Ubuntu moblin remix

Probably everyone heard about the order-bearing Moblin, created by intel directly for use on atom-based netbooks.
All heard that, but units used for certain. Information at least, both English-speaking and Russian-speaking.

The official site is replete with enticing videos and descriptions that boil down to one idea - Moblin is cool.

I decided not to pull the cat by the tail and downloaded the Moblin release based on Ubuntu 9.10.

Ubuntu Moblin Remix announced itself in this world suddenly, immediately after Dell decided to release the Mini 10v netbook with Ubuntu Moblin Remix Developer Edition.
How can I release some kind of “Developer Edition” for ordinary users, especially for such a respected office as Dell?
')
The question is of course rhetorical. Let's get to the point. In the shortest possible time, a section dedicated to Ubuntu Moblin Remix was created on the official Ubuntu forums. Information can be found there a little, of what is relevant there is only a FAQ , but basically the section is replete with questions like “What is this all about?” And “How is it better than UNR?”.

Okay it does not matter. You always have to check everything yourself :)

Installation

The distribution has the functions of live-cd, so the first thing I just downloaded from it to check the performance of this very moblin. First impressions can be described with the epithets “Beautiful!”, “Fast!” And “Convenient!”.

It is decided we will bet.
Finally, I decided to check for wifi and the rest of the wood. In general, I had no doubts about this, because the Wi-Fi with bluetooth on my netbook (Lenovo S10) in Ubuntu has been quietly working out of the box since version 8.04. However, having come to the tab of the branded moblin network manager, I found out that I don’t have Wi-Fi and bluetooth.

Well, nothing, of course, I wrote it off on the live-cd, they say the firewood is not all loaded.

The installation is absolutely standard and is no different from the same process at 9.04 and the original 9.10. Still as simple and with a minimum of questions.

The startup screen immediately when loading looks like this:

A bit does not correlate with the video , but all this is immediately proposed to be set up. To display information from Twitter and last.fm (and nothing else is supported) - of course, the Internet is required.

We stamp on the last tab, which proudly is called Network.

Well, yes, I have no blutus or Wi-Fi. And never did.
What, in this case, can a regular user get a netbook with such a “gift”?
Well, probably he will go to the settings, which, oddly enough, are hidden in the Applications tab.

Wow. The “Hardware Drivers” icon in the Settings section. And what do we have here? And nothing, aha.

All user in a stupor. The user from boredom crawls for another 15 minutes on beautiful menus and goes to set up his native Windows.
Particularly perverted users can try to connect with a great tyrnet via cable. These persistent guys will be shown another picture:

Such a picture will be displayed regardless of whether the user has a DHCP server on the network or not.
Settings? What are the settings? Settings are the last century and in general for suckers, so the Moblin network manager does not have them. At all. None
Is it worth mentioning that neither ExpressCard, nor USB GPRS modems also work?

The following procedure for a person familiar with Ubuntu is understandable in principle. We download ndiswrapper somewhere else, or we are looking directly for Linux firewood, throwing it on a USB flash drive and installing, installing, installing, installing ...
After all, Moblin is just a shell, under it is the same ordinary ubunt.
That's just with moblin do not want to do it all.

In this regard, there is one important question. What was the purpose of excluding the necessary drivers from the distribution, if the system itself did not actually change? Maybe moblin prevents tribal curse or some religious canons? Riddle.

It would seem that the only thing that distinguishes Ubuntu Moblin Remix from the original Ubuntu is Moblin itself as a shell and the only repa added ( ppa.launchpad.net/moblin/ppa/ubuntu karmic main ). I think it would be enough to put the original release of Ubuntu 9.10, connect this turnip and calmly put the moblin on top of the real ubuntu, and not those remnants from the master's table that the Ubuntu Moblin Remix distribution kit left us.

But let's move on to the good, the shell itself is really gorgeous. This is exactly what you need for a netbook with a screen diagonal of 7-10 inches.
Everything is extremely minimalist, beautiful and optimized for small screens. But as always - there are nuances and they are quite a lot.
I think the screenshots of the tabs will show it best.

Sound & Battery

Let's start from the end. The following tabs for the long-suffering Network are responsible for the volume and charge of the battery.



Quite nice. As can be seen in the screenshots - the tab with the battery status is presented in the form of a plug. Do you think it changes to the battery indicator in case you pull the adapter plug out of the netbook? No, they didn’t guess, see what happens with the battery and how much charge is left only by going to this tab. Fat minus.

Zones

It is a normal window switch. Also called on alt-tab.

Applications

Next tab, Applications. In fact, it is a classic gnome main menu, transferred to a separate tab.

Pasteboard

Next to the moblin is some Pasteboard, which is an advanced clipboard. I don’t know why it’s made by a separate button, and almost to the very center - but, probably, the moblin’s developers knew something that I don’t know.

Media

Well, everything is clear, pictures, audio, video. That's just a strange look static pictures under the heading "Recently played". No less strange looks classic green button PLAY, which appears when you hover the cursor on any picture. But this is of course I already find fault.
In fairness, it is worth noting that the video refused to play, got out a nice window with a notification that the player requires gstreamer. Yeah, "the crocodile is not caught, the coconut does not grow." Give me an Internet - you will gstreamer.

Internet

Media is following ... Well, what associations do you have for two blue circles? Playing darts? Blutus? Something to work with disks? Wrong, this is an internet browser!
By itself, it is represented by Firefox. It looks a bit strange, but it performs its functions.
No menu, even the menu is forbidden by the right mouse button. But what about the users will copy the text to your favorite Pasteboard? Does everyone know everything about hot keys? By the way, the Moblin right button doesn’t respond anywhere, PCM works only in applications that run separately from the shell.

People

Here, judging by the video, the IM client was supposed to be located, but with the lack of the Internet it somehow didn’t look at it. The IM client itself is represented by Empathy.

Status

On the next tab, Status, they nudged me again in the absence of the Internet.



But in general, that's all.
I repeat - the interface itself is great. It works very quickly, the screen space is spent quite economically. When you start any application, the top bar is lonely hiding and shown only when you press the super / win button, or when you move the cursor to the top.

However, this “release” release is difficult to call for all the desire. It’s not even beta, it’s more like an early alpha and is characterized by the words “look at what a cool interface we’ve done.”

I think that literally in a year and a half Moblin will be able to advise users of netbooks with all the reasons for this.

Now - no, do not even try, alas, without options.

PS Poor, poor users of the Dell Mini 10v ...