, and i can't say that i'm impressed. I can't get online, MSN isn't yet supported, it refuses to log into my LastFM and Twitter-account, i can't browse my music and movies, from my main partition. And that's weird, since i can do this in almost every other distros.

But it looks very good! And that's it!

Edit: btw, i installed it on my Aspire One A150.

Bear in mind it's BETA and thus these are the things to be found and fixed.

[drawkcab]

you cant. if you did moblin would break. moblin apps have to be specially compiled for moblin

dealbreaker

[BazookaAce]

Yeah i know, but still, the main thing that actually works, and works well is the UI. But i doubt i'll install this as my main OS when the final release will be out. I'll stick with Jaunty for now.

[Kimm]

This makes me wish I owned a netbook.

The interface looks like its based on KDE4, anyone know if that's the case (just curios)?

[bigbrovar]

BazookaAce
Re: Waouhhh moblin look fantastic!!!
Have tried Moblin now, and i can't say that i'm impressed. I can't get online, MSN isn't yet supported, it refuses to log into my LastFM and Twitter-account, i can't browse my music and movies, from my main partition. And that's weird, since i can do this in almost every other distros.

But it looks very good! And that's it!

Edit: btw, i installed it on my Aspire One A150.

Its still beta and not meant for production machines. if you find any problem you can help the project and play your part by reporting bugs http://moblin.org/community/bugzilla

[nolliecrooked]

is the moblin site down or something, cos it sure as hell aint loading for me...

[pwnst*r]

same here, it's slammed.

[meeples]

ok im on moblin the now on my acer aspire one, but im posting from my desktop BECAUSE i cant get online ¬.¬

i think its an aspire one bug tbh. but it says on the website that its been tested on AAO, so yea. the UI is amazing, still alot of work to be done though.

[BazookaAce]

is the moblin site down or something, cos it sure as hell aint loading for me...

Yeah i know. Here's a torrent. 229 seeders atm. ;)

http://www.torrentreactor.to/torrents/view_1867486/moblin_netbook_ux_beta_20090518_004_img.html

[irv]

Jeez, their server is really slow right now! Can't we make a torrent or something?

Try this: http://www.mininova.org/tor/2605675

[irv]

I have a couple of questions: I have been looking at the Starlin NetBook from System 76 it has the Atom N270 @ 1.60 GHz FSB 533MHz L2 512 kb with Hyper-Threading. It looks like Moblin will work with it, but my question is, is system 76 planning on shipping with the finial version of Moblin after beta? Also I downloaded it and put it on a memory stick and a CD. It books off the CD but not the memory stick. Even thought it boots, it will not install on either of my laptop. One is a Pentium Mobil and the other is a AMD processor. My next question is, will Moblin come out for support for laptop or is it just going to be for NetBooks?

Edit: one more question, How does it work with roaming? Jaunty with wicd work great. it finds every connection in my area that is within range.

[Xbehave]

This makes me wish I owned a netbook.

The interface looks like its based on KDE4, anyone know if that's the case (just curios)?
Nope GTK apparently. It's nice i hope somebody ports most of it to *buntu, i think m-zone would make a good desktop background (or at least the design as a screenlet/widget) and the browser looks good too.

[gnomeuser]

I have a couple of questions: I have been looking at the Starlin NetBook from System 76 it has the Atom N270 @ 1.60 GHz FSB 533MHz L2 512 kb with Hyper-Threading. It looks like Moblin will work with it, but my question is, is system 76 planning on shipping with the finial version of Moblin after beta?


I think System 76 is an ubuntu shop so I doubt there are any plans to ship Moblin unless there is demand for it. If I was a betting man, I would not put money on that happening.



Also I downloaded it and put it on a memory stick and a CD. It books off the CD but not the memory stick. Even thought it boots, it will not install on either of my laptop. One is a Pentium Mobil and the other is a AMD processor.


Did you use the image-writer script they provide. I had the same issue and it turned out that I had managed to anger dd, the image-writer worked fine. Also check that your machine will boot from USB and that preference indicates that USB is before the harddrive.



My next question is, will Moblin come out for support for laptop or is it just going to be for NetBooks?


Moblin currently states that they will not make any special effort to make it run on all manners of hardware. It's a netbook offering, at least for now. That doesn't mean it wouldn't run just as nicely on an ordinary setup. I just tested it on my laptop and very few tweaks would be required.



