Announcing the Moblin v2.0 beta for Netbooks and Nettops

From: "Sousou, Imad" <imad.sousou-AT-intel.com> To: "dev-AT-moblin.org" <dev-AT-moblin.org> Subject: Announcing the Moblin v2.0 beta for Netbooks and Nettops Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 09:54:23 -0600 Message-ID: <E1A1564674E5754FB00AB9AC949D5E32605CAC175F@rrsmsx501.amr.corp.intel.com> Cc: "lwn-AT-lwn.net" <lwn-AT-lwn.net> Archive-link: Article, Thread

The Moblin steering committee is happy to release the Moblin v2.0 beta for Netbooks and Nettops for developer testing. With this release, developers can begin to experience and work with the source code of the visually rich, interactive user interface designed for Intel Atom based Netbooks. The Moblin v2.0 user experience has been designed from the ground up to provide unique ways to engage with the internet, aggregate your social networking activity, and enjoy your media content. The new user experience and core applications were developed using the Clutter animation framework, leveraging heavily from GL and the physics engine. Experience it for yourself. Download<http://moblin.org/downloads> the Moblin v2.0 Netbook beta images and take it for a test drive<http://moblin.org/documentation/test-drive-moblin>. View the user experience video<http://moblin.org/documentation/moblin-netbook-intro>, take a look at the screen shots<http://moblin.org/documentation/moblin-netbook-intro>, or download the preliminary user guide<http://moblin.org/documentation/moblin-netbook-intro>. We would like to invite and encourage all developers to test the beta. We feel the code has reached a level where both developers and enthusiasts can play with it. While fine tuning, bug fixing, and polishing is ongoing, so is performance improvement, all of which you should start seeing rolled into the weekly builds. We encourage anyone to test it and provide feedback to us through bugzilla<https://bugzilla.moblin.org> or on the developer mailing list<http://moblin.org/community/mailing-lists>. Only with your feedback can we further enhance the user experience. Moblin v2.0 Beta Feature Summary * New, visually rich user experience, optimized for Netbook and Nettops, building on the latest open source graphics technology, such as Clutter, DRI2, and KMS. The user experience is provided mainly through the toolbar and panels, available at the top of the screen. * The m_zone, acting as the 'home screen' panel. It provides instant access to your synchronized calendar, tasks, appointments, recently used files, and real-time updates from your friends on social networking sites. * Aggregation of your social networking content. This provides you with the ability to see your social networking activities on one screen, easily interact with your friends, and update your status and site information. Twitter and Last.fm are the currently supported social networking sites, with more to come. * A web browser optimized for the Moblin 2.0 Netbook user interface. Based on the latest Mozilla browser technology revised into a Clutter shell, the browser gives you access to the whole internet, as well as advanced features, such as video embedding and the latest Flash plug-in, while integrating seamlessly into the user interface. * A 'Zoomable' media player. This player brings your media collection to life as you zoom from viewing all media down to focusing on an individual picture, movie, or audio track. The media player can detect and index media on external USB devices, as well as UPnP devices on your network. * A user interface for connection management and an updated connection manager (ConnMan). * And, of course, support for Linux desktop applications. Moblin is built using GNOME Mobile Technologies and supports existing Linux desktop applications. From here on out, we will focus on performance, bug fixing, fine tuning, and polishing. We post beta builds weekly in the download area. Moblin images should work on Intel based Netbooks and Nettops, we've been testing with the following platforms: Acer Aspire*One, Asus eeePC* 901, 1000H, Dell Mini 9, MSI Wind, Lenovo S10, Samsung NC10, HP Mini 1010 and 1120NR (wired networking only for now) Imad Sousou Director, Intel Open Source Technology Center