[Nottingham] Going Moblin

[Martin]

Folks,

Just tried out Moblin on Mandriva 2010 and, it's rather refreshingly
good and different.

It's clearly weighted towards mobile users with a "web presence". The
first options are for IM and IRC. However, there's the full range of
whatever applications you have installed available on the apps tab.

First impressions are that it is exactly what it should be. Nicely
minimalist but with well styled icons. A nice surprising touch of compiz
animations for various actions that give a good cute factor but without
being "in-yer-face" overt.

OK, from first impressions, I rather like it for casual netbook use.

One omission is that there is no "logout". You must press the power
button to then trigger a shutdown. But then again, a moblin user likely
wouldn't have multiple desktops and multiple OSes on a mere netbook!

Also, the bubble helps don't appear for every clickable bit. So what is
the noughts-&-crosses to the right of the address bar for?...

Include a 'welcome' feature so that all bubble helps are switched on
initially and then they can be switched off when they become irritating?...


And for a geekie bit, some timings on my 1.5GByte Acer Aspire One,
Mandriva 2010.0, whilst on mains power:

Cold poweron to grub:	7s
grub -> kdm:		27s
kdm -> Moblin:		7s
kdm -> Icewm:		3s
kdm -> KDE4:		27s (to the start of the welcome sound)


And my preference?

Well, normal usage is still KDE4 despite the abysmal startup wait. For
quick hackings I use Icewm. To show off, I think I'll be demoing the Moblin.


Cheers,
Martin

-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
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