gOS and MiTAC working together on Moblin 2.0 Netbook
Posted in New Product by admin on October 27th, 2008 Good OS have announced their relationship with MiTAC International to deliver its gOS Gadgets Linux operating system on a Intel Moblin 2.0 Netbook.
gOS chief executive, David Liu, said that the machine planned with MiTAC will be among the first to be released on the currently incomplete Moblin 2.0.
The device will be the first netbook from Taiwan’s MiTAC, who are best known for their Global Satellite Positioning (GPS) systems through its Mio Technology partner.
Back in July, Intel told the O’Reilly Open-Source Conference (OSCON) that Mobline 2.0 would be ready in three weeks. Of course, that never happened, and Intel now says that it will see the light of day in 2009.
Ram Peddibhotla, Intel’s software and services group open-source business director, said that Moblin 2.0 will become available in the first half of 2009 to run on Intel’s Atom processors and Intel’s next-gen processors in the second half of the year.
Some vendors have been working with Moblin 1.0 and “Moblin optimizations”, which are portions of Moblin spec that has been integrated into hardware of software design. Asus for example added changes with Moblin that offers a 25 percent improvement in battery life.
Moblin was “getting more and more ready for mainstream use,” said Liu.
Liu however warned that earlier this year Linux risked getting pushed out of the netbook market by Microsoft as OEMs adopted Windows instead. However he said this could be avoided by Linux companies such as gOS working closely with OEMs building netbooks.
Liu said that although Moblin had some bugs in the past, these are being ironed out, and that Moblin is adding “key optimizations that are getting our OEM partners super excited and that are encouraging”.
He believes Moblin is a sign that the Linux community is fighting back against Windows in the netbook market.
The new netbook will feature an 8.9-inch screen, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor along with options for either a solid state drive or a hard disk, Bluetooth capability and an on-board GPS system.
