Moblin v2 beta on S10

I indulged my technology fetish and install Moblin’s v2 beta on my Lenovo S10 netbook. If I had to characterize the OS, I’d have to say that it’s slick but not polished.  Slick because there are some nice ideas that are well-suited to the netbook form factor: the use of zones (like virtual desktops), tabs for switching between common functionality (status updates, media, web browsing, etc.), and a nice “home zone” (the m_zone) that makes a set of pertinent information available.

However, it’s still clearly a work in progress.  Wifi doesn’t work on the S10 under Moblin (word has it that the reason is because Broadcom’s driver license is too restrictive to allow Mobin to redistribute it, although I haven’t confirmed that).  There are a number of bugs that cause applications to crash, and the support for common social services is pretty limited (e.g., Twitter and Last.fm, but not Facebook). Plus there’s no email client provided by default, and the default repositories for new applications are pretty limited.

So overall I think Moblin could turn out to be rather nice, but it’ll likely be awhile before it’s ready for regular use. I don’t see myself giving up Ubuntu on my netbook anytime soon  (Ubuntu’s netbook remix, while not as polished from a UI standpoint, is much more functional).  On the other hand, I did leave it installed on my netbook, so now it’s a triple boot machine (Windows 7 RC, Ubuntu 9.04, and Moblin).