There have been quite a few Moblin related announcements these last weeks: The release of the final version of Moblin 2.0, the Moblin Garage and the preview release of Moblin 2.1. More interesting is the news released by Microsoft's Silverlight team that they will develop Silverlight 3 for Moblin.

Intel and Microsoft have announced a new port of Silverlight to Linux, specifically for the Intel-sponsored Moblin operating system running on Atom-powered devices such as netbooks. The port enables Intel to include Silverlight as a supported runtime in the Atom Developer Program, which will feed an iPhone-like App Store.

There's three important announcements coming out of Intel's Developer Forum today as it relates to their Moblin Linux distribution that launched two years ago: Moblin 2.0 final has been released, Moblin 2.1 is under development, and Moblin Garage and the Moblin Application Installer have been introduced.

During the Intel Developer Forum this week, Microsoft announced that it was planning on delivering its Silverlight media for Intel's Moblin Linux. What's the point of replicating what Novell already does?

Intel hosted their developer conference this week in San Francisco (Intel Developer Forum) where several new announcements were made, with Linux being involved in some of these announcements. It was revealed that Dell will begin shipping Ubuntu Moblin Netbook Remix on one of their Atom-powered netbooks, Moblin 2.0 was released, and there was a snapshot of Moblin 2.1 was released.

The first netbook preinstalled with Moblin v2 for Netbooks will likely launch next week, possibly at Intel's Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco. Following that, the Moblin Project will release the first milestone release of the Moblin v2 Linux distribution, which began beta testing in May.

The prominent role of Silverlight in the Intel-Microsoft collaboration leads to a new set of questions

Moblin.org shipped the final version of the Moblin v2.0 netbook distribution, and released early-preview versions of a Moblin app store, Moblin installer, and Moblin v2.1. Meanwhile, Moblin v2.0 is now available on Dell's Mini 10v netbook, as part of an "Ubuntu Moblin Remix Developer Edition" option.

Is Moblin, the open source mobile operating system initially launched by Intel and now overseen by the Linux Foundation, a potential thorn in Microsoft's side?