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Moblin Alpha 2

Intel and its partners that are working on the Moblin Linux platform for netbooks and Mobile Internet Devices have big plans for this little operating system. Ars Technica reports that one of those goals is a super-fast 2 second boot time.

I took Moblin Alpha 2 for a test drive last week. And while it definitely seems snappier and more feature-packed than earlier builds, it’s not quite at the 2-second boot point just yet. But apparently Intel thinks this is a wholly realistic goal, even on mobile devices with slow processors because it doesnt’ take very long to load the most important software components.

What’s interesting about this concept is that it could quickly make quick-start applications like DeviceVM’s Splashtop and Phoenix’s HyperSpace obsolete. Each of these are designed as light weight operating systems that boot in 10-15 seconds to give users quick access to a handful of programs including Firefox and Skype without waiting for Windows or a heavier Linux operating system to fully load. But Moblin is a fully functional Linux distribution. If you can start a computer running Moblin in as little as two seconds there would be no need for a secondary OS like Splashtop or HyperSpace.

In fact, if Intel can pull this off, there wouldn’t even be much need for sleep or hibernation — unless you want to be able to save your computer’s state in between sessions.