| Moblin2 first impressions -- wow, does it boot fast! |
Jan. 28, 2009
A lot of notebooks and even netbooks these days run Windows, but also offer a minimalist Linux environment that boots in seconds. Now, with the Intel-sponsored Moblin project's alpha release of Moblin 2 Monday, it looks like insanely fast boots will become a standard feature of full-featured Linux desktops, too.
Some of the quick-booting environments out there are enough to give anyone a lasting hatred of Linux. Like those free bicycles that liberal, well-intentioned municipalities release into the wild from time to time, hoping to get drivers out of their cars, fast-boot Linux is probably doing more to harm than help the cause.
But pretty soon, even full-featured Linux will boot in seconds. That's because Intel's built some mighty whizzy read-ahead boot technology into Moblin2, its toolkit for Linux distributors, which it released in alpha form this week. Moblin tools are used by scads of downstream Linux distributors to create distributions for netbooks and other Atom-based gear.
What's new?
Moblin 2 has some other great advances over the earlier toolkit. A new command-line only (for now) Moblin Image Creation tool automates the creation of installation and live CD media, letting distro makers continually churn out test builds. MIC2 re-purposes some tools developed by the Fedora Project for enterprise distro builders, and it's pretty neat. You edit a text file with the packages you want to include, and the tool puts it all together, integrating your own software creations with RPMs downloaded from repo's you specify (Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and Fedora Core9 and Core10 are officially supported, but you could use anything, really). It can create ISOs for live CDs or USB keys, or raw images for use with KVM or VMWare.
Another promising feature of Moblin2 is Connman. It's a bit difficult to test it out completely, because only a smattering of WiFi card firmware was included in the Moblin2 alpha release yesterday. But frankly, almost anything would be an improvement over Network Manager.
In fairness, Network Manager has actually done an amazing job of evolving with the deep changes that have been happening in Linux's kernel with regard to networking and especially WiFi cards over the last couple of years. But now that things are starting to settle (no udev pun intended there), perhaps it's time for a new ground-up approach. For now, the approach of the day seems to be Connman. Have a look.
Yet, what really won me over, in playing around with the Moblin 2 alpha, was the insanely fast boots. Running qemu in software only (no hardware virtualization support), it booted in under a minute on my run-of-the-mill system. Running from an el-cheapo USB key on a Core2 Duo laptop and PC, it boots in a couple of seconds (!), with most of that seemingly taken up by generating a whole bunch of security keys (really, did I need *four* ssh host keys?) that wouldn't have to be recreated each time, in an installed system. To know more about it, maybe see our earlier coverage, or else run strings on the binary read-ahead-packed file in /etc.
Real progress
Fast boots could be a true advance in the history of computing. Having two OSes, one fast-booting and one slow-booting, is a horrible kludge. It's like a car with two steering wheels, one only for parking. I don't know how fast Windows 7 is booting, but given that Windows has historically integrated a whole huge chunk of the application layer tightly with the OS kernel, I think Microsoft may have to really re-think a few things if they are going to compete on boot time with the Linux distros of tomorrow.
Anyway, the Moblin tools are quite well-documented, and even if like me you are no programmer, you can easily download them and check 'em out. Hey, that's the beauty of open source, eh? No walls, Windows, or Gates (heh). Here's some info, if you decide to try it out.
There are two test builds -- a core build, and a developer build. The latter includes compilers and header files and things that you'd need if, say, you wanted to compile an application.
Both builds are available as ISO images, or as raw files for KVM (the Linux kernel's built-in hypervisor) or VMWare. Download 'em, burn/launch them, and you'll find a barebones environment with only a few simple apps (Minefield browser, Thunnar file manager, XFCE Window manager, etc.). Rest assured that Moblin's many downstream users will be fancying up that stack quite a bit! (for example, with Clutter).
Furthermore, if you download the MIC2 tools, and look in the "examples" folder, you'll find the recipes (i.e., kickstart files) used to build both pre-built images. So, if you download the developer version, get your application to build, and then want to create a live CD or VM image that includes it, all you have to do is edit the kickstart file a bit, run the moblin-image-creator, and go get yourself a beer.
If I had a beer in my hand right now, I'd raise my glass to the Moblin project. It's great to see real progress happening! I have a feeling that those declaring it's "mission accomplished" for Windows on netbooks may be getting ahead of themselves just a bit.
-- Henry Kingman
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