Intel and Novell today announced broad efforts to collaborate and encourage original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original design manufacturers (ODMs) to adopt Moblin, an open source Linux software platform for enabling rich Internet experiences on Intel Atom processor-based netbooks and other mobile systems.

Intel and Novell signed an agreement outlining their plan for collaboration. Novell also announced it will create a Moblin-based product for netbooks that it will take to market to a wide range of OEMs and ODMs. Additionally, Novell will establish Novell Open Labs in Taiwan to foster the adoption of Moblin and will work with the Taiwan Moblin Enabling Center (MEC), a joint effort of Intel and the Taiwan Institute for Information Industry, to validate designs for Moblin compliance.

Intel launched Moblin in 2007 and incubated the effort until last month when the Linux Foundation became host of the community. Intel continues to contribute key technologies and work with the developer community to advance the effort. Novell began contributing to the Moblin project last October.

Novell's contributions to the Moblin ecosystem include leading the open source development of key operating system features such as window, e-mail and media management.