[Exocet]

I've been intrigued by Moblin since I first saw it discussed on Gizmodo many moons ago. It seems to be a great interface for the basic tasks I use my MacBook for on the couch. So, in the pursuit of all things Geeky I thought I'd have a crack at running it on my MacBook via VMWare Fusion.

Doing the usual thing us geeks do, I ploughed right in with nothing more than an image file and a bit of creative guesswork. Unfortunately, it didn't work. I could successfully install the OS into a VM but it wouldn't boot. So, only after facing defeat did I hunt down some help. I came across this set of flickr shots with a series of screenshots and instructions. It seemed to be what I'd already done, bar the info about predefining the hard drive space. Still, I could install but not boot. All I would get is this:

Off I went again, following the instructions to the letter - unfortunately, still no go. Looking for more guides on virtualising this little package, I couldn't find much on VMWare Fusion. However, I did come across a lot of detail on using Sun's free VirtualBox suite. A short 10-minute download later, and away I go again. Working off of this guide, I once again can successfully install the OS but it still fails to boot.

Looking more closely at some of the included screenshots in the two guides I've used so far, it appears that they were using Moblin 2.0, and my version was 2.1. 721mb of v2.0 later and I try the whole process again - in both VMWare and VirtualBox but unfortunately I'm still shit outta luck.

Does anybody have any recommendations on getting this up and running? I had somebody mention that it may require an ATOM processor to run rather than the C2D I have in my MacBook. If so, is there any way to virtualise such a chipset to fool it into thinking I'm running a netbook?

Other than that, I have to say that Moblin has the best "installation successful" screen I've ever seen:

[Exocet]

Anybody had any luck with this at all? I've borrowed a friend's EeePC at work today, playing around with live images but still not having any luck.

[happyfrappy]

Haven't had any luck with my Intel Atom 230 desktop board, I think the Moblin platform is still a work in progress to a point of any hardware differences seem to 'break' it. Sort of reminds me of Bell Labs Plan9 OS. Maybe you'll have to hunt down the old version to install into VMWare/Virtualbox.

Several configurations I've tried so far:
--No optical drive, CF(poor mans SSD), nothing
--Optical drive, CF, nothing
--No optical drive, Western Digital SATA HD, boots then nothing
--Optical drive, Western Digital SATA HD, boots then nothing
--No optical drive, Samsung PATA HD, boots & installs... nothing
--Optical drive, Samsung PATA HD, boots & installs... nothing.

Beyond that I'm out of ideas and that is the only Atom based box I have.

[Exocet]

Well, gave up on virtualising it and borrowed an Eee 1000H from a family member...


Its pretty, very quick - but not quite polished enough to run it as my main machine. Its certainly a product I'm going to keep looking at closely over the next 6-12 months.