Back in October we introduced the world to DeviceVM's SplashTop, with Phoronix delivering the first full in-depth review of this technology that can be embedded into motherboards (and soon enough, desktops and notebooks) for allowing an instant-on desktop environment. Within seconds of turning on the PC you can be in this lightweight Linux desktop environment that comes with web applications such as Skype and Firefox. As we shared during CES 2008, they also have Pidgin, a DVD player (LinDVD), music player (with MP3 support), and a photo viewer on forthcoming versions. SplashTop is so great that we named it one of the greatest Linux innovations of 2007.
The latest advancement achieved by the DeviceVM engineers is the ability to use SplashTop while the PC is booting and then once it has booted, the user has the ability to switch between the native operating system and this lightweight SplashTop environment. Unfortunately, details regarding these new virtualization capabilities are scarce. We were informed under an embargo that DeviceVM was working on SplashTop virtualization support, but information on this feature is limited at the request of one of their OEM customers. What we do know and can share is that while the PC is booting, you can be using SplashTop to check your email or be reading Phoronix and then once the OS has fully booted you can transparently switch between SplashTop and your full-blown desktop in a windowed or full screen mode.
Yesterday this was briefly (for a few seconds) demonstrated by DeviceVM's CEO, Mark Lee, at the Under The Radar conference. His six minute presentation of SplashTop covers just a subset of the information we've shared about this embedded Linux product in our SplashTop articles. Once we have more information that we're able to share on this added virtualization support, we'll be sure to do so. Below is the YouTube recording.