The Grumpy Editor's Moblin review

Despite your editor's affection for electronic toys, he has, thus far, managed to avoid cluttering his desk with a netbook system. Until now. It seemed like it was past time for a closer look at Moblin, and it further seemed that a distribution designed for netbooks should be experienced on one. So, it didn't take long for your editor to come into possession of a Dell "Mini 10v", which ships with the Ubuntu Moblin remix preinstalled. The 10v is a cute little system, but it is, alas, saddled with a free-software-unfriendly Broadcom chipset. Needless to say, the version of Ubuntu shipped on the hardware includes the binary driver needed to make that chipset work.

Much hype has been generated about Moblin's extra-fast booting behavior. A quick check with the stopwatch shows that this system requires 27 seconds from when the BIOS completes its power-on ablutions until the login screen appears. That is a definite improvement over a number of other systems, but it's not quite, yet, the five seconds that the Moblin folks have been aiming for. Suspend and resume are both quite fast; opening the lid yields a working system within 2-3 seconds.

The Moblin experience starts at the "MyZone" screen, containing calendar and "to do" items, icons for a few favorite applications, a set of screens from recently-run applications, and an area meant to contain communications from online friends. When an application is running, all of the "MyZone" stuff goes away, leaving the full screen for whatever the user is working on at the time. Screen space is generally at a premium on netbooks, so Moblin goes out of its way to waste as little of it as possible.

A core feature of the Moblin interface is "zones." These are really just the virtual desktops or workspaces that Linux users have been using since before Linux existed. On a small screen, though, there is little value in having more than one application on-screen at a time, so Moblin usually starts each application in its own zone. Switching between applications normally requires moving between zones.

There is a task bar which can be obtained by moving the pointer to the top of the screen. A quick look at this bar is enough to clarify the things that Moblin's designers think netbook users will want to do. Top-level tasks in Moblin include adjusting one's online social networking status, connecting to people, running a web browser, running a media player, and accessing a "pasteboard." There are icons for battery and networking status, one for moving between zones, and one for "applications" which is the path toward any other programs the user might want to run. Users who buy a netbook to support extensive twitter activity, watch videos, and view the occasional web page will be more than pleased with Moblin. Those wanting to do kernel development are likely to find this environment to be somewhat irritating.

Your editor has been using computers for quite some time; the notion that one can get a program into a system without punching it onto cards first still seems novel at times. To your editor's eyes, the Moblin environment has the feel of a toy. Lots of bright pastel colors assault the eye. Picture thumbnails dance around each other before lining up in pretty little rows. Dialog windows bounce on the screen in ways which risk inducing motion sickness. It's all very cute and joyful and social; Moblin is clearly not aimed at a typical longtime desktop Linux user.

Another choice which makes it clear that your editor is not in the target audience: this is the first distribution encountered in years which does not come with an SSH client. This kind of problem is easily fixed - the entire Ubuntu repository is accessible to people who dig far enough into the menus - but it is a bit of a surprise.

This machine arrived with an Ubuntu 9.04-based system running Moblin 2.0. This distribution, it must be said, has some rough edges. OpenOffice.org comes up with a dialog whose buttons are below the bottom of the window, which, in turn, refuses to let the user resize it (see image to the right). The mail client features color choices which sometimes render text unreadable. There are no bookmarks in the web browser; this browser also thinks that users want their searches to go to Yahoo. Windows vanish abruptly from the screen, losing whatever work may be in progress. Dell's page notes that the system is for early adopters; that certainly seems to be the case.

One should note that 9.04 is not the current version of Ubuntu, and 2.0 is not the current version of Moblin. There is a newer version of the Moblin build, based on the 9.10 release. The download page nicely offers a CD image of this release, seemingly unaware of the fact that a lot of netbooks lack CD drives. Ubuntu has a tool (usb-creator) which will create a bootable USB device from a CD image; too bad that its window is much taller than a typical netbook screen, making the crucial buttons unreachable. Your editor finally got past that little problem and was able to create a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 device.

The result was a very sluggish, very brown, but a generally slicker-looking Moblin installation. The software installation feature has been made more prominent, and the list of available applications has grown. Moblin 2.1 lacks support for the Broadcom wireless adapter found in this device, but that is not really Moblin's fault. The web browser still leaves much to be desired - strange, because Moblin 2.1 has made a number of improvements in that area. One other thing your editor noticed with both Ubuntu versions: the power consumption seems high. Running PowerTop shows a steady state of anywhere between 100 and 350 wakeups/second - not the way to get the most from one's battery. Moblin is supposed to be better than that.

