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Hacking the XO Laptop
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Jan 20, 2008 06:41 AM
from the new-uses-tiny-toys dept.
from the new-uses-tiny-toys dept.
dulceLeche writes "While the OLPC was not designed with the American consumer in mind, people that took part in the Give One Get One program have been having fun with their XOs. The XO has a number of limitations, but with some work you can get Opera running, chat over your mesh network, and much more. An article at Geek.com explains what a few folks were able to do with their XOs."
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Mobile: Lessons To Learn From The OLPC Project 261 comments
FixedSpelling writes "Whether you're impressed with it or not, the XO-1 could have a major impact on notebook design. The concept behind the OLPC's development brings outside-the-box thinking and cost-consciousness to a level that we rarely see in portable computing. There are a number of lessons that can be learned the from its unique design and we can already see that some of these concepts have been noticed by manufacturers. 'The biggest attraction to the OLPC project has always been the price of the system. You don't have to be a cynic to understand that the impact of a $100 notebook could be huge and the price has generated the majority of the interest in the project. Notebooks break, they get lost, and they are replaced frequently, so the cheaper, the better. The low price was originally important so that the XO-1 could be produced in large quantities without putting too much of a burden on the buyer but the low cost appeals to everyone.'"
[+]
News: OLPC Launches Buy One, Give One Free Program 282 comments
Tha_Big_Guy23 writes "For the first time, and for a limited period only, people in North America will be able to get their hands on the XO, MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte's rugged little laptop that's designed specifically for children. And for each cutting-edge XO purchased in the West, another will be given to a child in a developing country. For $399, customers can order a laptop for themselves; bundled into the price is the cost of delivering a second XO to a child a poor country."
Submission: Hacking the XO Laptop by Anonymous Coward
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The Subtle Jokes are Always the Best (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Subtle Jokes are Always the Best (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
[joke spoiler] The laptop is silent in normal operation. They only chirp if you launch a specific classroom activity designed to use acoustic signals to measure the distance between two laptops. It's quite neat actually. I guess if you have a classroom of students who all launch this particular application at once, it'll be pretty noisy.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Go on (Score:4, Informative)
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"designed to be hackable"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mind you... I don't consider the things from the article to be hacks. Using the CLI is not hacking, downloading and installing software is not hacking, and hooking a sensor up to a soundcard MIC in and using a monitoring app (could easily have been any ol' sound recording app) to look at the sensor's output is hardly a hack either (using the USB for power isn't a hack by any stretch, as the ports are designed with this very thing in mind). Not to mention that all of these can be done on -any- computer.
I may have missed something more subtle, but I really don't think the XO is any more, or less, hackable than any other computer - and I'm really not too sure about 'hackable' being a design goal for the thing. Cheap, rugged, open and all the other things... but hackable? Especially in terms of hardware?
( Don't mod this up - this is just a question post to which I honestly hope to see an answer that makes me change my mind. If one does get posted, please mod that up instead. ~ aether)
Parent
Re:"designed to be hackable"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh?
Since when does hacking refer only to hardware? And from a software perspective, Sugar is clearly more hackable than anything outside of a Squeak environment. Sure, you can hack anything you like on, say, Ubuntu, but there's a world of difference between that and pressing the "show source" key and modifying the app you're running. And, of course, there's simply no comparison with a closed system like Windows or OS X.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Installing software is not hacking... come on mate, you dropped the 'installing' off your quote. at least be fair.
Yes, I did, but I didn't -- and don't -- consider it misleading because the rest of the post seemed to assume that nothing related to software could be considered "hacking". Though the specific phrase was taken out of context, it was well within the spirit of the larger context.
Not only that, installing software certainly can be hacking. Doing something that wasn't intended by the designer and requires significant cleverness is hacking, even if it's just installing software.
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Installing software is only considered hacking if you wrote the software you installed.
-Don
Re: (Score:2)
Installing software is only considered hacking if you wrote the software you installed.
Do you not consider installing Linux on an XBox a hack?
Re: (Score:2)
Porting Linux to the XBox was a hack, but just installing something that somebody else created isn't a hack.