Edit: one more question, How does it work with roaming? Jaunty with wicd work great. it finds every connection in my area that is within range.

pass

[Changturkey]

Now if they could make this available for laptops, integrate a torrent client in there somewhere, and improve the web browser a bit more, I'm sold. I love the look of the UI.

[irv]

Did you use the image-writer script they provide. I had the same issue and it turned out that I had managed to anger dd, the image-writer worked fine. Also check that your machine will boot from USB and that preference indicates that USB is before the harddrive.

I installed the imageWriter from the Package Manager. When it ran it ran under root, and found the USB stick. I just picked the img file and it installed it on the stick. I am not sure what image writer script you are talking about. And yest I have my laptop set to run from the USB, CD and then the HD. I also did a f12 on boot and picked the USB but it still did boot from the USB but the HD.

[gnomeuser]

I installed the imageWriter from the Package Manager. When it ran it ran under root, and found the USB stick. I just picked the img file and it installed it on the stick. I am not sure what image writer script you are talking about. And yest I have my laptop set to run from the USB, CD and then the HD. I also did a f12 on boot and picked the USB but it still did boot from the USB but the HD.

http://moblin.org/documentation/test-drive-moblin/using-moblin-live-image

[sertse]

Have tried Moblin now, and i can't say that i'm impressed. I can't get online,
Edit: btw, i installed it on my Aspire One A150.


ok im on moblin the now on my acer aspire one, but im posting from my desktop BECAUSE i cant get online ¬.¬


I got online and I use the exact same model as you Bazooka Ace. Also as far as I know, the AAO (the "A" series anyways) all use the same wireless chipset, so it does work.

[celticbhoy]

I have just given this a quick test on my Aspire One, and I have to say this looks like the first Netbook OS I would be happy with. Once I see how installing other software goes I could be putting this over the Linpus Linux partition that has sat dormant on my machine for the last few months.

[zekopeko]

any ppa for this out there? would love to try it under ubuntu.

[mc4100]

I have just given this a quick test on my Aspire One, and I have to say this looks like the first Netbook OS I would be happy with. Once I see how installing other software goes I could be putting this over the Linpus Linux partition that has sat dormant on my machine for the last few months.
+1!!!!!
Just being testing Moblin on my AAO for the past few hours and ... wow.
It's amazing. It's amazing because it looks amazing, and performs amazing -- by which I mean the old, "it just works". Or maybe because it's so simple.

Boot is flicker-free, and very, very quick.

You really need to try it out to see what I mean, but changing tabs in the web browser is gorgeous: the new one just fades in right over the old one. Just like that.
There's animations - smooth, eye-pleasing animations - all over the place.
Suspending is, finally, great -- half a second ... less?

... and flash ... I hate to say it, but that's impressive too, I don't know how they did it but it's not slow anymore, and not flickery.
I had a look at the "known issues" list and it tells you how to install flash, only when I ran the yum command it failed, can't remember why, so I did it again, it failed because the package was unsigned (easy enough to work around), then there was another error: had to do it many times to make it work.
Because there's bugs, loads of 'em.

First, because it besmirches the entire web experience (the main point of a netbook) is the crappy widgets in clutter-firefox (or what ever it's called), they look like they're taken right from windows98, just horrible. The fonts don't look too great either.

I couldn't find a way to set up a net connection without DHCP, which also annoys me.

Suspend is nice, but resuming from suspend, though it took maybe two seconds, had to be done three times. It kept resuming ... and then it re-suspends. It did it very quickly though. ;) -- might be due to booting from USB, unsure.

Generally speaking though, I like it. And I'll consider using it full time when it's released.

[floborg]

So, I was interested in seeing if this would run on my Core2 Quad desktop. Grub4DOS can fire up the IMG file's bootloader, but that's it. Just like ISOs, it doesn't seem to get any further than the kernel and initrd.

It runs in VirtualBox, though quite slow. I had to enable PAE/NX on the General/Advanced settings tab just to get it going.

[cmat]

It runs in VirtualBox, though quite slow. I had to enable PAE/NX on the General/Advanced settings tab just to get it going.

Then again it's only targeted towards a single architecture.

[KhaaL]

I tried it yesterday and I must say its very pretty - though I feel it's not for me:

* I feel they're following KISS too much (no customizability what so ever) and you can change very few things in settings. This will surely change with future versions
* not being able to install ordinary apps is something i can't live with. I need my pokerth/dwarf fortress/etc!
* it's automagical "smart" placement on apps in different zones (desktops) annoys me. I'd also like to change the animation to something more subtle, but i can't.