Your editor decided to go straight to the source: the Moblin.org download page, which offers an image which works nicely from a USB stick. Some things have not really improved: it still takes 30 seconds to boot the system (though it should be noted that the use of a USB stick will slow things somewhat). But 30 seconds beats the few minutes that USB-based Ubuntu required, and the system is more responsive thereafter as well. And there are some improvements to be seen in this version of the distribution.

For example, the web browser (a Mozilla derivative) is indeed improved: it now has support for bookmarks, extensions, and a full set of preferences to tweak. This version of Moblin comes with its own package installer backed by Moblin's repository; users can install real applications like Thunderbird or AbiWord, but the package selection is far smaller than found with Ubuntu 9.10. Interestingly, OpenOffice.org is not available for this build - a surprise, given how many people your editor has seen running presentations from netbooks over the last year.

The official Moblin build is indeed more power-efficient, though it still runs at 80-90 wakeups/second, which is too many. All told, Moblin feels a little bit like an unfinished product, still.

In general, your editor is not really sold on the netbook idea. The screen is too small to get much serious work done, and the aspect ratio is wrong for any sort of text-oriented work. The keyboard tends to be just big enough to tempt the user to try to really type on it. And, frankly, Moblin-like software just tends to get in the way of a user who is used to the full Linux desktop experience and who does not spend a lot of time on Twitter. Chances are good that this particular netbook will eventually find itself running a more traditional Linux distribution.

But, as has been noted already, your editor is clearly not the market that these systems are aimed at. Not yet, at least. There are some very interesting changes happening in the area of consumer-level computers, where the traditional desktop idea seems to be slowly falling out of favor. Many experiments are underway to come up with something better; in the free software world these experiments have names like Android, Chromium OS, Litl, Maemo, and Moblin. Free software is trying to break new ground here; this is not a case of following somebody else's taillights. So, while your editor does not see Moblin as his system of choice at the moment, he is most interested in seeing where this project goes in the near future.

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to post comments

The Grumpy Editor's Moblin review

Posted Nov 25, 2009 21:00 UTC (Wed) by kpfleming (subscriber, #23250) [Link] (9 responses)

"These are really just the virtual desktops or workspaces that Linux users have been using since before Linux existed."

Quite a trick indeed :-)

The Grumpy Editor's Moblin review

Posted Nov 26, 2009 11:13 UTC (Thu) by njh (subscriber, #4425) [Link] (8 responses)

That turn of phrase caught my eye too, but it is true. Some (grumpy?) old-time Linux users like myself were using proprietary Unix workstations, with things like FVWM virtual desktops, long before Linux came along.

The Grumpy Editor's Moblin review

Posted Nov 26, 2009 20:54 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] (1 responses)

FVWM does not predate Linux. I recall installing its first version while running SLS. However, e.g. olvwm was available well before (and was my WM of choice prior to FWVM).

Predating Linux

Posted Nov 28, 2009 14:53 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

FVWM does not predate Linux, but vtwm most certainly does...

The Grumpy Editor's Moblin review

Posted Nov 26, 2009 22:55 UTC (Thu) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (5 responses)

By definition, before Linux existed, there were no Linux users. :) That word should probably be replaced by "Unix" or "X".

Linux users before Linux existed

Posted Nov 26, 2009 23:11 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (4 responses)

It didn't say they were Linux users at the time they used workspaces. It's a statement about present Linux users. "Have been using" refers to a present property, much like "have experience with."

That's the subtle difference between simple past ("I roller skated") and past participle ("I have roller skated") that people often have trouble grasping. The latter is actually a statement about the present -- as influenced by the past.

Linux users before Linux existed

Posted Nov 27, 2009 0:26 UTC (Fri) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (3 responses)

Ok, this is kinda silly to talk about, I do realize this, but the writing is normally so good here that I can't resist. This is the original sentence:

These are really just the virtual desktops or workspaces that Linux users have been using since before Linux existed.

This is poorly written. There are three main problems here:

1. They couldn't possibly have been using Linux before Linux existed, which is the simplest/obvious interpretation of that sentence.
2. A modern Linux user is not at all guaranteed to have been using X pre-Linux.... or, for that matter, to even have been alive yet.
3. If one interprets the sentence correctly, he's mixing present-time use of Linux with past use of the X Window System.

