The New York Times discovers Moblin
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
The New York Times — one of the most important daily newspapers in the United States, and arguably, the world — has discovered Moblin.
Last week, the paper ran a major feature article, “Intel Adopts an Identity in Software,” focused mainly on Moblin. The story, written by Ashlee Vance, discussed the company’s 3,000+ software developers, who toiled invisibly behind the scenes… until now.
“The most attention-grabbing element of Intel’s software push is a version of the open-source Linux operating system called Moblin. It represents a direct assault on the Windows franchise of Microsoft, Intel’s longtime partner,” Vance writes, explaining that “the Moblin software resembles Windows or Apple’s Mac OS X to a degree, handling the basic functions of running a computer. But it has a few twists as well that Intel says make it better suited for small mobile devices.”
She adds that “with animated icons and other quirky bits and pieces, Moblin looks like a fresh take on the operating system. Some companies hope it will give Microsoft a strong challenge in the market for the small, cheap laptops commonly known as netbooks. A polished second version of the software, which is in trials, should start appearing on a variety of netbooks this summer.”
Vance knows the real reasons behind Intel’s free-software push: not-so-free hardware.
“While Moblin fits netbooks well today, it was built with smartphones in mind. Those smartphones explain why Intel was willing to needle Microsoft,” she writes, saying that “Intel has previously tried and failed to carve out a prominent stake in the market for chips used in smaller computing devices like phones. But the company says one of its newer chips, called Atom, will solve this riddle and help it compete against the likes of Texas Instruments and Qualcomm. The low-power, low-cost Atom chip sits inside most of the netbooks sold today, and smartphones using the chip could start arriving in the next couple of years.”
Thus: “To make Atom a success, Intel plans to use software for leverage. Its needs Moblin because most of the cellphone software available today runs on chips whose architecture is different from Atom’s. To make Atom a worthwhile choice for phone makers, there must be a supply of good software that runs on it.”