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Moblin 2 Core Alpha

These days it looks like every major Linux distribution is trying to slim down its boot times: a faster boot-up is one of the main goals of Ubuntu 9.04, and so-called 'fastboot' systems such as HyperSpace and Splashtop are becoming mainstream as PC vendors are preinstalling them on mainboards. The Intel-sponsored Moblin project is part of the same evolution. Nevertheless, there's a fundamental difference: while fastboot solutions have minimal functionality and are meant to be used if you would like to read your Gmail account but don't want to wait for Windows booting, Moblin aims to have a full-fledged distribution which boots in seconds.

The unique selling point of the recently released Moblin 2 alpha is clearly the read-ahead boot technology by Intel. The release shows an impressive boot time: on an Acer Aspire One with SSD the Moblin 2 alpha boots in 6 seconds from the GRUB menu to the Xfce desktop (with autologin enabled). Other distributions will surely borrow this technology in the future. For example, the Netbook Edition of Ubuntu 9.10 ("Karmic Koala") will include Moblin's fastboot technology; Linpus and Mandriva are also planning to build on Moblin. In addition, at the beginning of this month, embedded Linux company MontaVista announced a Moblin-based Linux platform, as its competitor Wind River did last year.

The Moblin platform

Moblin 2 alpha is more a technology showcase and a platform, rather than yet another Linux distribution. Moblin 2 is not based on another distribution, but borrows parts from various other distributions, and leans heavily on Fedora by its use of RPM package management and other Fedora tools. The Moblin toolchain comes from openSUSE.

Moblin Core, the heart of the Moblin platform, provides a base that can be shared for platform-specific implementations, such as netbooks, MID's and even in-vehicle systems. It is built on GNOME Mobile and extended with Intel's fastboot and power saving technologies. Intel engineers have also sent patches to Xfce to improve the startup time of the graphical session.

Moblin 2 alpha uses a kernel version named 2.6.29.rc2-13.1.moblin2-netbook. It supports Intel Atom and Intel Core 2 cpu's. Moblin 2 is reported to work on the Acer Aspire One, Asus eeePC 901, Dell Mini 9 and MSI Wind. Your author was delighted to see wireless networking work out-of-the-box on his Acer Aspire One.

Moblin 2 can be tried out easily on a MID or netbook. Just download the Moblin live image, copy it with dd to a USB pen drive and boot from it. If you install Moblin on your netbook's SSD or hard drive, what you get is fairly minimal: the Minefield (the future Firefox 3.5) web browser, the Thunar file manager, the Totem movie player, the Mousepad text editor, the Pimlico suite of PIM applications, a terminal, and some other tools.

The graphical interface is based on the Xfce desktop environment, but, according to Intel, this is a placeholder which will be replaced in the final release. Moblin 2 doesn't use GNOME's Network Manager, instead it uses the Linux Connection Manager, which accounts for the lightweight connman daemon and applet connman-gnome. The project is specifically designed to run on embedded devices with low resources.

Using the alpha version for day-to-day work is not recommended: there are errors floating on VT 1 and many things don't work yet. For example, choosing Quit in the Xfce menu doesn't halt the machine, but restarts X. Because it's an alpha version and because Moblin is more a platform than a distribution, it's not fair to attach too much importance to these errors. Actually, there are only two reasons to use Moblin 2 alpha: to play with the bleeding edge fastboot technology, or to build your own Moblin-based distribution.

Build your own Moblin

As Moblin is targeted to distribution builders, there's a toolkit to build your own Moblin-based distribution: Moblin Image Creator 2 (MIC2), which is based primarily on Fedora live CD tools. MIC2 automates the creation of installation media, such as an ISO image or an image for a USB pen drive. You can create a project and a target, customize your target with specific packages, then create an image. You can specify different repositories, such as Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and Fedora. MIC2 is a generic tool that can be used to create images from any yum or apt package repository, so applications can be packaged as rpm or deb files. Thus, MIC2 makes it possible to build a full-fledged distribution which goes much further than the standard Moblin application set.

Conclusion

The Moblin 2 alpha release is a good showcase of what we can expect from netbook-targeted Linux distributions in 2009. Intel's fastboot technology, the Linux Connection Manager and the Moblin Image Creator are a good base platform. It will make distributors and netbook makers lives a lot easier. If these parties pick it up, the lives of netbook users will also be much easier by the end of this year.

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New Releases

Novell Ships SUSE Linux Enterprise 11

Novell has announced the availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 in server (SLES) and desktop (SLED) and JeOS (Just enough Operating System) editions . "Later this year, Novell plans to release the next version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time Extension, which will leverage the SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 code base to reduce latency and increase predictability and reliability of time-sensitive, mission-critical applications."

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Distribution News

Debian GNU/Linux

Bits from the Debian Pure Blends Team

The Debian Pure Blends team has announced that the process of renaming Custom Debian Distributions to Debian Pure Blends is now regarded as finished. "The package which was used to build the metapackages of each Blend was renamed from ccd-dev to blends-dev but there will be a compatibility wrapper package cdd-dev to make migration easy for each single Blend. The package is currently sitting in experimental for testing purposes and the blends metapackages of Debian Med, Debian Science and Debian Jr. are there as well. An upload to unstable will follow soon."

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Fedora

Fedora Board Recap 2009-03-24

Click below for a recap of the Fedora Advisory Board meeting held on March 24th. Topics include Involvement of the Board in Future Security Incidents, Contributions from Embargoed Nations, and What is Fedora.

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Fedora Board Recap 2009-03-17

Click below for a recap of the March 17 meeting of the Fedora Advisory Board. Topics include Contributions from Embargoed Nations, What is Fedora, Involvement of the Board in Future Security Incidents and Board Transparency.

