Moblin is an Intel-created open-source operating system for netbooks and, specifically, the kind of people who use them. The first time i heard about this i was excited to see intel trying to get their hands down and dirty with software.

On a technical level this means Moblin is built for the Atom x86 chip found in many netbooks, while on a practical level it means Moblin is an Internet- and multimedia-focused operating system. Moblin is less about knocking-up spreadsheets on the move and more about twittering, updating your Facebook account, and watching movies on the go,simply, what 80% of netbooks sold are used for.

Fundamentally, Moblin is just another distribution of Linux (based on Fedora), although it’s one that benefits from some unique tweaks and a radical user-interface. However, traditional apps take a back seat, and some you might expect are missing (there’s no GIMP or OpenOffice.org, for example). Moblin is based on the familiar GNOME/GTK desktop, like distros such as Ubuntu, but this is largely invisible because of the UI improvements.

Any offline functionality tends to be geared around playing movies or music, so you can keep up with The Wire or Britney’s latest while out of range of a wifi base station.

Moblin is open source, and free of charge, so you can download and try it yourself. Like most of Intel’s mainstream processors, the Atom is essentially an x86 chip, so you should be able to run Moblin on any computer, or in a virtualised environment. However, it requires 3D graphics drivers so is far from optimal in VMware or VirtualBox, and is also optimised for low-resolution widescreen displays. Additionally, its hardware support is deliberately limited to what is usually found in netbook computers.

Sincerely speaking, i will hang around with XP on my netbook, reason being, it works just great!