Moblin Vs Google Chrome OS

Ever since few years ago when netbook was first released to the market, it started to change the way the computer is being used. The most recent focus of all computer industry is how user's internet experience can be changed and improved. However, all the existing computer operating system was developed not with this idea in mind as the OS base, but focus more on applications and application extensibility.

Thus, after all these years of change of computer use towards more internet base, it is just the right time for the releasing of a brand new operating system which is highly internet based. And that is why that the announcement by Google about their new Google Chrome OS as well as the new Moblin by Intel Software and Service Group, hosted by the Linux Foundation and with collaboration with various OS vendors.

I myself is a netbook user, and loading a full OS such as Vista or XP is definitely somehow overloading my netbook. Thus i mostly welcome the new OS which is light, and tailored according to the needs of netbook's used. But between the 2, which one is better?

Moblin V2.0 Beta
Moblin is an open source operating system which is built on top of an optimized Linux
platform, which is lead by a group of Intel's software engineer, with collaboration with a few operating system vendors such as Asianux, Canonical, DeviceVM, gOS, MontaVista, Novell, Wind River, and others.

Moblin is built with the vision to make a total different internet experience for their user community. For this, Moblin had come out with several brand new idea for operating system to achieve the vision.

One among all brilliant idea is the MyZone feature which is shown to the user when Moblin is loaded on the netbook. The user will be presented with 3 different sections with the MyZone, which includes Recent Activity, Recent Files and Recent Social Network Update. Yes, you heard me correctly. Moblin has the capability to hook up with your social networking site and display updates and contents within your MyZone. However, up to now, Moblin is only able to hook up with the Last.fm and Twitter, although a lot of the users are requesting for the Facebook integration.

Another brilliant idea is the Zones Panel. Zones Panel can be easily accessed from the toolbar's icon which is located on the top edges of the screen. It's purpose is to get rid of the tasks bar you have on your XP or Vista machine. Moblin will no longer show the running applications or opened files as series of buttons in the tasks bar, however, it try to hide it in such a way that every application or file will be opened to a zone which user can customized, and switching from zone to zone will bring user a different view (just like multiple virtual windows) and each zone's view will only shows what is being opened into that particular zone. Thus, user do not need to be worried about opening too many application which will eventually filled up your tasks bar with too many buttons, while conserving the taskbar (or toolbar in Moblin) for some other more useful quick launched selection.

Another feature worth mentioning in Moblin is the integrated messaging tool. It works just like your social networking integration into Moblin, so that from the People Panels of your Toolbar, just a single click will bring you to a screen where all your Instant Messenger (IM) buddies is being shown. You will be able to do a direct messaging from the same screen as well. However, up to now, i have no information on whether it will be a Moblin's messaging tool which requires user to register for new Moblin's accounts, or it will be able to load up contact list from existing messenger services (such as MSN, Yahoo or others).

Moblin also includes multimedia features live media player and image viewer, all can be found within the Media Panel with one-click easy access via the toolbar. In Windows XP or Vista, all the installed program can be found from your desktop's "All Programs" from the start menu. However in Moblin, it is listed under another page call Application Panel, also easily accessible via the tool bar.

All Moblin's image from here

You may find further details of the Moblin V2.0 Beta or the free beta 2.0 version from Moblin's Official Website.


Chrome OS

Image source from here

After its launched of the new Google Chrome Browser approximately 9 months ago, Google again announces that it is going to launched it's first Netbook operating system, Chrome OS by second half of year 2010.

According to Google, this Chrome OS is and extension from the current Chrome Browser. Its target is the same as Moblin's - the Netbook market, and so happen that it is going to be an open source, light weight operating system which focusing highly on internet user experiance.

However, up to date, there is no alpha version available, which user can try. But base on official announcement via Google's Official Blog, this OS will be loaded and started up and get user onto the web in just few seconds. Google Chrome will be running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel, and using web as the platform. Thus, Google claimed that all web-based application will be running well within their new OS.

Except focusing on enhancing internet user's experiance, Google also put a major look-into for the security of the new OS so that the user can leave all handling of malware, viruses and security update entirely to the OS itself without the need to worry about it.

Due to limited resources and official article about Google Chrome OS, i am not able to put an in details study on the features and feel-and-look for it. Thus, i will leave this to my future post when more information becomes available.

Something that the user will need to take note is that both Moblin and Google Chrome OS are light weight operating system which is targeting on heavy internet usage, and for netbook platform to allow quick start-up and easy access to the web content anywhere with WiFi connection. Thus you should not expect some other resource-hungry application to be loaded and running in this platform (such as games and software development kits)

Up to now, i think Moblin looks quite promising to me since there is a working beta available for me to try out and i will be able to see what's gonna happen and how the OS actually works in front of me, as compared to Chrome OS where there is still no available version for user to try out. But who knows Google might be able to change me when they have their first beta available someday.. :) So before that, i'll just wait and see what both Chrome OS and Moblin will turn out to be and gives me another worth-full surprises..