Intel scored 3 wins for Moblin earlier this year when Linpus, Canonical and Xandros announced that they would all move to Intels, Atom-optimised Moblin core. Then, just a month later, Intel decided to make big changes to Moblin by changing the build architecture and moving to an RPM-based software packaging system. I’m sure that didn’t please Xandros and Canonical (who both run deb-based distributions) and can’t have helped anyone because since then, the only thing I’ve heard about Moblin (V2) is that changes will feed in until the full release in Spring next year. I also heard from one Linux vendor that the process would be very slow. With OEMs wanting fast response on solid, user-friendly OEM builds for, potentially, millions of machines, its not difficult to imagine that moving to a new core build is not their top priority.
Maybe that will change soon though as gOS are announcing that they are going to have a Moblin-based build by the end of the year and that they are partnering with a ‘major’ OEM. Whether that means we’ll see Moblin on a netbook by the end of the year is open to question. A press release from Good OS states that David Liu, the founder "will announce details of a new partnership with a major OEM using Moblin for Intel® Atom™ Processor-based NetBooks. David will be speaking from 10:20-11AM in Room 201B at the Taipei International Convention Center, and will provide more details about a gOS based on Moblin that will be available at the end of this year."
gOS aren’t new to the netbook space as earlier this year they shipped their distribution with the Everex Cloudbook. It didn’t appear to go down to well. Since then they launched gOS Space which was received well at Laptop magazine in May.
Keep an eye out for the gOS announcements tomorrow.
Update: gOS will be working with Mitac.