Thats all. Otherwise it's a very slick looking OS - I *really* like the pastebin area. Also I'd like to rip out that top panel and put it in my ordinary ubuntu installation :P

[Orlsend]

The sound I can get compared to my other eee distro its terrible. but Overall its seems cool! I wish they had pre-loaded videos. Instead of loading Youtubevideos.

Is there a terminal on this thing?

[KhaaL]

The sound I can get compared to my other eee distro its terrible. but Overall its seems cool! I wish they had pre-loaded videos. Instead of loading Youtubevideos.

Is there a terminal on this thing?

yes there is, look in application tab, and acessories (or something similiar)

[dirtylobster]

I love Moblin, this will be a strong Win7-killer candidate. It's pretty buggy/unpolished at the moment but they're heading in the right direction.

a hint to those who complain about there not being any additional software to install; just compile them yourselves. The repos have pretty much all the tools needed to compile the majority of apps out there.

[snowpine]

Has anyone tried the OpenSuse version yet?

[irv]

I love Moblin, this will be a strong Win7-killer candidate. It's pretty buggy/unpolished at the moment but they're heading in the right direction.

a hint to those who complain about there not being any additional software to install; just compile them yourselves. The repos have pretty much all the tools needed to compile the majority of apps out there.

Once this comes our of Beta we will need some "how-to's" to do this and other things. But this is a Ubuntu forum so this will have to be done on a Moblin forum or something. Over all this has been a good thread and it looks like Moblin for netBooks will be giving Win7 a run for its money, just a play with words ( run for its money :p )

[Labello]

Well i installed it on my belinea o.book.

Hardware detection went flawlessly. webcam, wifi, graka, everything all right and smooth.

i also like the design. the integrated browser is pretty neat and also the mediaplayer which really reminds me of cooliris.

well i use ICQ and MSN as main IM-protocols. moreover i really need skype or ekiga. but none of these is installed nor available, which sucks pretty hard.

there also is the total lack of openoffice. if i wanted to browse and play media i would have bought an iphone and not a netbook.

there is still a lack of many really needed apps. i hope they will be included very soon.

the calendar-function is also useless when it doens't work together with google. i tried to import my tasks from google-calendar but it didn't work.

i also would like to use dropbox, which i think could easily made available via a repo, because it works with nautilus and the linux client is OS.

flash also isn't working for me. when installing it complains about unsigned software or stuff like that and doesn't continue installing.

all in all moblin still is in a huge lack of webservices and hasnt integrated some essential apps. or maybe they rely on the community to provide some more apps after release.

i will keep testing it.

[Changturkey]

I kinda wish they would use Chromium or Webkit for the browser.

[keiichidono]

This looks great, I must say I would like to see a comparison between this and Ubuntu Netbook Remix. I would vote this though, it looks smooth and seem like it was meant for the netbook.

[Xbehave]

I kinda wish they would use Chromium or Webkit for the browser.

Why? gecko is much more widely used & tested and plays nicer with flash etc, is under GPL. Firefox's 'bloat' doesn't come from gecko nore is gecko slow at renering. Why would you want to rely on apple & google over mozilla?

[hanzomon4]

Webkit is opensource and besides extensions I have enjoyed Safari 3 and 4. I used Chrome (I refuse to call Chrome's alpha on OS X or Linux Chromium, it's the same damn thing) it was alright hulu didn't work but. That said Firefox 3.5 is blazing and amazing (It's worthy of a Don King)

[PhoHammer]

Has anyone attempted to do a HDD dualboot install with ubuntu?
I want to but I'm scared...hahaha ;)

[Deamos]

Has anyone attempted to do a HDD dualboot install with ubuntu?
I want to but I'm scared...hahaha ;)

Was thinking about it. I made an attempt to install to my SDHC card and let it install the bootloader and all directly too with without any luck. I might try to add it to my installed GRUB and see if they helps.

But, these things have to wait as my house got flooded in the Florida storms this week. 25 Inches in 2 days is a little much. Luckly the Desktop and the Servers were saved before I lost the living room :D

I'll do more tests when I get everything back up.

