Novel OS Drives the '$100 laptop' 174
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."
Re:Novell OS? Whoops (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Where can I find the "Sugar" Windowmanager or D (Score:5, Informative)
Look at the OLPC wiki [laptop.org].
Re:Where are the apps? (Score:3, Informative)
http://people.opera.com/howcome/2006/olpc/ [opera.com]
OS is Fedora based (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Most underinstalled thing I've not used in a wh (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Screenshot (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:OLPC Sucks (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Where are the apps? (Score:3, Informative)
Then you can have an opinion.
Re:Most insightful thing I've read in a while (Score:3, Informative)
Re:SWT is basically a GTK+ binding for Java. (Score:1, Informative)
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.