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Novel OS Drives the '$100 laptop'
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jan 04, 2007 06:36 PM
from the not-novell dept.
from the not-novell dept.
jrwr00 writes with a link to a CNN story about the $100 laptop's unique operating system. We've discussed the OLPC's UI before but the article offers a few new piece of information on the project, which is expected to roll out this year. From the article: "The XO machines are still being tweaked, and [OLPC UI] Sugar isn't expected to be tested by any kids until February. By July or so, several million are expected to reach Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, Thailand and the Palestinian territory. Negroponte said three more African countries might sign on in the next two weeks. The Inter-American Development Bank is trying to get the laptops to multiple Central American countries."
Related Stories
[+]
OLPC Project Interface Revealed 196 comments
BogusToo writes to mention an EE Times article describing the interface for the OLPC project laptop. Using some fairly intuitive UI concepts (like simplified web browsers and a chat client), the Linux-based system attempts to do away with the kludgey parts of computer use. A video demo of the interface has been placed on YouTube. From the article: "Earlier postings around the Internet have also shown how the physical design of the laptop has changed, including the elimination of the much touted on-board hand crank that was supposed to power the cheap, lime green laptop. It's still there, reportedly, but has now been moved to the power adapter. The OLPC's produced earlier this week in Shanghai still need to go through loads of testing, such as knocking them off desks and dropping them in mud, as kids are wont to do. They may also be kicked around, like soccer balls, a popular sport in 99.9 percent of the world."
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Technology: A Close(r) Look At OLPC Human Interface Guidelines 152 comments
feranick writes "There have been a lot of articles on Slashdot about the OLPC project, most of
them regarding the hardware, the social impact or the cost of the
operation itself. However the software development,
specifically in the GUI didn't get so far much attention. This
blog summarizes some of the OLPC
global interface guidelines. You will see that what is really
new in the laptop is not the laptop itself, but the completely new idea
behind the design, where instead of applications you have activities,
documents are now journals,
'application bundles can be signed by
whoever works on them — because
there is a view source key on the keyboard,
anybody can modify an app
and distribute it'. It really looks like if this is successfully, we
could see a new breakthrough in GUI design also in mainstream PCs: "This
UI is quite simply one of the deepest and most interesting redesigns of
the desktop user interface ever produced. It makes MacOS look like what
it is — boring and unoriginal.""
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Novell OS? Whoops (Score:5, Insightful)
In any event, it doesn't really sound particularly novel to me.
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Could be worse. I read through the whole article waiting for the point where they'd explain how SuSE was involved. Then I finally looked back at the headline and realized I'd misread it.
Re:Novell OS? Whoops (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Sun should take a lesson. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://dev.laptop.org/git.do?p=sugar;a=tree [laptop.org]
I just tried it out, and I am pleasantly surprised! It's amazing how much faster Python is for desktop applications than Java is. Even when using IBM's SWT for developing Java applications, they still feel far more bloated and slower-responding than OLPC's Python-based GUI applications.
I would have expected Python to be slower than Java, but apparently that is not the case. It could be that the layers upon layers that make up Swing really slow it down. Maybe it's time for Sun to take a page from OLPC's Sugar project, and develop a UI framework that is fast and easy to use.
Parent
Re:Sun should take a lesson. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Go whoops yourself. (Score:2)
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How do you know? Have you inspected the hardware?
I've never understood the concept, really. How does one engineer a product to work properly through the warranty period, but magically fail when it's out of warranty? Certainly, some manufacturers use inexpensive parts when they think they can, and sometimes those parts fail, but it's hard to imagine that's an intended effect.
Maybe I'm naive.
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What you are describing is not "engineered obsolescence" but "engineered failure," and indeed is hard to imagine manufacturer's doing. Obsolescence != failure.
Engineered obsolescence means that the manufacturer's product ro
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Uh, no.
Computers do not lose capability over time. (Except for Windows machines.)
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Do you know if this $100 laptop is upgradable? I'm sure that as the lustful fires of consumerism awaken in these nations' loins, they'll want harder, better, faster, stronger laptops that these corporations will be all too happy to *sell* them, as the OLPC simply doesn't meet the gluttonous standards of a modern consume
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Do you know that it isn't? Do you know if it needs to be upgradeable? I've got a laptop that's several years old, and I wouldn't even consider upgrading it.
"I'm sure that as the lustful fires of consumerism awaken in these nations' loins,"
OK, holy cow. Could we please dial back the rhetoric a little bit?
