The first truly significant public beta of Intel's Moblin distribution went public the other day. It's also the first peek we've had at Moblin's native interface, which straddles a curiously wavering line between netbook, notebook, and phone interface.

Here's how it looks, as running on my loaner Lenovo S10:

The menu ribbon at the top pops out when you hover the mouse up in that region, and from it you can select many common functions. The leftmost icon, for instance, is an overview page:

(Those things in the background are kinda creepy.)

New programs, when launched, can show up on virtual desktops, so the display never gets too crowded.

It's also very beta, so be warned. Not everything's plugged in and turned on yet -- the media player doesn't quite seem to work yet -- although some basic behaviors are clear. The power/brightness control panel wasn't working, but oddly enough the hotkeys to control the display all worked fine. FInally, one of the config panels crashed on me, but also sent off a bug report to Intel, so I assume a lot of those things are already being tackled. (It also didn't boot at all on my full notebook.)

The best way to experience it for yourself is -- you guessed it -- to go try it out. Grab a live CD and boot it on a notebook or a virtual machine, and see what you see.

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