MSI U135 Netbook Featuring Linux

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A few computer manufacturers have shipped their netbooks with Android, but, most have chosen to ship with the tried and true Windows XP or Windows 7. Taiwan’s MSI is hoping to buck the trend with the MSI U135 netbook, which will come with Linux-based SUSE Moblin.

Moblin (a combination of mobile linux) is an operating system originally intended for mobile phones, but like other mobile OSes, became refocused for netbooks and nettops. It has many favorable comparisons to Android. Dell declared their interest in selling Moblin-equipped netbooks, but MSI will apparently beat them to market.

The U135 will ship with version 2.1 of Moblin, a version that Intel and Novell worked together to optimize for netbooks. There is a concern among PC manufacturers that consumers will not be attracted to buy computers that don’t ship with Windows, specially at the low-end. Despite that, everybody involved with this project thinks it can succeed.

“The Moblin project has the potential to become an accessible and widely used computing platform,” Intel’s Business Director of Open Source Software, Ram Peddibhotla, said in the press release.

On the hardware side, the MSI U135 is a fairly typical netbook. It’ll come with a 10.1-inch display, an Atom N450 Pine Trail processor (clock coming in at 1.66GHz), 1GB of DDR2 and a 250GB hard drive.

No word on price, but MSI’s press release mentions that by going with a Linux OS, they can charge less than that would have than Windows, so expect it to come in a bit cheaper than the typical 10-inch Pine Trail model. It’ll be shipping in February 2010, and it’ll be interesting to see if Linux catches on in the netbook/nettop marketplace.