Just as writing and performing music is creative, but simply pressing the play button on an iPod isn't creative.
-Don
Re: (Score:2)
Re:"designed to be hackable"? (Score:4, Informative)
It's the only laptop I've ever heard of that uses Open Firmware, or any open source BIOS. There are even tutorials [laptop.org] on hacking it in the wiki. Plus, most of the GUI and applications are written in Python and are designed to be relatively easy to modify.
The hardware itself is far from hackable though. There is very little, if anything, that can be modified inside the thing, even though it is easy to disassemble. I imagine its the result of making it as cheap and rugged as possible.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
My iBook would like to have a word with you outside. Actually all Macs that belong to the "New World" generation have had Open Firmware [wikipedia.org]. This stretches all the way to the iMac and the Blue & White Tower, and continues to the last G5 PowerMacs. All iBooks have OF.
EFI [wikipedia.org] has now replaced OF in the MacIntel platform that was introduced with MacBook, MacBook Pro and Mac Pro.
What I had in mind (Score:2)
The XO has no such restrictions - the source is free and changeable, so you can do whatever you want with it.
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I'm not trying to sound like an astroturfer for the EeePC (I like the XO better), but there is an interesting project where someone hardhacked an EeePC with bluetooth, more USB ports, wifi, larger solid-state storage, etc.
It only cost him several hundred dollars to turn the EeePC into a midrange laptop. :p
I'd link to the site, but it is down.
Re: (Score:2)
Well not really. The XO is designed to be hacker resistant. The machine has a security system called bitfrost which is meant to prevent the machine from working if it is stolen, and to also prevent programs from obtaining certain combinations of rights, such as video camera & internet functionality at the same time. I suppose it would be possible to hack programs to work within that framework, but certainly not as
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After all, the XO is designed to be hackable (unlike most hardware today, unfortunately).
Well not really. The XO is designed to be hacker resistant. The machine has a security system called bitfrost which is meant to prevent the machine from working if it is stolen, and to also prevent programs from obtaining certain combinations of rights, such as video camera & internet functionality at the same time. I suppose it would be possible to hack programs to work within that framework, but certainly not as easily as an Asus EEE PC for example where you can pretty much do anything you like.
Yes, but with a developers key virtually all of the bitfrost features can be disabled. Further all combinations of rights are possible, but an unsigned app wanting certain combinations requires manual user involvement. This can be a good thing if it is not too frequent. For example, if an internet application that had nothing to do with video requested video rights, users may become suspicious. However, they would not find it surprising that a videophone application wants to have camera rights, or that it
These are just preliminary hacks (Score:3, Insightful)
Everything about the OLPC is optimized for its intended end use. It isn't just a bunch of computer bits slapped together. If you want to hack the OLPC successfully, you have to take a bunch of stuff into account otherwise the results will be suboptimal.
Example: The browser that comes with OLPC is optimized for the display and works about as well as could be expected. Opera, on the other hand, gets worse results display wise.
Re:These are just preliminary hacks (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you should try one if they offer the "Give-One-Get-One" program again. Maybe the kid who gets the XO you donate will create hacks you might find satisfactory.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
But they're hot grits proof !
(sorry, got carried away there, keep going)
Sad (Score:3, Interesting)
I want to play with the damn thing:P Maybe I will look into getting a a Zipit 2z [zipitwireless.com]. I have the first generation and the second one looks very nice.
Re:Sad (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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What a painful and useless website this product has! Looks like it was desgined by a fourth-grader. Someone, please beat their web staff with a clue-by-four.
Since you've got one of these gizmos, can you give us a quick rundown on what it is and why you find it useful? 'Cause I sure can't figure it out from their site.
Re: (Score:2)
Who are these idiots that make a flash-based piece of crap website with substance at all?
Would be great if there were some specs or even a small amount of real info available instead of the wannabe mac-marketing pictures.
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Who are these idiots that make flash-based piece of crap websites with NO substance at all?
