Moblin is Intel's open source Linux based operating system built specifically for the new breed of computers called netbooks that run Intel's propreitory Atom x86 chips. As it is targeted at Netbooks segment, the operating system developed by the world's largest chipmaker is more focussed and centred around Internet and Multimedia, and less on productivity tools such as office suites. It is more about twittering, updating social networking profiles and watching movies on the go. For those who cannot live without an office suite, there are many online alternatives, most of them free such as Google docs and zoho writer ...... but surprisingly the moblin developers seem to have steered away from Google as the OS does not support Google gears and uses Yahoo! as the default and 'recommended' search engine. The developers do seem out of touch with times for this surprising choice.
Technically, Moblin is nothing but a linux distro, but benefits largely from its uniquely tweaked refinements and a radical user interface. Missing from this OS are popular linux softwares such as GIMP ( GNU image manipulation program ) and openoffice.org .Though the distro is based around the familiar GNOME/GTK desktop environment, the fact is easily overlooked and largely invisible because of the UI improvements.
The offline functionality of this OS is limited to playing movies and music. Being free of charge and based on the widely used x86 chips, you can download and try it for yourself on virtually any computer or using OS virtualization solutions such as virtualbox or VMware fusion. However it's requirement of 3D graphic drivers means its performance on VM software will be far from optimal. The first beta of Moblin 2.0 has just been released, so don't be surprised to find more than a few bugs.
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