What matters is that they were X users back in the antediluvian times, and that's how the sentence should really be worded. As written, it's sort of correct, some of the time, if you jump around between two separate time periods and two different software packages, but it's both confusing and a real stretch. It requires only a single-word edit to instantly become clear and completely true, to wit:

These are really just the virtual desktops or workspaces that X users have been using since before Linux existed.

Heh, can you tell I'm a little bored? :)

Linux users before Linux existed

Posted Nov 27, 2009 1:30 UTC (Fri) by mp (subscriber, #5615) [Link] (1 responses)

Sleepiness apparently weakens my OT-defences. So, out of curiosity, would you consider a sentence about "something that my father has been using since before I was born" to be poorly written as well?

Linux users before Linux existed

Posted Nov 27, 2009 1:42 UTC (Fri) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link]

"something that my father has been using since before I was born"

Looks fine to me. It's clear that it was the same user, and the same thing that was being used, you're just putting a time qualifier in. "Something that my father has been using since 1953" is a perfectly acceptable noun + modifiers. "Before I was born" is a more approximate time modifier, but lexically similar, and appears to be a drop-in replacement for a date.

Note that in the case of Linux and X, he's changing both what was being used (Linux or X) and the timeframes they were being used (now and in the past) within a single sentence, but using the same word for what's being used. You're not doing that in your example here. :)

Linux users before Linux existed

Posted Dec 3, 2009 12:37 UTC (Thu) by ccurtis (guest, #49713) [Link]

Since we're being pedantic: I am a Linux user. I was using virtual desktops on SunOS before I ever used Linux. Therefore, Moblin zones are just the virtual desktops that I (Linux user) have been using since before Linux existed. [1]

Ultimately, I think the sentence is simply the grumpy editor being grumpy ... and dating himself.

[1] In reality, my virtual desktop experience probably began in 1993, up to 2 years after Linux was unleashed onto the world; anachronisms aside, I think the point remains.

The Grumpy Editor's Moblin review

Posted Nov 25, 2009 21:16 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (2 responses)

a dialog whose buttons are below the bottom of the window, which, in turn, refuses to let the user resize it

One of the more annoying UI bugs, even on desktops. There was a news item here a couple of days ago about developers should pay attention to the different environment of mobile devices. The screen size is one such difference, it's really stupid when the windows are bigger then the screen.

The Grumpy Editor's Moblin review

Posted Nov 26, 2009 7:45 UTC (Thu) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (1 responses)

While generally very true, this isn't really the case here: Take a look at the screenshot.

It's just fixed-size dialog, that has the wrong size.

The Grumpy Editor's Moblin review

Posted Nov 28, 2009 9:27 UTC (Sat) by magnus (subscriber, #34778) [Link]

It would be nice if window managers designed for netbooks had special support for this case, for example automatically shifting the window when you move the mouse to off-screen parts of the window.

Of course, it would be even nicer if this never happened but sometimes you need to run old programs and you can't rewrite them all..

Don't cheat on boot time.

Posted Nov 25, 2009 22:11 UTC (Wed) by dwmw2 (subscriber, #2063) [Link] (9 responses)

Grr. Why are you counting boot time from the moment the BIOS finishes, rather than the moment you press the power button?

We could fix the BIOS too, given the chance. It shouldn't be exempt.

Don't cheat on boot time.

Posted Nov 26, 2009 7:47 UTC (Thu) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (1 responses)

Counting the BIOS time hardly seems fair when reviewing an operating system.

Didn't cheat on boot time.

Posted Nov 26, 2009 12:13 UTC (Thu) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]

Well, as I see it our editor was reviewing hardware&software.

27 seconds is nothing special, my pretty default Kubuntu install on my EeePC 901 takes 28 seconds. So 27 is bad for a custom install IMO.

And this also shows how great the 7 seconds ChromeOS needs to login are.
Different ballgame.

Don't cheat on boot time.

Posted Nov 26, 2009 8:50 UTC (Thu) by Tuxie (guest, #47191) [Link] (6 responses)

Why don't you count the boot time of the server when measuring the startup time of your PHP application?

Don't cheat on boot time.

Posted Nov 26, 2009 10:46 UTC (Thu) by dwmw2 (subscriber, #2063) [Link] (5 responses)

If I'm boasting about how quickly my PHP application can be up and running again after a power cut, of course I'll include the boot time of the server I choose to run it on, the SQL server it depends on, etc.

