Moblin, short for 'mobile

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

', is a discontinued open source

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

and application stack for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), netbooks,

nettop A nettop (or miniature PC, Mini PC or Smart Micro PC) is a small-sized, inexpensive, low-power, legacy-free desktop computer designed for basic tasks such as web browsing, accessing web-based applications, document processing, and audio/vid ...

s and embedded devices. Built around the

Intel Atom Intel Atom is the brand name for a line of IA-32 and x86-64 instruction set ultra-low-voltage processors by Intel Corporation designed to reduce electric consumption and power dissipation in comparison with ordinary processors of the Intel Co ...

processor, all builds were designed to minimize boot times and power consumption as a netbook and MID-centric operating system. The netbook/desktop version of Moblin supported other chipsets based on the

SSSE3 Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 (SSSE3 or SSE3S) is a SIMD instruction set created by Intel and is the fourth iteration of the SSE technology. History SSSE3 was first introduced with Intel processors based on the Core microarchitectu ...

instruction set, such as the

Core2 Intel Core is a line of streamlined midrange consumer, workstation and enthusiast computer central processing units (CPUs) marketed by Intel Corporation. These processors displaced the existing mid- to high-end Pentium processors at the time ...

and some

Celeron Celeron is Intel's brand name for low-end IA-32 and x86-64 computer microprocessor models targeted at low-cost personal computers. Celeron processors are compatible with IA-32 software. They typically offer less performance per clock speed com ...

processors. OEM support was scarce but hit an all-time high in 2009 when Acer replaced Linpus Linux with Moblin on their Acer Aspire One netbooks. and

LG Electronics LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean multinational electronics company headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG Corporation, the fourth largest '' chaebol'' in South Korea, and often considered a ...

chose Moblin OS 2.1 for its mobile Internet device class

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

the LG GW990. Dell also once accepted orders for its

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

Moblin Remix, a

Canonical Ltd. Canonical Ltd. is a UK-based privately held computer software company founded and funded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu and related projects. Canonical employs staff ...

which built Moblin on top of Ubuntu distribution as base. Few commercial products existed around Moblin 2 most prominently a

Foxconn Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., trading as Hon Hai Technology Group in China and Taiwan and Foxconn internationally, is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturer established in 1974 with headquarters in Tucheng, New ...

netbook and an InvenTech

, both announced at

Computex COMPUTEX Taipei, or Taipei International Information Technology Show (), is a computer expo held annually in Taipei, Taiwan. Since the early 2000s, it is one of the largest computer and technology trade shows in the world. The last COMPUTEX wa ...

2009.

Mandriva Mandriva S.A. was a public software company specializing in Linux and open-source software. Its corporate headquarters was in Paris, and it had development centers in Metz, France and Curitiba, Brazil. Mandriva, S.A. was the developer and maint ...

offered Moblin's v2 version to all Mandriva distribution and netbook owners. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2010, MSI and Novell announced SUSE Moblin preloaded on the MSI U135 netbook. Following the release of Moblin version 2.1, this was the first original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to sell a fully supported Intel Atom processor-based netbook running Moblin-based technology to consumers. It was demonstrated at both the MSI and Intel booths at the show. In addition, Samsung showed four netbooks preloaded with SUSE Moblin. At the Mobile World Congress in February 2010, it was announced that the Moblin project would be merging with

Maemo Maemo is a software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and SDK. Maemo played a key role in Nokia's strategy to c ...

to create the

MeeGo MeeGo is a discontinued Linux distribution hosted by the Linux Foundation, using source code from the operating systems Moblin (produced by Intel) and Maemo (produced by Nokia). Primarily targeted at mobile devices and information appliances ...

mobile software platform. Nokia stopped all MeeGo development after switching to

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design l ...

in 2011 and Intel also discontinued work on to join the Tizen project instead.

History

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

launched the Moblin.org site in July 2007 and significantly updated the site in April 2008 with the launch of the Intel Atom processor family at the

Intel Developer Forum The Intel Developer Forum (IDF) was a biannual gathering of technologists to discuss Intel products and products based on Intel products. The first IDF was held in 1997. To emphasize the importance of China, the Spring 2007 IDF was held in Beijin ...

in Shanghai. A custom

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific ...

(SDK) is available on the site. The Moblin 2 OS was specifically designed to run on an Intel Atom processor in a netbook. In April 2009, Intel turned Moblin over to the Linux Foundation. Subsequently, Moblin was merged with Maemo, becoming MeeGo. MeeGo's development was also hosted by the Linux Foundation, and initially governed by a Technical Steering Group overseen by Imad Sousou of Intel and Nokia's Valtteri Halla. The Linux Foundation canceled MeeGo in September 2011 in favor of Tizen. A new Finnish start-up,

Jolla Jolla Oy (sometimes referred to as Jolla Ltd.) is a Finnish technology company; vendor and developer of Sailfish OS. Headquartered in Tampere, Finland, Jolla has its own research and development offices in Helsinki, Tampere and Cyberport, Hong ...

