Pass the Source » moblin http://passthesource.org.nz Free software today Wed, 25 Aug 2010 05:42:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Now for Moblin http://passthesource.org.nz/2009/07/16/now-for-moblin/ http://passthesource.org.nz/2009/07/16/now-for-moblin/#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:01:16 +0000 Don Christie http://passthesource.org.nz/?p=67 I’ll be brief. The Moblin project is at Beta 2.0 which these days usually means “been in production for a couple of years”. Having been to the project site I had very high hopes for this distro.

Moblin is not afraid to buck trends and my very brief trial of Moblin would suggest that, yes, this very much is a beta. It lacks polish and clarity and seems flaky. Windows users will know what I mean.

The Moblin interface is very iconic. I guess they have tried to take a leaf from the XO Sugar project but I think they have missed the point. Instead of creating an elegant intuitive UI they have created a pretty but very dumbed down experience. To say this is frustrating is an understatement. Whilst I am sure any technical problems can be easily ironed out I do not believe the UI approach is encouraging or sustainable.

All the above said, it could also be that Moblin is not really a Netbook OS but more of a palm/smartphone OS. If that is the case then it is very fit for purpose.

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

Apologies for my little lie in my last post. I hope to get onto Arch next.

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