[gnomeuser]

Why? gecko is much more widely used & tested and plays nicer with flash etc, is under GPL. Firefox's 'bloat' doesn't come from gecko nore is gecko slow at renering. Why would you want to rely on apple & google over mozilla?

Do we need to go over this again.

Chromium:
1) Vastly superior security by design
2) Superior JavaScript performance
3) Superior static testing of builds to ensure correctness
4) Superior rendering performance
5) Smaller ressource footprint

Aside that Mozilla has purposely ignored the needs of embedders for years, to quote the epiphany developers: the
embedding API of Gecko (GtkMozEmbed) has been unmaintained and stagnant for a long time (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany-list/2008-April/msg00000.html) (read: Mozilla doesn't care one bit for users of gecko outside of Firefox/XULRunner), as a user of gecko you are also forced to constantly keep up with their frequent API changes or you have no access to security updates (as a bonus often you will be required to support multiple versions of their API because of downstreams having varying versions of XULrunner/Firefox being shipped). This sucks up a significant amount of development time especially for small teams (like epiphany) this distracts from feature development and bug fixing in your own codebase.

Thank you Mozilla bullies.

[ghindo]

I kinda wish they would use Chromium or Webkit for the browser.A Moblin developer explained today in a blog post the choice of Gecko over Webkit:

http://chrislord.net/blog/Software/mozilla-is-actually-pretty-good-guys.enlighten

[ghindo]

Why would you want to rely on apple & google over mozilla?What are you implying? The KDE team still works on WebKit too, IIRC. Not only that, but the code is LGPL. There's not too much sinister about the WebKit project.

[floborg]

Ok, so I've been able to do a frugal install (poor man's) boot from my HD. I converted the IMG to ISO by simply renaming it. Then, I used Unetbootin to do a frugal install. There's not much in the IMG, so this could easily have been done by hand.

It was running much faster than in VirtualBox. However, it was not terribly fast overall. Maybe it's been optimized for Atom to such an extent that it actually runs faster on a single-core Atom than my Core2 Quad.

I too couldn't find a shutdown command in the GUI. I can uderstand how they think most people could just hit the button to turn off the machine, but what about restarts?

[PhoHammer]

I installed to my HDD and it booted up perfectly and all with only one thing missing:
no network connectivity, wireless or wired. However, we all shall remember this *is* beta
and I am looking forward to that final release!



But, these things have to wait as my house got flooded in the Florida storms this week. 25 Inches in 2 days is a little much. Luckly the Desktop and the Servers were saved before I lost the living room :D

I'll do more tests when I get everything back up.

Oh wow! At least you got the computers out alive!

[sefs]

This installs on an machine with an AMD chip in VMware, but how do i get to the terminal so i can install vmtools.

[karl_eller]

Out of curiosity, how difficult would it be to modify Moblin to run properly on nVidia GPUs? Would it just be a matter of modifying the kernel and adding a couple more packages? Or would it be more complex than that?

Keeping in mind my initial impressions where booting off a slow-ish USB key on a laptop with an nVidia card, it looked pretty sweet. I like the toolbar thing, it had no trouble detecting most of my hardware (bar said nVidia card), and looked fairly sweet.

Could do with support for touchpad scrolling, as well as MSN, skype and some sort of office suite (even if it's only support for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files). I'm hoping they'll be added in before it gets released.

Eller

[celticbhoy]

Rather than mess about with kernel's why dont you wait for Karmic, Moblin interface is meant to be an option when it rolls out. At the moment I think suse has already started a version. Whether installing one these when they are done will open up the interface for other architacures I dont know, but I would be supprised if they only made it available for the atom.

[PhoHammer]

Rather than mess about with kernel's why dont you wait for Karmic, Moblin interface is meant to be an option when it rolls out.

Very good for ubuntu that they will make this an option!

[omorrow15]

I'm interested to hear if anyone has any luck getting this to work with a broadcom wireless card. I've got a HP mini 1000 with a broadcom bcm4312, and can't get it detected in moblin. Tried copying the firmware to /lib/firmware/b43, but no luck.

All the tools I'd usually use to try and diagnose it are missing in moblin too! No lspci, ifconfig, iwlist, etc... :P

I really enjoy the Moblin interface and they've been really good about fixing bugs that I've submitted (wifi networks won't refresh manually or automatically unless you reboot). I ultimately will decide to go back to UNR 9.04 because I'm familiar with the Debian/Ubuntu based distro and Moblin is based on Fedora (YUM, RPMs, etc). Also because I love Boxee and it runs fair on UNR. Hulu was a smidge choppy and I haven't tried local media yet.

lspci, lsusb, ifconfig, iwconfig, iwlist are all available on Moblin but you need to get root first. Type "su -" and enter the root password then all your commands will be available.