, announced in July 2012 that MeeGo's community-driven successor Mer, would be the basis of their new operating system

Sailfish OS Sailfish OS is a Linux-based operating system based on free software, and open source projects such as Mer as well as including a closed source UI. The project is being developed by the Finnish company Jolla. The OS first shipped with the ...

slated to launch in a smartphone during 2013.

Moblin 2

At the Linux Collaboration Summit in April 2009, Intel demonstrated that the Moblin 2 alpha release can load major components of the stack, including the graphics system, and start up in mere seconds. On May 19, 2009, Imad Sousou announced the release of Moblin v2.0 beta for Netbooks and Nettops for developer testing. Moblin 2's Core distribution is based on recent builds of Fedora, but other distributions to announce future support for the core Moblin stack include Linpus and Ubuntu. This second major release marked a shift from the Xfce

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphica ...

to a custom-built GNOME Mobile UI based on

OpenedHand OpenedHand, a computer software, was an embedded Linux start-up that was acquired by Intel in Q3, 2008. The firm developed an OpenEmbedded distribution called Poky Linux (now part of the Yocto Project) and the Clutter library. The latter is heavil ...

Clutter Clutter and its derivations may refer to any of the following: Excessive physical disorder * Clutter, a confusing, or disorderly, state or collection, and possible symptom of compulsive hoarding * Clutter (marketing), numerous advertisements, a ...

, a key piece of the Maemo graphical environment, built around the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

. The new UI also includes an integrated Gecko web browser.

The Register ''The Register'' is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee, John Lettice and Ross Alderson. The online newspaper's masthead sublogo is "''Biting the hand that feeds IT''." Their primary focus is information te ...

was impressed by the interface but noted the presence of "quite a few apparent bugs" and described the beta release of Moblin 2 as "closer to an alpha than a beta.".

Major components

* Moblin Image Creator (MIC): allows developers to create a custom Linux file system for a device. Using MIC, a platform developer can choose which components from Moblin they want on their device, build the target file system, copy all the necessary files to a

USB mass storage The USB mass storage device class (also known as USB MSC or UMS) is a set of computing communications protocols, specifically a USB Device Class, defined by the USB Implementers Forum that makes a USB device accessible to a host computing devi ...

device and load the resulting files onto the target. * Kernel: platform-specific patches to the Linux kernel and various other device drivers. * UI Framework: screen interface and its underlying

- and GTK+-based framework. * Power Management Policy: extending and enhancing existing Linux power management capabilities * Browser: the Moblin browser is full-featured web browser based on

Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, w ...

technologies with a finger-driven UI and MID UI integration. The Moblin browser supports key plug-ins like

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Fla ...

. * Multimedia: audio and video playback and photo viewing including

Helix A helix () is a shape like a corkscrew or spiral staircase. It is a type of smooth space curve with tangent lines at a constant angle to a fixed axis. Helices are important in biology, as the DNA molecule is formed as two intertwined helic ...

GStreamer GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework that links together a wide variety of media processing systems to complete complex workflows. For instance, GStreamer can be used to build a system that reads files in one format, processes the ...

multimedia frameworks with

Universal Plug and Play Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Internet gateways, Wi-Fi access points and mobile devices to seamlessly discover each other's presence on the n ...

support through the GUPnP library. * Linux Connection Manager:

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

connections that can be extended through plug-ins to support various wired or wireless technologies.

Applications

Moblin 2's interface is designed for netbook and nettops and built on open source graphics technology, such as Clutter, DRI2, and KMS, which are designed around toolbars and panels available at the top of the screen. * Myzone is a variation on the desktop or home screen. It provides an overview of the user's latest activities on the system. The screen is divided into three areas: recent activities, that is calendar and to-do items (left); recent files and websites, such as pictures viewed and websites visited (center); and recent social network updates, currently tracking Twitter and Last.fm (right). * A custom toolbar provides more personalized content on the screens it navigates to, than most toolbars do. Most menu items open screens that display the most recently accessed topical content. For example, the work zones panel manages, organizes, and switches to currently running applications and the media panel displays recently played and viewed media files. * The optimized browser is based on Mozilla browser technology revised into a Clutter shell. * A 'zoomable' media player allows going from viewing all media at once down to focusing on an individual picture, movie, or audio track. The media player detects and indexes media on external USB devices, as well as UPnP devices on a network.

References

External links