I stopped by the MSI booth this afternoon and got a chance to check out the new MSI Wind U135 netbook running SUSE Linux with the Moblin user interface. This model will begin shipping in February, and Novell says SUSE has been optimized to boot in as little as 30 seconds.

While the Moblin interface is full of widgets for interacting with web services, sort of like the Skylight user interface Lenovo is using on its upcoming smartbook, under the hood you have a full Linux desktop environment. That means you’ll be able to install applications packaged to run on SUSE Linux as well as programs that will be available from Intel’s developer program for Atom.

You can check out a brief hands-on video after the break.

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It looks like Windows 7 Starter Edition won’t be the only OS available for the MSI Wind U135 netbook. Computer World reports that MSI will also offer a new version of SUSE Linux based on Moblin 2.1.

Moblin offers a framework for a light weight Linux distribution optimized for netbooks with Intel Atom processors. It boots quickly and has a widget-based user interface designed for small-screen devices. The Wind U135 reportedly boots in just about 30 seconds. That’s the amount of time it’s supposed to take from the moment you hit the power button to the moment when your device is up, running, and connected to the internet and ready to browse the web.

The Linux version of the Wind U135 will be available in February. What’s interesting is that this isn’t the first time MSI has released a netbook with SUSE Linux. The Wind U100 and Wind U90 were available in some areas with SUSE, but MSI stopped offering that option a while back. It should be interesting to see whether the netbook-specific Moblin interface makes Linux a more viable option for MSI and other netbook makers.

Moblin Alpha 2

Novell, the company behind the SUSE Linux distribution, has thrown its hat in the Moblin development game. Moblin is a custom version of Linux optimized for mobile devices. The project was started by Intel, but the company handed the reigns over to the Linux Foundation in April.

So what does Novell’s involvement mean? First, the company says it will develop a “Moblin-based product,” which can be distributed to OEMs and ODMs (Original Equipement/Device Manufacturers) for use on netbooks. The idea is that the finished product wouldn’t be a netbook with Novell or Moblin branding all over it. Instead, equipment makers could customize the devices to, say run an AT&T, Verizon, or HP branded operating system that just happens to look and feel a lot like Moblin Linux on other systems.

Novell will also establish an open lab in Taiwan to encourage companies to adopt the platform.

via ZDNet

The company behind the SUSE Linux distribution has set up a research and development team to coordinate with Taiwanese netbook vendors. While Ubuntu Linux and Linpus Linux Lite get a lot of attention for their work with netbook makers, SUSE is a popular distribution among enterprise users looking for corporate support for their Linux powered computers.

HP and MSI have already shipped some netbooks with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop preloaded. It’s possible Novell’s new initiative could lead more computer makers to adopt the software.

The goal is to improve driver support and design new human machine interface elements. Novell is expected to work with Acer, asus, MSI, and other Taiwanese netbook vendors and could show some mini-laptops from these companies running SUSE at the Computex trade show in Taipei in June.

via Asus Eee PC Hacks

SUSE is one of the more popular Linux distributions for enterprise users. A handful of netbooks including the HP Mini 2140, Lenovo Ideapad S10e and MSI Wind U90 come with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop as an option, and it runs well on mini-laptops with Intel Atom processors. But it’s possible that a growing number of netbooks will be using low power ARM-based processors soon. And the folks at Novell, the company behind SUSE, say they have no plans to port the operating system to run on ARM processors.

Other Linux distributions including Ubuntu and Xandros should be ready for ARM CPUs by the time netbooks start to use them in the coming months. But Computer World reports that a Novell executive says the company is focusing on other opportunities right now.

The move probably makes sense… for now. While SUSE is popular among enterprise users, low cost ARM based netbooks are most likely going to be targeted at consumers who are looking for portable computing devices with larger screens and keyboards than found on a cellphone, but without the same kind of performance found on Atom-based netbooks. The few prototypes I’ve run across with ARM processors so far have been a bit more sluggish than netbooks with Intel Atom, or even VIA C7-M CPUs. But that could change in the coming years. And companies that have decided not to support ARM like Novell and Microsoft could come to regret it. (Windows Mobile runs on ARM processors, but Windows XP, Vista, and 7 do not).

