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Moblin

Originally developed by Intel - which is why it takes special advantage of the Atom processor - Moblin has now been handed over to the Linux Foundation for completion. Moblin isn't an Ubuntu respin, like so many netbook Linuxes, but a distro in its own right.

Moblin

Revamped UI: Moblin Beta 2 gets more netbook friendly

When we first looked at Moblin, it was in alpha phase and looked like a fairly standard distro on the surface. Reading the documentation, however, it was obvious that some clever stuff was going on underneath. The sub-15 second boot-up time and support for all of our netbooks was also promising.

The latest version, 2.0 beta, is a better indication of where things are meant to be. It's dramatically different to an off-the-shelf distribution and clearly pitched as an Android competitor. Acer is speculated to be using Moblin in a new range of netbooks, and several other linux distributions are looking to work closely with Moblin – including Canonical, the people behind Ubuntu, who are eager to release a Netbook Remix version.

However, using the current version it felt much closer to an alpha than a beta – with quite a few apparent bugs even during the relatively short time we spent with it. Looking on the Moblin site, it seems most people are having troubles.

The interface is designed for the modern social networking, cloud-based user – which isn't everyone. It integrates Last.FM and Twitter straight into your welcome screen. Twitter functionality is pretty worthless though, displaying only a few recent tweets. A tab for updating your status is useful, but realistically, anyone who uses Twitter seriously will want to use something more powerful.

Moblin

Well tuned for Intel's Atom

Instant messenging is also integrated, but only supports Google Talk, Jabber and Salut. The exclusion of Skype and MSN will certainly get in the way for some users. There's no word processor as standard, but Abiword is in the repositories – but that's about it. There's no sign of OpenOffice and a lot of other common software.

The interface is really nice to use, but we can't help but feel teased as this is from a complete product. Yet another distribution to keep an eye on, but not really ready for use.

Download Here

Did we miss out your favourite netbook distro? Use the Comments section to tell other netbook users why they should give it a try.

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Latest Comments

Nice article

I've been experimenting with a couple of distros recently on my eeepc so this article is quite useful to round up what's available and if they're worth trying.

Thanks

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Kuki linux

Yet another Ubuntu respin to consider. It's optimized for for for Acer One. Found on http://kuki.me boots within 20 sec. and works great. It comes with xfce and I got very responsive support at the #kukilinux at freenode. Used it for several months now.

Only issue was that the optimized kuki kernel did not support my Huawai usb 3G modem so I changed to use the more heavy generic Ubuntu kernel.

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Linux Mint on EeePC 1000HE

Linux Mint works great on an EeePC 1000HE. No functionality is compromised or lost, and the OS as well as the apps that run on it are snappy. I can't see any need for a hobbled or specially modified version of an existing distro just because the machine is a "netbook". Mint is based on Ubuntu, which is about as full-featured as any Linux distro extant, so why mess around?

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