The netbook is a highly contested for market space. If it is not the hardware vendors butting heads over what should and should not go under the hood of a netbook it is the software companies tyring to slam a new OS onto them.

Intel has decided that it was not enough to make the CPU that powers 90% of the netbooks out (as of this writing) but they want a slice of the OS pie too.

Today they released a beta version of their linux based Moblin OS. This new OS is looking to shake things up a bit as it has a lot more polish and glitz that many of the stripped down Linux distros that are currently being forced on the unsuspecting netbook buyers.

Read more here.

Grab the Moblin Beta here

In short, Moblin is shaping up to be a fancier, better-looking, and more polished successor to the stripped-down Linux distributions that appeared in the very first netbooks. Apparently, Intel has even implemented a physics engine and OpenGL acceleration to make the user interface look prettier and more dynamic.

You can "test drive" the Moblin 2.0 beta by downloading the 680MB installation image over on this page and loading it up onto a USB drive. (Instructions are up here.) Intel says it has tested the image on the Acer Aspire One, Asus Eee PC 901 and 1000H, Dell Mini 9, MSI Wind, Lenovo S10, Samsung NC10, and HP Mini 1010 and 1120NR (the 1120NR supports "wired networking only for now," though).