Intel's Moblin OS for netbooks and MIDs gets a boost from Taiwan

Intel's Linux-based Moblin OS may have lost some considerable ground to Windows XP in the netbook space, but it looks like the company is far from ready to throw in the towel, and it's now getting a bit of a helping hand from the Taiwan government. Apparently, the government will be helping Intel open up a new development center in Taiwan, which will be tasked with furthering the development of the OS and, hopefully, attract the interest of local companies like ASUS and Acer. Any further specifics are expectedly a bit light at the moment, but the development center is apparently on the fast-track, with it reportedly set to open in December of this year.

[Scotty Doo @ Oct 30th 2008 3:57PM]

Looks like more of a splashtop rather than to compete with XP. They going to expand on it though by the sounds of it. Competition is always good :)

[iEye @ Oct 30th 2008 4:01PM]

Yes thats all nice and good another free OS....

off topic does anyone know why my avatar is 'Shuffle' ing through past avatars for the week...
It is randomly changing from "iJackolantern" to "iSkeleton" to "iGhost" and "iFrankenstein"?

[telepheedian @ Oct 30th 2008 4:11PM]

You uploaded so much iCrap that the system couldn't handle it.

[jungleFish @ Oct 30th 2008 7:25PM]

Huh. Count yourself lucky. I still can't figure out how to put a custom avatar on my comments. Frustratinggggg!

[iEye @ Oct 30th 2008 9:35PM]

make sure it is in jpeg format

[Link @ Oct 30th 2008 4:01PM]

So those guys chasing me around the forest while I'm trying to find Zelda and fight off Gannon are now running my computer?

[Ashwin @ Oct 30th 2008 4:02PM]

This looks similar to Ubuntu MID Edition.

[brian @ Oct 30th 2008 4:38PM]

I dont care which, but the first one between Ubuntu and moblin to offer out of the box touch screen support gets my vote. I've got 2 touch screen devices that I pretty much have to run XP on because I don't want to fool around with taking a week to get the touch screen working in linux.

[Sranshaft @ Oct 30th 2008 11:44PM]

Quoted from Ubuntu's website:

[i]Finger friendly, touch driven

Ubuntu MID is finger friendly, with no stylus needed. You drive Ubuntu MID with touch. Simply tap the screen or drag a finger to make gestures for intuitive navigation and control. [/i]

So it looks like Ubuntu MID is touch friendly straight out of the box.

[Scotty Doo @ Oct 30th 2008 5:15PM]

I got a moblin in my pants

[phanbouy @ Oct 30th 2008 6:17PM]

never leave home without your Depends

[loosely_coupled @ Oct 31st 2008 2:02AM]

Why the hell is intel doing this crap? Wouldn't it be much more productive if Intel just grouped together with Canonical on this one instead of having their own project? Then they could focus their resources on low-level performance and optimization of "Ubuntu mobile" and let Canonical do all the higher-level work on libraries, integration, and UI.

[JoKe @ Oct 31st 2008 4:37AM]

Thats just what they are doing! Moblin is not an OS, its an opensourceproject. Ubuntu Mobile Edition takes the low (and high) level optimizations in Moblin and produces an Moblin compliant OS. Other OS vendors does the same, thereby giving crossplattfrom compatability between the OSes..

[Ian @ Oct 31st 2008 2:36AM]

They need help from HP. Their MIE OS looks great. I know it's just a user interface placed on top of a linux distro, but it's still a good design.

If you're going to topple MS (or OS X), it'll probably have to be a collaborative effort involving more than just Intel. Got to make it a standard that everyone has vested interest, which is easiest to achieve by making sure these other manufacturers have contributed somehow.