To exclude those and publish just an irrelevant microbenchmark of the part I want you to think about would be massively disingenuous.

If boot time matters a lot, that will definitely affect the choice of operating system I run it on. It could also affect my choice of chipset/CPU — if I really care about how quickly the whole thing starts up, I'm more likely to use hardware from a company which supports open source projects like coreboot, rather than one which refuses to support open source and leaves me stuck with a slow, closed-source BIOS implementation that I can't fix for myself.

Don't cheat on boot time.

Posted Nov 26, 2009 10:57 UTC (Thu) by Tuxie (guest, #47191) [Link] (3 responses)

But this review was a review of Moblin, not the laptop it was running on.

If he was reviewing a netbook with Moblin preinstalled, of course the BIOS time should be counted, but that was not the case here.

Don't cheat on boot time.

Posted Nov 26, 2009 20:00 UTC (Thu) by amikins (guest, #451) [Link] (2 responses)

To be fair, it WAS a netbook with Moblin preinstalled. :)

Don't cheat on boot time.

Posted Nov 26, 2009 21:32 UTC (Thu) by Tuxie (guest, #47191) [Link] (1 responses)

Ouch, you're right. If someone asks for me, I'm over there in the corner hiding for a while.

Don't cheat on boot time.

Posted Nov 26, 2009 23:29 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

I don't think it was a review of the whole package, even though the first tests were done on a the preassembled package. It was a review of Moblin.

And it doesn't matter. Readers aren't trying to judge the engineering effort; they're judging the result. If Moblin can't make boot fast because the time is spent in things Moblin can't control, then Moblin fails just as surely as if Moblin engineers just did stupid things in the code.

Another way of putting it is that to the extent that things outside Moblin elongate the boot, the time it takes Moblin per se to start is irrelevant and the article might as well not mention it.

Don't cheat on boot time.

Posted Dec 3, 2009 12:16 UTC (Thu) by robbe (guest, #16131) [Link]

I don't think the BIOS-to-login time is a microbenchmark. Relationships
between micro- and "real" benchmarks is normally much more complicated
than in this case where the time you want to optimise is simply a sum of
the BIOS and the OS part.

I'd expect the BIOS time to be below 10 seconds in this case, so trimming
down the 27 second part is very relevant.

FWIW, which hardware vendors support coreboot well?

Datapoint: one of my *server* VMs takes 26 seconds from poweron to login.

P.S.: Am I the only one who thought that our editor was surfing a site
named "Rate Wives" -- until I got that it was the logo of a popular TV
show cut off? Another case of screen too narrow...

Just a CPU

Posted Nov 25, 2009 22:20 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (6 responses)

The netbook concept is wonderful, but as our editor has discovered it requires some external peripherals: a big screen and external keyboard and mouse are a must. Then he will probably need external speakers, a backup USB disk and maybe the occasional DVD drive, so a USB hub will not be out of place. Finally, an Ethernet cable is always nicer than wifi if the router is nearby.

All in all, what you get for about $300 is a small silent CPU with integrated UPS, plus a small backup screen and integrated keyboard and mice for emergencies. So that in a pinch this little beast can be hauled around if necessary! Although the screen and most peripherals will probably stay behind. Not a bad proposition, even though it will not be the most powerful machine owned by most people. Therefore the ability to SSH to that noisy 8-core monster in the basement will probably be appreciated. Me, I just do light Python development here and browse the web; the occasional GIMP usage does not justify more power, so this little piece of silicon delivers everything needed. Moore's law rules!

Just a CPU

Posted Nov 26, 2009 1:46 UTC (Thu) by tshow (subscriber, #6411) [Link]

Actually, there's another target audience for these things. People who take public transit. I'm on the train for a couple of hours each day (an hour into the city, and hour to get back out), and it's nice to have a lightweight little laptop I can chuck in my bag. All it needs to be able to do is run a text editor (emacs, for me) and I can do useful work.

"Why not a full laptop?" you might ask. I tried a full laptop, but I have fairly powerful desktop machines at home and at the office. Netbooks are significantly lighter, smaller and cheaper than full laptops. Lighter is important (as is smaller) because it fits in my bag nicely and doesn't weigh me down.

Cheaper is *very* important. A little rain in my bag, falling on some ice, or being bumped by someone could wreck either a notebook or a laptop with equal ease. If it happens to a $300 netbook, I'll be annoyed, but I can replace it easily. If it happens to a $3000 laptop machine, a small random event has just cost me significantly.