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Gentoo Linux

Gentoo Council summary for meeting on 12 March

A summary (click below) of the March 12 meeting of the Gentoo Council is out. Topics include EAPI-3 Proposals, Technical Agenda Items and Open Floor.

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SUSE Linux and openSUSE

openSUSE Build Service 1.5

Version 1.5 of the openSUSE Build Service has been announced. It's not just for building packages anymore. "The 1.5 release makes it possible to build entire releases within the build service. and export ISO images and FTP trees."

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Planet SUSE DNS Troubles

Stephan Binner reported a problem with the Planet SUSE Domain Name Server. Planet SUSE can still be reached at planet.opensu.se.

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Ubuntu family

Ubuntu 7.10 reaches end-of-life on April 18, 2009

Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" will reach its end-of-life on April 18, 2009. "At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 7.10. The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 7.10 is via Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. Instructions and caveats for the upgrade may be found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardyUpgrades."

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New Distributions

Igelle PC/Desktop

Igelle PC/Desktop is a new independent project providing a graphical desktop operating system for Intel (x86) compatible personal computers, including desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, and so on. It features the usual applications and features found in modern desktop operating systems/environments, in a lightweight configuration. The source release can be used to build custom distributions or images. Igelle joined the list with the release of v0.6.0 dated March 18, 2009.

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Distribution Newsletters

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #134

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for the week ending March 21, 2009 is out. "In this issue we cover: Ubuntu 9.04 Beta Freeze in effect, LoCo Team information request, Ubuntu Server: KVM call for testing, MOTU Release Charter, QA Team next testing day, Ubuntu Drupal 6.3.0 released, Ubuntu India re-launches User Forums, Ubuntu Honduras begins to work, FossConf 2009 - Madurai and Ubuntu Tamil Team, Announcing Eucalyptus, Ubuntu Forums nuts and bolts, Daniel Holbach: Time to Party, Soren Hansen: gtk-vnc and virt-viewer mozilla plug-in, Thierry Carrez: What I want Ubuntu Server to be, What is Qimo?, Ubuntu Podcast #22, Server Team Minutes: March 17th, QA Team Minutes: March 18th, Behind MOTU Interview: Roderick Greening, and much, much more!"

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openSUSE Weekly News, Issue #64

This issue of the openSUSE Weekly News covers openSUSE Build Service 1.5 Announced, Gabriel Stein: SuSE-Studio - Quick and Easier, Joe Brockmeier: openSUSE Project Accepted to Google Summer of Code 2009, mendesdomnic: Package Management Quick Reference, Survey: Is openSUSE Developer Friendly? and more.

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The Mint Newsletter - issue 79

This issue of the Mint Newsletter covers News about Mint mintCast - Episode 9, Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna reaches end-of-life, Linux Mint now has a forum at LinuxQuestions.org, New packages are continuously added to the community repositories - merlwiz79 has made a .deb that makes the "software-sources" application work on Mint Twitter, and more.

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Fedora Weekly News #168

The Fedora Weekly News for the week ending March 22, 2009 is out. "With the Fedora 11 Beta release slipping by one week Announcements reminds the community about "FUDCon Berlin 2009". In PlanetFedora the recent Red Hat patent acquisitions are among several topics covered. Ambassadors reports on the OLPC XO work at Rochester Institute of Technology. QualityAssurance gets excited about "Test Days" for DeviceKit, Xfce and an upcoming one for nouveau. Developments reflects a lot of anxious upgrading and "How to Open ACLs and Find Non-responsive Maintainers". Translation notes the "Upgraded Transifex" and translation to Cornish. Infrastructure advises in "Change Requests" that the infra team is in freeze and lists all the approved recent changes and hotfixes. Controversy rages in "Artwork" over the choice of Greek temple imagery. Yet again SecurityAdvisories lists packages that you want, really, really want. Virtualization worries about "More Flexible x86 Emulator Choice". Needless to say there's lots more to read this week!"

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 295

The DistroWatch Weekly for March 23, 2009 is out. "This week we interview Robert Shingledecker, a former Damn Small Linux developer and now founder of Tiny Core Linux, a new mini-distribution and probably the smallest desktop live CD ever created. In the news, Ubuntu's upcoming release, version 9.04 and code name "Jaunty Jackalope", hits beta freeze and gains an as-yet unreleased AMD video card driver, Gentoo releases automated builds for the ARM processor, Mandriva helps to port KDE's premier optical burning software to Qt 4, and openSUSE updates its online build service. We also link to a brief interview with Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu community manager. Finally, three new distributions have been added to the DistroWatch database last week; these include the Fedora-based Bee Linux from Algeria, the independent Igelle PC/Desktop with a lightweight desktop, and Privatix, a distribution that allows anonymous browsing and storing of data on encrypted USB drives."

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Newsletters and articles of interest

Distributions: The big and the small (The H)

Here's a survey of upcoming distribution releases on The H. "Later this week, CentOS version 5.3 is expected to appear. The Red Hat clone, which traditionally releases a few weeks after the final releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), this time is a little late. Scientific Linux 5.3, also a Red Hat clone, appeared late last week. Just like CentOS, the developers built the distribution from the Quell packages of Red Hat Linux. However, the Scientific Linux developers have added some of their own extras and the distribution is backed by several scientific institutions, including Fermilab and CERN."

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A Short Introduction To Apt-Pinning (HowtoForge)

HowtoForge takes a look at apt-pinning. "This article is a short overview of how to use apt-pinning on Debian and Debian-based distributions (like Ubuntu). Apt-Pinning allows you to use multiple releases (e.g. stable, testing, and unstable) on your system and to specify when to install a package from which release. That way you can run a system based mostly on the stable release, but also install some newer packages from testing or unstable (or third-party repositories). I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you! "

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