SlashGear

Intel have released Moblin v2.0 beta for netbooks and nettops, the latest version of the company’s open-source OS for Atom-based devices.  Mobile v2.0 brings with it a new, visually-enhanced GUI, together with the “m_zone” homescreen, integrated Twitter and Last.fm widgets, and a new integrated browser based on Mozilla’s engine.

Video demo after the cut

There’s also a new media player, with support for UPnP streaming and USB devices, a new connection manager now with GUI, and the promise of further social networking integration.  Many of the changes take advantage of the new Clutter animation framework, together with other open-source graphics systems.

The free download is a 321MB file available here; one thing to note is that it apparently only supports wired networking at present, not WiFi, though it’s unclear if this is only on certain systems or all hardware.  It also seems to be targeting netbooks/nettops only, rather than MIDs, which is likely to be a disappointment to ultramobile-aficionados.

Update: Intel tell us that it’s only the HP Mini 1120NR which has problems with WiFi and Moblin v2.0; other netbooks they’ve tested it with (Acer Aspire One, ASUS Eee PC 901, 1000H, Dell Mini 9, MSI Wind, Lenovo S10, Samsung NC10, HP Mini 1010) have WiFi working fine.  If you have a 1120NR, for the moment you’ll be stuck with wired networking only.