To me, at least, the netbook is a semi-disposable computer, something I can use on the train without worrying too much if it gets lost, stolen or wrecked, and something which doesn't feel like my bag has a brick in it.

Just a CPU

Posted Nov 26, 2009 6:01 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (2 responses)

The netbook concept is wonderful, but as our editor has discovered it requires some external peripherals: a big screen [...]

I suspect both you and our esteemed editor have missed the point of these devices: They really are netbooks: their purpose in life is make web browsing and other internet activities easily portable. The small keyboard is there mainly because often you need to enter some text into browser windows, not for writing kernel code or epic novels.

Just a CPU

Posted Nov 26, 2009 13:43 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

And you can connect to people with it!

(does anyone more twittered-up know what that means? It sounds decidedly
disturbing, and given the sorts of people who travel on the London
Underground possibly actively dangerous ;} )

Just a CPU

Posted Dec 3, 2009 1:01 UTC (Thu) by pixelpapst (guest, #55301) [Link]

http://www.xkcd.org/642/

Just a CPU

Posted Nov 26, 2009 7:50 UTC (Thu) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]

It seems like your usage of a netbook is the alternative one.

The main purpose is probably for keeping online, or doing a bit of work on the go.

Just a CPU

Posted Nov 26, 2009 10:38 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]

The low screen resolution of netbooks is their weak spot. Technically there's no reason I can think of why they couldn't ship with higher-res screens. I believe most of the problem is that Microsoft refuses to allow the XP "netbook" license to ship with any device having a higher-resolution screen. This means that any manufacturer shipping such, would be shipping a Linux-only device (or at least, would have been until Windows 7 launched). Vista on an Atom CPU is a bad joke. On the limps/walks/runs scale, it's somewhere less than crawl. Ooze, maybe.

Anyway, Asus are soon to ship a Netbook with a 2-core "desktop" Atom CPU, NVidia graphics, and a screen with a decent resolution. Provided the weight hasn't bloated too much (to support a less frugal CPU), that'll be close to perfection. The mass market will probably take to it running (or more likely walking) Windows 7.

In the meantime I find standard Gnome quite usable on a 1024x600 screen, though the apps need a bit more scrolling than would be ideal. Wonder why MS hasn't filched the idea of virtual desktops yet?

Moblin is not the UI

Posted Nov 26, 2009 8:58 UTC (Thu) by jonas.bonn (subscriber, #47561) [Link] (5 responses)

I was at a Moblin seminar just yesterday and the Intel people were very keen to point out that Moblin is NOT the user interface, but rather the stack of components underneath it. "Moblin Compliance" was the key, meaning that any distribution that provides the components specified by the Moblin Core definition can be considered to be Moblin.

The user interface is just a toy, an "experiment" in their words. Given that it uses just the Moblin Core components, it will run on any Moblin compliant system and is, as such, an interesting demo application. That said, the UI should not be confused with Moblin as the system could still be Moblin even if it ran, say, Gnome.

That's what I took away from the seminar, in any case. If any Moblin folks see it differently, feel free to correct me... and your colleagues, too, in that case!

Moblin is not the UI

Posted Nov 26, 2009 10:40 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

I tested the initial Moblin releases, wich were based in XFCE, and was very pleased with it. Should I be able to replace the fancy Moblin UI with XFCE again, I would be happy as a child.
On a second thought, maybe my wife (the real main user of my netbook machine) would like the Moblin UI best, as it fits better what she does with the machine, so being able to chose UI would be best, IMNSHO.

Moblin is not the UI

Posted Nov 26, 2009 17:20 UTC (Thu) by nedrichards (subscriber, #23295) [Link] (3 responses)

As one of the designers behind the Moblin interface you can assume that I see it differently. I'd certainly be interested to know who told you that so we can have a full and frank discussion.

Moblin is many things, as you note, there is Moblin Core, this is the thing that you have to be 'compliant' with that's the thing that makes things fast and power friendly. This is a good base for anyone to build a product or distro on. Moblin compliance is sort of like LSB++.

There is also the Moblin interface, which doesn't actually have a name but which I usually refer to as the Netbook UX. People can take this set of code and run it on any distro they like (and they do). This is not a 'toy' or an 'experiment', it's an experience aimed at some very specific scenarios and people (as most comments seem to note, which is cool). If you like it, it makes me happy though.

"Moblin' is the distro that you get from moblin.org which uses the Moblin interface and is Moblin compliant.