"they'll want harder, better, faster, stronger laptops that these corporations will be all too happy to *sell* them"
Yeah, sell them for $100. And these peo
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...they'll want harder, better, faster, stronger laptops that these corporations will be all too happy to *sell* them, as the OLPC simply doesn't meet the gluttonous standards of a modern consumer.
Oh good God. The point is they can't afford standard consumer electronics as it is. That's what the whole project was about-- provide a low cost computer to people that can't afford current computers. Great insight there. With out a doubt OLPC will soon be trying to sell the latest core 2 duo laptops to the children of Bangladesh. Hell, they'll probably start a new campaign, One Widescreen HD Plasma TV Per Child (OWHDPTVPC), next, just to sucker those unsuspecting s fools in even more.
Re:OLPC Sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck charity, we need to change the global economy. If you want to help the poor in the third world then don't give them charity unless they are literally starving. If you want to help you should buy what they produce, lobby your government to write off the debt they made them take on and lobby your government to remove trade restrictions. Your country is fucking the third world in the ass and given you live in a democray they are doing it in your name. You need to stop the fucking, not start the giving.
Parent
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I really hope OLPC project will create a situation when 3rd world countries will be able to produce services that we'll want to buy and won't cost us $0.01 per work hour. I believe OLPC is a huge opportunity.
Fixed specs != planned obsolescence (Score:4, Informative)
It is my impression that the whole idea of creating a brand new interface is to escape the eternal upgrade spiral. On the surface, they do away with folders and mainstream OS vendors, but consider how this affects the entire paradigm of computing. In a few years these people will be old enough to work in an office (not saying they will, it's just a possibility), and set me tell you, I think they're not going to *want* to touch Windows, MacOS, or KDE/Gnome with a fire poker -- it's too messy. They won't want to work on their computer, they'll want to work on their *tasks*.
As you state in a later post, hardware failures are a different topic; that's mostly a question of build quality and durablity. While it is to a high degree possible for a manufacturer to skimp in this department, and thus encourage more purchases, it's not my impression that the OLPC project has chosen this path -- quite the opposite.
Parent
Pour some Sugar on me! (Score:3, Insightful)
Given the target audience for OLPC, I predict that long before these kids make it into the workforce, Sugar will be available for Ubuntu, either as an app to run on top of a windowin
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Most insightful thing I've read in a while (Score:5, Insightful)
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The $100 laptop hardware may be designed and destined for the 3rd world - but the interface could be put to use anywhere
Anything which allows kids to explore and extend their imaginations whilst learning should be embraced wholeheartedly.
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Word processing is a different story. I feel that every kid should know how to write, and know the basics for writing in at least one word processing package. I'm not talking we
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Re:Most underinstalled thing I've not used in a wh (Score:3, Informative)
Quote FTFA (Score:4, Funny)
Where are the apps? (Score:2, Interesting)
A platform exists only to run the apps, not visa-versa. BeOS was a great platform, too. Many excellent gaming platforms have failed, because they lacked apps (i.e., games). Linux desktop is getting now
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I can only imagine that Negropointe envisioned (after his own media attention, of course), that kids on opposing sides of local wars would IM each other and work things out, and that it would later be portrayed in a movie starring Keanu Reeves (playing Negropointe), produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.
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Bluh? Is OpenOffice.org that bad on Linux? Admittedly I've only ever used it on Windows and OpenBSD, and can't really compare it to Microsoft Office since I've never actually used that (mostly because I've never had to)...
Re:Where are the apps? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, a collaboration plugin for abiword is being worked on, that will use the mesh infrastructure and sugar presence framework to find and communicate with other users. This will allow realtime collaboration on documents (for example, 2 or more children working on an assingment simultaneously).
So there you have an application that takes full use of the offered platform.
Parent
Re:Where are the apps? (Score:4, Insightful)
Web browser is, overall, the killer app. The pure difference in being able to access the Web, and not access it is remarkably huge. By giving children access to Google, Wikipedia, Slashdot, and billions of other sites and web applications it is the single most useful tool a child could have. It also comes with RSS reader, chat, AbiWord and eToys along with several games.
Mesh networking is the point by itself, as its main function is not only to connect OLPC laptops together, but to also connect them to an Internet gateway, which will be provided by schools... This will have an overall effect of propagating Internet access through OLPC-targeted countries.
I just don't see what would children "need" Office and Photoshop for.
In developed countries, a child will have its computing needs satisfied already, by having access to regular computer. OLPC targetted child has no such privilege, and a difference between owning an OLPC laptop and not owning it will be huge.
Porting software to OLPC is not hard. While Sugar is the interface, it is still founded on X Window System, and it runs Python apps as well... And newer versions of OS will have more apps that are already announced.
