Hacking the XO Laptop

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."

Sad

[WarlockD]

Ordered mine last November and still haven't got it. Getting worried too as the email they sent said it be in before the 15th of this month and the website doesn't seem to do anything when I put my confirm number in....

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.

Inferno is running in Xo

[DrSkwid]

pfft, that's not hacking

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Inferno [laptop.org]

Re:"not designed with the American consumer in min

[Lumpy]

You can buy one right now.

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 rain?

Re:one important piece of hacking

[Tacvek]

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 features.) Further the antitheft feature would be disabled by default on the laptops purchased through this program. Turning it on would require the developer's key or the OLPC master key (if one exists). Normally there would be a country key held by the Education Ministry that could also turn this feature on, but presumably there would be no such key installed on the laptops purchased through this program. Oh yeah, the developer's key is specific to the machine to which it was issued.