The product the grumpy editor reviewed is Ubuntu with the Moblin interface on top (thus the boot time and the wakeups are Ubuntu's thing - the interface failings are ours), as other commenters have noted you can get the interface from lots of distros, my personal favourite of the other ones is opensuse's version but the more the merrier.

Moblin is not the UI

Posted Nov 26, 2009 23:51 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (2 responses)

I'm still confused as to what Moblin is.

What you're calling the Moblin interface: is this a user interface? If so, I would certainly recommend putting the word "user" in there, because there are lots of other kinds of interfaces.

"Moblin' is the distro that you get from moblin.org

Is this "distro" in the Linux sense, i.e. operating system? Is this thing I get from moblin.org something I can install on bare hardware?

The product the grumpy editor reviewed is Ubuntu with the Moblin interface on top

What about Moblin Core, or what the previous poster called the stack of components underneath the UI. Are those in there somewhere too?

At one point, the grumpy editor replaces Moblin 2.0 with 2.1, all the while separately running Ubuntu. Did he misspeak? Because that seems inconsistent with your definition of Moblin.

Moblin is not the UI

Posted Nov 27, 2009 19:11 UTC (Fri) by arjan (subscriber, #36785) [Link]

Moblin is a vision.

A vision of how the user should experience a netbook.

The implementation for that vision contains many pieces; the most visible one is the desktop environment. But experience is a lot more than just the desktop environment; it includes network connectivity, power, performance, boot, etc.

The Moblin project publishes a Linux distribution that works towards this vision; other OS vendors work with the Moblin project towards a similar vision and sometimes have "Moblin" as part of their product name.
Not all of these manage to implement the vision to the same degree unfortunately, but hopefully that is just a matter of time.

I realize that this is sometimes confusion, and our grumpy editor got confused a little bit as well; just adding more to the general confusion.

The only thing that tries to keep the Moblin ideas "whole" is the trademark (including compliance); but that is a fine balance. One the one hand, there are requirements on when/how you can use the trademark (don't ask me, I'm not the guardian of that), on the other hand the open source community frowns on enforcing trademarks like this in general....

Moblin is not the UI

Posted Dec 4, 2009 21:40 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]

"I'm still confused as to what Moblin is."

I was under the impression that it was Intel's attempt to try and tie as much of the mobile linux infrastructure to x86 as possible and distract people from ARM.

Am I wrong?

Another mix

Posted Nov 26, 2009 10:48 UTC (Thu) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link] (4 responses)

You could try third route: getting Moblin as part of Fedora. This way you
would achieve: a) familiar distro underpinnings¹, 2) open firmware for
Broadcom wifi card. All you need is F12 system and 'yum install @moblin-
desktop'.

¹ I'm under impression our beloved Editor run Rawhide on his workstation.

Another mix

Posted Nov 26, 2009 13:53 UTC (Thu) by fcrozat (subscriber, #175) [Link]

or use Mandriva Linux 2010 and install "task-moblin" package ;)

Another mix

Posted Nov 26, 2009 17:44 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (2 responses)

The open Broadcom firmware wouldn't help here. The Mini 10v ships with an n-phy Broadcom card, which is unsupported by either the open firmware or the open driver.

Another mix

Posted Dec 4, 2009 21:37 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm glad you said that. I was considering buying one of these.

That's one sale they've lost.

Another mix

Posted Dec 4, 2009 22:14 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

I think I'm actually wrong about this - it's more likely that it's an lp-phy, which is supported by
the open driver but not (afaik) the open firmware.

The Grumpy Editor's Moblin review

Posted Nov 26, 2009 14:01 UTC (Thu) by ikm (subscriber, #493) [Link]

The cat with the birds is VERY cute.

The Grumpy Editor's Moblin review

Posted Nov 26, 2009 14:50 UTC (Thu) by william.waddington (subscriber, #25316) [Link] (1 responses)

"In general, your editor is not really sold on the netbook idea."

Same here, but my Aspire One does fit nicely next to the coaster for my cocktail glass. Just the thing for emergency Googleage without leaving the recliner.

good for leaving the couch too

Posted Dec 1, 2009 1:35 UTC (Tue) by louie (guest, #3285) [Link]

It is good for leaving the couch too. When going to the coffee shop around the corner for a brief jolt and a breath of fresh air, my hp netbook is just right to grab (along with wallet and sunglasses) and just Go. I don't have to think about it.