The Moblin Weblog

It’s here, and what a pleasant surprise — I wasn’t expecting the Moblin v2 initial public alpha for another few weeks. No complaints here! As expected, however, this alpha is targeted at netbook-sized devices. It’s your first opportunity to test some key aspects of Moblin v2, including:

• The core Linux O/S, boot process, interprocess, and package interactions.
• The new “Fastboot” feature of Moblin, which fundamentally improves boot time.
• Connectivity and networking, using the new ConnMan connectivity manager.
• Kernel 2.6.29-rc2.
• The Moblin Core Components, including Clutter and all other UI development tools.
• Xserver 1.6 (with DRI2).
• New Moblin Image Creator (MIC2) and installation tool.

This alpha requires an SSSE3-enabled Intel Atom processor or Intel Core 2 processor. It will not work on non-SSSE3 systems. It also requires Intel’s integrated graphics. The alpha has been tested on the Acer InspireOne, Asus eeePC 901 and Dell Mini 9 platforms.

Where to get it? The alpha release is available at http://repo.moblin.org/moblin/releases/test/alpha1

To use the pre-built images for alpha, go to http://moblin.org/documentation/getting-started-guides/test-drive-moblin

To create images using the repositories provided with the alpha release, look for instructions at http://moblin.org/projects/moblin-image-creator-2

The Moblin Tools are available at http://repo.moblin.org/moblin/tools/

According to the Moblin team, there are some known issues:

• The user interface is under heavy development. The final user interface will look very different than the current user interface and will not be based on XFCE.
• 3D performance is known to be slow.
• Currently, Wifi is not supported on Asus eeePC 901.
• Platforms with GMA-500 Graphics chipset are not supported.

Hurray for the Moblin v2 alpha! Try it, let us know what you think.

Audio Manager is one of the coolest new Moblin projects. Started mid-January by Huan Zheng, a developer who works for Intel in China, the project has some exciting goals:

• Manage multiple audio sinks and sources
• Manage all individual audio streams
• Configurable policy
• Policy based mixing of audio streams and policy based sink/source selection
• Policy based muting/volume adjustment of audio streams
• Audio stream priority
• Sound effect functionality
• Programming API for audio applications
• Audio event management

With Audio Manager, Moblin could adjust properties of specific audio streams and choose the most appropriate device to play out sound based on current audio event, hardware and policy. As you can see, Audio Manager is an important piece of Moblin’s multimedia functionality.