Re: (Score:2)
A better review is here [linuxdevices.com]
It looks like they are caring about the hacker community. Whats cool about it is not only does it support Wifi but SMS messaging.
"not designed with the American consumer in mind" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"not designed with the American consumer in min (Score:2)
Re:"not designed with the American consumer in min (Score:4, Informative)
-kurt-
Parent
Re:"not designed with the American consumer in min (Score:3, Funny)
Re:"not designed with the American consumer in min (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:"not designed with the American consumer in min (Score:3, Interesting)
Ibook G4 12". Best linux laptop you will ever own and I get 5 hours runtime out of mine daily.
and they are cheap on ebay, if you look hard enough. only problem is that they are not rugged or durable.
Now, the XO peaks my interest as a backpacker/bicycle camping laptop. if you can rig a solar charger for these that would be perfect for the outdoorsperson that wants to have a pc with them (blogging from the backwoods W00t!)
anyone know if they are fine with being used open in the r
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It's also very intersting as an ebook reader, in fact, just for that it's worth the deal. It was designed with that functionaly in mind, it's very useful in places where books are often very expensive and not easy to get.
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Now, the XO peaks my interest as a backpacker/bicycle camping laptop. if you can rig a solar charger for these that would be perfect for the outdoorsperson that wants to have a pc with them (blogging from the backwoods W00t!)
IIRC, part of the point of the XO is that it can be used where there is no power. There is a hand crank you use to generate power. A few minutes of cranking gives you a decent charge. There is also an optional solar panel that they sell.
Also, while they're not supposed to be immersed in water, they are rugged enough that supposedly a little rain won't kill them. YMMV.
(the above is based on my recollection of last years story, I'm pretty sure it's accurate but too lazy to go look)
Re:"not designed with the American consumer in min (Score:2)
The hardware is beautiful, but the software needs some work.
Can anyone read Negroponte's mind? (Score:2)
Think of what mesh networking capability can do in a city where many people's hardware does it by default. Would you need to purchase connectivity? Can P2P connectivity do to the telecoms what P2P file transmission has done to the mafiaa? (or at least what the mafiaa believes it is doing to them?) Now could one push such a project where the aim is letting people communicate fr
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I don't doubt that development of the OLPC has been expensive. Worthwhile things frequently are.
OOLPCPLH (Score:3, Funny)
Inferno is running in Xo (Score:3, Interesting)
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Inferno [laptop.org]
Xubuntu on the XO (Score:4, Informative)
I have Xubuntu on it in a dual boot system, with ubuntu on an SD card. Followed moocapiean's directions [olpcnews.com]. Works great. No glitches.
So, as for it being hackable, I'd say that it's easy to *change*, in ways it wasn't originally intended to run. You don't have to break anything to do that, so maybe it's not strictly speaking hackable. But then, nothing open source is hackable.
Depends on your definition hackable.
Installing Opera is "hacking"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Are you sure it's that simple? (I don't know, I'm asking. Maybe it should be, and these guys did a Rube Goldberg for no good reason.) Anyway, from TFA:
XO is another platform (Score:2)
Fake Steve Jobs (Score:2)
one important piece of hacking (Score:2)
Am I paranoid or gullible or does this worrying piece of software exist on the unit? Is anyone working on a patch to remove it?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure if this is true or not but apparently every OLPC unit has a piece of kill code in it which will brick the unit if they think a unit intended for a child has gone to a third party. Even if I was to do the BOGO option, I'd feel incredibly uncomfortable knowing my unit has the capability to be bricked at will.
Am I paranoid or gullible or does this worrying piece of software exist on the unit? Is anyone working on a patch to remove it?
With a developer's key (which you can get from the OLPC project) (it might even come with the laptops purchased trough the program) one can turn off virtually all security features, including the one you are referring to. My understanding is that to get the key requires evidence that you obtained the laptop legitimately, and that the laptop has not been reported as stolen. (It is not entirely clear if the key can unlock the laptop if it has been locked. But the key can definitely disable the anti-theft fea
I want one (Score:2)
I have the money to pay twice the price. Alas I live in Europe...