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Consumer point of view: Moblin? A new OS? Scary and confusing! Developer point of view: Moblin? A new OS with all components under the GPL? Developed by In

by seiji 17y ago

Consumer point of view: Moblin? A new OS? Scary and confusing! Developer point of view: Moblin? A new OS with all components under the GPL? Developed by Intel and released to The Linux Foundation [1]? I can now port it from power hungry and inefficient Intel Atom hardware onto handheld ARM Cortex powered devices? Sign me up! [1]: http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/press/2009/04/02/linux-foundation-to-host-moblin-project/ http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/press/2009/04/02/linux-f...

uighbuiybv 17y ago
>Consumer point of view: Moblin? A new OS? Scary and confusing! Only if you think of it as a computer. If you think of a netbook as web-browser/emailler/ebook reader then the user doesn't know/care about an OS. Nobody refused to buy an iPod/iPhone because it had a new OS. Otherwise windows mobile devices would have won.
willwagner 17y ago
Not only is a new OS scary, a Linux OS is even scarier. While I don't believe it's so true these days, Linux as a brand still has has this negative connotation with average consumers and is associated with engineers, tinkerers, and geeks. It's largely an unfair stereotype these days but it's hard changing consumer perceptions. I'd bet it would be easier for me to convince my in-laws to install Intel Moblin on their notebook over Linux Moblin, although at this point, my in-laws know better than trust me with their computers.
- jonny_noog 17y ago
  For better or for worse, There's a significant amount of engineers, tinkerers and geeks out there who don't wish to see Linux loose its niche appeal with engineers, tinkerers and geeks. They like that Linux is by developers, for developers, that is its appeal to them in the first place. I don't think it will ever go mainstream until non-geeks (or perhaps I should say designer-geeks as opposed to developer-geeks, if that makes sense) are heavily involved in at least the user interface aspects of the system. If that ever happens (and I think that's a big "if") I suspect that the engineers, tinkerers and geeks will be quite disappointed and go elsewhere. I didn't vote you down by the way, because I'm not really disagreeing with you and what's more, I feel this tendency for people to vote down comments based solely on disagreement rather than voting down only inane/inappropriate/off-topic comments is a crappy phenomenon. Your comment was none of these things.

by seiji 17y ago

uighbuiybv 17y ago

>Consumer point of view: Moblin? A new OS? Scary and confusing! Only if you think of it as a computer. If you think of a netbook as web-browser/emailler/ebook reader then the user doesn't know/care about an OS. Nobody refused to buy an iPod/iPhone because it had a new OS. Otherwise windows mobile devices would have won.

willwagner 17y ago

Not only is a new OS scary, a Linux OS is even scarier. While I don't believe it's so true these days, Linux as a brand still has has this negative connotation with average consumers and is associated with engineers, tinkerers, and geeks. It's largely an unfair stereotype these days but it's hard changing consumer perceptions. I'd bet it would be easier for me to convince my in-laws to install Intel Moblin on their notebook over Linux Moblin, although at this point, my in-laws know better than trust me with their computers.

jonny_noog 17y ago
For better or for worse, There's a significant amount of engineers, tinkerers and geeks out there who don't wish to see Linux loose its niche appeal with engineers, tinkerers and geeks. They like that Linux is by developers, for developers, that is its appeal to them in the first place. I don't think it will ever go mainstream until non-geeks (or perhaps I should say designer-geeks as opposed to developer-geeks, if that makes sense) are heavily involved in at least the user interface aspects of the system. If that ever happens (and I think that's a big "if") I suspect that the engineers, tinkerers and geeks will be quite disappointed and go elsewhere. I didn't vote you down by the way, because I'm not really disagreeing with you and what's more, I feel this tendency for people to vote down comments based solely on disagreement rather than voting down only inane/inappropriate/off-topic comments is a crappy phenomenon. Your comment was none of these things.