If you’re in the market for a netbook and looking for a bargain, you might be considering the MSI Wind U90. Like the popular Wind U100, the U90 has a large keyboard, an Intel Atom CPU, and an 80GB hard drive. It also has a smaller 8.9 inch display with a large bezel around the screen because it’s housed in the same chassis as the U100’s 10 inch display. And while the U100 has a 6-cell battery, the U90 has a 3 cell version.Finally, the netbook ships with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop instead of Windows XP.

But the U90 also costs much less than the U100. While the MSI Wind U90 is not sold in the US, you can pick one up from a Canadian retailer for about $370, including shipping. We’ve already seen a Canadian MSI Wind U90 unboxed and booted up. But what happens when you actually spend a little time with this netbook?

Laptop Magazine’s Joanna Stern has posted an in-depth review of the bargain basement version of the MSI Wind. The netbook’s smaller display is the same resolution as the larger screen on the U100, so she had no problems with the display. But she wasn’t particularly fond of the operating system.

First, SUSE doesn’t seem to have drivers for the 1.3MP webcam, making Skype video calls impossible. Second, connecting to a WiFi network was a nightmare, although the signal was quite strong once connected. And finally, Stern says she only got a feeble 1 hours and 39 minutes out of the battery, despite the fact that the MSI Wind U100 with a 6 cell battery gets more than 5 hours of battery life. I can only assume this is because SUSE lacks the power management features of some other operating systems.

In other words, if you’re not comfortable tweaking SUSE or replacing the operating system with Windows XP or another Linux distro, you might want to be careful about ordering the MSI WInd U90, especially now that the Wind U100 price is starting to come down. You can pick one up from Amazon for as little as $480.

You can read more about the MSI Wind U90 and MSI Wind U100 in the Liliputing Product Database.

The MSI Wind U90 is the U100’s little cousin. Well, it’s not actually smaller. It just has a smaller screen and a larger bezel around the display. So if you want to save a few bucks, you can pick up the U90 instead of the U100, right? Well, not if you live in the US, because it’s not available here — unless you can find an international retailer willing to ship to the US.

And that’s exactly what Liliputing Forum member FDAMAN did. He discovered that Canadian retailer NCIX is selling the U90 for about $370 US including shipping to New York. So he placed an order and 4 days later, a box arrived.

The U90 does have some French symbols on the keyboard, but the operating system is in English. This version of the MSI Wind laptop ships with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (the same distro HP includes on lower end Mini-Note models), and has a 3 cell battery and just 512MB of RAM. The US version comes with 1GB of RAM and a choice of a 3 or 6 cell battery. But while the US version of the MSI Wind currently ships with an 80GB hard drive, the version FDAMAN ordered from Canada has a 120GB hard drive.

The bezel around the screen doesn’t look all that bad. And the advantage to using a bezel to put a smaller screen in the same case as the U100 is that the keyboard is identical to the U100 keyboard. That means if you’re comfortable touch-typing on one laptop, you should have no problems with the other.

You can check out FDAMAN’s unboxing videos after the break. The first video shows the unboxing and the first bootup of the U90. But since SUSE takes a while to configure the first time you load it, he shut off the camera for a few minutes and shot a second video showing the OS loading. 

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HP may not include recovery discs with the HP Mini-Note, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. This morning I called HP support and after spending a few minutes on hold and being transferred a few times, I finally got someone who handles support for the Mini-Note. Apparently the folks who provide general technical support for HP laptops aren’t responsible for the Mini-Note. There’s a special division for that.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that you won’t hear the HP Mini-Note mentioned at all if you try to go through the automated voice directory system. So just go ahead and shout “agent” into the phone to speed up the process a bit. When you do finally get to the right person you’ll need to read off your serial number (which should be on the bottom of your computer). And that’s about it. Hopefully I should be receiving a SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop restore disc within a week or two. I don’t actually expect to use it, since I’m pretty happy with Ubuntu on my Mini-Note. But it’s nice to have options.

Update: Upon closer inspection, this is not a restore disc image. Rather, it’s a disc image that contains the software HP added to SuSE Enterprise Linux for the Mini-Note. Theoretically you could download and install SuSE on your own and then use this disc to restore your system to the state it was in when you bought it. But if you’re not married to SuSE, I’d recommend checking out MinBuntu instead.
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HP has finally posted a disc image you can use to install SuSE Linux on a Mini-Note. That means the Mini-Note support page is starting to look like it should have the day HP released the Mini-note.