There are a few good Moblin forums on linuxforums.org and anything Fedora related will help.

Can't wait to see that interface on UNR for Karmic! Anyone know where I can read more about their intentions? I know the original Moblin was based on Ubuntu, but they moved to Fedora for some reason (clutter?). Thanks. :)

[amitabhishek]

Just tested (through USB) its latest build and its impressive :). Works 'almost' like a charm on my Dell Latitude D630 laptop. Sound, Flash and wifi is out of the box. UI is chic. Package management looks nifty. Speed is very very impressive; as if its booting from ROM. Whats the downside....? Why still in beta...?

Well...network has a mind of its own esp. wireless- however once it connects it stays put, OS freezes without any apparent reason, as mentioned earlier office suite missing...etc...

[Fatman_UK]

Ubuntu is in serious danger of being evicted from my netbook. (My non-Atom systems, however, are safe.)

The ISO writes to a USB stick and installs smoothly, except that I hate reinstalling half of a dual boot system! Especially when I'm doing it every couple of weeks.

The Advent G10 (aka MSI Wind) runs very hot under Ubuntu, which I assume is due to the compositing window manager. These summer nights it's a relief to run Moblin, which warms my lap without leaving scorch marks.

The first August beta is the best beta yet. I have a few issues, though, including:

no way to disable tap-click
no shutdown icon (the G10/Wind doesn't have a hardware power-off button, so I have to "sudo reboot" in a terminal, which is less than friendly)
a system hang bug (even the magic SysRq sequence didn't get it to reboot, so the only way to reboot was to close the lid and remove the battery)
"applications" is a bit laggy
"media" is extremely laggy (to be fair I did torture it a bit)
browser defaults to Yahoo! search not Google (why?)
/sbin is not in the limited user's path (which is why you can't get to ifconfig, route et al)
three sync services are provided by default, with no hints on which is the best in which circumstances - confusing at best


And so on. Mostly small things, hardly any showstoppers there at all. The crash handler works almost invisibly, unlike the Ubuntu equivalent (in my experience). Can't wait for release.

[bodhi.zazen]

It works poorly on the AspireOne 751h (11.6")

although the distro boots fast, X failed to start.

Log in with user = moblin pw=moblin and become root with su - (password = moblin)
or
user= root pw = moblin
and either enter (as root) startx or gdm

You will get a graphical interface which is hopelessly slow, it takes up to 2 minutes to change tasks. This distro recognizes the wireless card, but I never found on the graphical interface where to configure the wireless card.

I had the same problem with ubuntu UNR and I suspect it is due to incompatibility of the X driver (you need the so called xserver-xorg-video-psb psb-kernel-source with this hardware).

I did not do any further testing.

Same problem with Ubuntu UNR, although (I am disappointed to say) the development team has been poorly responsive to my bug reports on the issue.

Both Xubuntu 9.04 and Fedora 11 run fine once you install the psb driver (see the Acer One wiki page).

[Johnsie]

I had a go on Moblin last night. Installed it on my Advent 4123 netbook. It looks good but is still very buggy.

Things I like:
-Fast boot time even off a usb stick
-Adding my contacts to the desktop
-Having a calendar/todo list at boot time



Things I didn't like:

-My wireless networks came up in the list but would not connect
-The cursor didn't blink in the web browser
-The address bar in the web browser doesn't search properly
-I couldnt get it to connect to MSN messenger
-There are very few packages in the repository. No wine so I can't install spotify, no open office
-Error messages come up with ugly prompts that don't match the gui
-No support for 701's. I have an atom netbook that it did work on, but it would be nice to have something like this for a 701.
-Having to download an ISO and then another program to copy the iso to a flash disk or cd. It would be alot easier for newbies and more convenient if there was an all-in-one windows exe or linux installer to do this.
-Having the OS choose my media player. I would rather have Spotify come up when I click the media button
-No application store/add new probgrams applet. As far as I'm aware they are working on that though.


There are alot of things I don't like about this and I did end up nearly throwing the computer out the window at some stages. But I still think this project has potential and will support it whatever way I can.

[graabein]

Whooops. Sorry.