Plus, judging a platform for not having enough software for it when it hasn't actually been released to its end-users yet isn't really fair. I predict it will create a very decent software library of its own, and that we'll see first of it quite soon after it goes fully public. It has happened to pretty much every platform around during the last 50 years.
Parent
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Re:Where are the apps? (Score:4, Informative)
The point of the mesh networking is to enable certain network applications without a persistent connection to the internet, but yes, a company has developed and will be making available a satellite earthstation designed especially for rural village and donating satellite time to provide internet access to accompany the OLPC project.
The purchasers of the laptops in the involved countries are the national ministries of education, who tend to be the people that run the schools. One might surmise, then, that the schools will participate.
And, if you want, you are free to send a bag of rice to any region you think needs it. There are even many charities that you can contribute to that will take care of most of the logistics of providing food aid for you, so you just can give them money. OLPC will continue working with interested countries to develope and deliver educational tools that both the people behind OLPC and the countries to whom they are being sold, rather than air-dropped as unilateral gifts, believe will be useful to those countries educational systems. The two kinds of projects are not opposed to each other.
Parent
Re:Where are the apps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where are the apps for this platform?
How about a web browser, or an e-book reader? Those certainly sound like important apps for learning. Or how about a scientific graphing calculator? Perhaps some interactive learning software? There's already apps that could be very usefull. Really the hard part isn't really the apps, it's the content and curiculum that're more important.
Can anybody name one app, accessible to end users (e.g., no recompiling required), that is compatible with the Sugar UI, mesh networking, low-end specs, and other unique features?
You're asking the wrong crowd here as there's not many people on slashdot develop for, or familiar with this machine. Just because no one has given you an answer means very little.
Go into a shopping mall and give a random person an OLPC -- what would they do with it?
Huh? What does a random person in a shopping mall have to do with the needs of someone in a 3rd world country that's never even used a computer have to do with each other? I think you're really missing the point here.
Hardware has always suffered from a chicken/egg problem. You need interest in the hardware to generate interest in developing software, but you need available software for the hardware to do something.
My guess is the hope is that more specific apps will be created for the purposes of learning. But using a pre-existing OS will bring enough apps that're already available for Linux to make the thing usefull from the start. Personally I'd be more worried about the curriculum and infra-structure for kids to learn how learn from these things.
Parent
Re:Where are the apps? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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http://people.opera.com/howcome/2006/olpc/ [opera.com]
Re:Linux Doesn't Need Your Apps (Score:3, Insightful)
1. It's very easy to argue it's getting somewhere because of the variety of distros out there. Just because NetCraft or whatever research name you look to for credibility can't/won't measure or validate the progress means absolutely nothing.
2. Putting together a coherent desktop is difficult to say the least. Your average Linux desktop won't be competing directly with apple/microsoft, but you will find pragmatic IT people deploying them e
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Last I checked, the target market for the OLPC was not "random people in shopping malls".
Correct. Many things that children might conceivably want out of a computer will not be provided by the OLPC. It will not be a game platform to rival the PS3, for instance.
Its an educa
Re:Where are the apps? (Score:4, Insightful)
The OS is Linux, so it will run anything that runs on Linux (subject to computing power, RAM, etc).
no recompiling required
There will (hopefully) be hundreds of millions of these machines. I think someone can make binaries for the kiddies if they want.
Linux desktop is getting nowhere, despite it's technical excellence, because it lacks key apps (i.e., Office).
Ahhh! so you really mean commercial applications. I don't see why 'perfect' compatibility with Word documents is so important to children.
Look - it comes with applications: Broswer, RSS reader, text editor, and others. And it has a compiler, so kids can write their own applications. This computer is about liberating these kids, and giving them computer expertise - it's not about making them consumers of software. Difficult to understand, I know.
I like to repeat myself every time an OLPC story is posted
Well, saying the same thing many times doesn't make it more true or relevant.
Parent
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Then you can have an opinion.
Where can I find the "Sugar" Windowmanager or DE? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Where can I find the "Sugar" Windowmanager or D (Score:5, Informative)
Look at the OLPC wiki [laptop.org].
Parent
Source code is here (Score:2, Interesting)
Screenshot (Score:3, Interesting)
Lameness filter is a lameness filter
OS is Fedora based (Score:3, Informative)
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Because a major reason for the low price is that they aren't doing the kind of packaging and marketing, etc., they'd need to do for individual sales, the cost would be significantly higher than $100 (or even the $150 that looks like it will be the "early adopter" cost) if it were sold to individ