Moblin on the Nettop - Part 2 (Overview)

After a whole two days, here are a few first impressions of Moblin on my nettop Dual Atom system:

- First, remember, this is a Beta distribution, and you will be made aware of that very quickly. Quite a few things don't work yet, they just pop up a "not yet implemented" or "coming soon" window when you try to select them.

- They're using an unusual syntax in the /boot/grub/menu.lst file (vga=current). This is absolutely not a problem for 99% of those who use it, because as long as you are only booting Moblin, it's fine. If you try to set it up in a multi-boot system, and you actually boot a GRUB from some distribution other than Moblin, it is likely to choke on that syntax when you try to boot Moblin. Not a big deal, but worth mentioning for those who might find themselves in that situation, and then wonder why it won't boot

- I don't see any significant problem with the nettop screen being much larger than Moblin typically expects to find on a netbook. The screen I am using is 1280x1024, and it looks just fine to me - wallpaper fills the background as it should, fonts are appropriate size and readable, menu bars span the screen as they should, and such.

- The menu bar across the top of the screen auto-hides by default. I love it. There may be others that do this by default, but I haven't come across them yet. I'm so tired of having to activate this every time I load a new distribution.

- There are a few specific places where you really see that Moblin is being designed with netbooks and other "typcial" mobile devices in mind. One good example is that there is no "Shutdown/Suspend/Reboot" button that I can find. As near as I can tell, they expect you to simply press the power button, and that then causes a normal, orderly shutdown. Well, what the heck, it makes as much sense as having to push a button that says "Start" in order to stop... However, if what you really want to do is suspend, reboot or logout, you're either out of luck, or you have to know how to use the shutdown command in a terminal window.

- Another similar point - I don't see any obvious way to set up multiple user accounts, and have Moblin boot to a login window, nor do I see a way to logout and return to a login window rather than just shutting down. I'm still hoping that I have just overlooked this...

- One more place where the assumed target system is obvious - most things come up very "large", either full screen or nearly so, which I assume is because they are targeting small screens. This is not really a "problem" when you have a large screen, but it is surprising. Also, I don't see "minimize/maximize/restore" buttons on the window title bars, so you either have to use the "View" menu option, if there is one, or you are stuck with everything full screen. I think that I recall UNR working somewhat like this too, so maybe this is the "accepted wisdom" when designing for netbooks?

- The standard web browser is Google Chrome, and I really don't like that - both because of the look and feel of it, and because I really, really don't like for it to be running background processes which are constantly telling Google about what web pages I am visiting. (Warning: I tried one of the early releases of Chrome on Windows and it was doing this - I haven't tried it since, so it might actually not be doing so any more, but I haven't heard of any changes, and I strongly suspect that it is.)

- Small irritant: when I click on "Internet", it brings up an address bar and a note that says "Type an address or load the browser to see your tabs here". Uh, ok, how do I "load a browser" at this point? The only way I have found is to type an anddress, but if I have all of the addresses I want stored in the browser...

- Is there a mail client lurking in there somewhere? I have seen Twitter, IM, RSA feeds and the like, but I haven't found any kind of an email client yet...

There is a lot more to see, do and discover. I will say once again, working with Moblin is a very different world than working with any of the typical Linux distributions. The more that I look at it, the more I think that it might well be very good for users who just want to switch on the device, whatever it is, and use it without having to worry about a lot of setup, administration, configuration and such. Maybe. But it's going to have to get out of Beta, and get all of those "coming soon" or "not yet implemented" thinkgs working before it will be possible to try it on some ordinary users to see how it goes.

jw 12/6/2009