Submitted by Christopher Blizzard, one of OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) developers posted on his blog the picture of the working OLPC prototype running a stripped Fedora Core 5 and the test board provided by Quanta Computers. More pictures available. This demonstration shows Fedora Core 5 running on a 500mhz processor, 128 MB of RAM, and a half a GB of flash storage.
I personally think that this is one of the most innovative computing projects to be underway in the last 25 years.
Not just innovative, the industry reaction has been nothing short of rabid. Major industry giants have, out of nowhere, grown a sudden ‘concern’ about computer access in third world countries.
However Microsoft and Intel see new ‘consumers’, not new programmers. The OLPC project is the one that will succeed. It gives the power of a tool into the hands of kids, rather than give them something they can only do what they are told to do with – and at a rediculous price.
Microsoft and Intel remind me greatly of loan sharks at the moment. Ready to step in and show their support via a large down payment and vendor lock-in for the rest of your life.
In addition, here is the description of Sugar interface made by Fedora developers (also Red Hat employees)
http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/?p=200
and OLPC news:
http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptopnews.nsf/2e76a5a80bc36cbf85256cd7…
one of key quote:
The distribution continues to get smaller; it is now down to about 250MB uncompressed (from 400MB last week). (With JFFS2 compression, we can expect this to go down another 50%!) There is still low-hanging fruit left to pull out of the image, including bitmap fonts we don’t use (7MB), the X font server (1MB) and Perl (30MB). Removing the fat out of other system resources will require more effort. We’ll continue to report on the ever-shrinking distribution in the coming weeks.
Note to editors: feel free to post the above article in news sections.
Come on, we should be giving them the stuff to do Linux From Scratch.
Heck, just give and screw driver and some parts make ’em build the thing themselves.
(psst…
)
how adorable … !
I want one & thed we great kids gifts all over the world 8) – thed possibly be the Ipod of laptops for a short while were they to ship in “developed” countries
Hey with the spicky bits it reminds me of BSD … cutage major ! … I loooooove O R A N G E
BTW will this stripped FC5 be available – a low memory using FedoraCore ?
Im more interested in the interface they will have – with lots of visual clues etc to make navigation easy .. ?
Power management features … ?
Applications included – I wnder if OO is included
– ?
Any preset bookmarks or pictures .. more ads for coke .. health information on the desktop … daily news rss feeds … ????
Edited 2006-05-24 19:20
BTW will this stripped FC5 be available – a low memory using FedoraCore ?
Read my above post. You can alos get a preview by visiting http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CategoryOLPC
Im more interested in the interface they will have – with lots of visual clues etc to make navigation easy .. ?
The interface is called Sugar.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/eti/2006/05/001414.php
Note the similarity with Maemo interface from Nokia 770 meaning that some Nokia developers are involved in the project.
Power management features … ?
Probably similar to Gnome-Power-Manager.
Applications included – I wnder if OO is included
– ?
Mostly lightweight versions such as Abiword, Gecko browser like Epiphany to name a few.
Any preset bookmarks or pictures .. more ads for coke .. health information on the desktop … daily news rss feeds … ????
Remember this is a educational laptop. You will find answers inside posted link.
Edited 2006-05-24 19:56
I wonder why it is only meant for developing nations. I would love to buy one for my kids. I wonder how the parents in developed nations feel about this?
There was talk at some point to make the OLPC available for developing nations at a higher cost (around 200USD IIRC). Don’t know if that’s still available, though.
Then again, not to sound preachy, but I wonder how parents in developing nations feel about you getting clean water and easy access to education and medical care…
It’s all a matter of perspective, I guess.
But can it run Linux?
half a GB of flash storage
The price for flash memory chips have fallen through the floor this spring. You can now get 1GB MMC/SD card for just 21 EUR (incl. VAT) in retail sales.
http://www.alternate.de/
Select hardware, speichermedien
So buying the flash memory chips itself in volume will even be cheaper, and the difference between 512MB and 1GB will be down to a few EUR, a bad point to save on.
It is good that they aim for squeezing everything into small memory, but they should upscale the flash memory before final design.
100 laptop…I don’t see how it really can be done, even given the limited specs of this machine. The screen alone must cost at least 50% of the price of the whole computer. Even then, the company that produces the machine won’t make anything on it…so it looks like it must be done just out of principle…
Dano
“Even then, the company that produces the machine won’t make anything on it…so it looks like it must be done just out of principle…”
I’d love to see more companies just doing something out of principle. The world is so greedy and profitt oriented that humanity always comes last if at all.
“The world is gready” & “humanity comes last” .
Isnt that one of those sentences that negates itself ?
We Western “developed” humans make up that world .
We push for material wealth because we think it is the way to be happy – I guess .
Our societies are based around money for stuff exchanges – more money -> more stuff (so many different kinds of stuff ..
)… .
Are there any other ways of operating society – a currency that can not be accumalated so easily & which many can have –
hey its Star Trek – the federation is based on KNOWLEDGE exchange not money –
– ?
Are these kinda systems used anywhere ?
U accumalate knowledge & for that you get points which can then be exchanged for money ?
🙂
They make it up in the volume.
This is usually just a joke comment when I say it, but in this case I mean it.
Made in just small volumes this machine will cost well over the $100 goal. But if you up the volume you can just get down to the $100 range for production.
However,there already is talk about selling the same machine here in N.A. in the $200-300 range. At that point every machine sold here is gravy to the manufactor. So good infact, that even if the extra money is used to send free machines to developing countries as also has been suggestted, the sheer buying power makes the companies other products more profitable.
Imagine you are a small company selling far less than a million machines a year. What are your costs per unit? Next you win this contract and are selling a extra 10,000,000 extra machines a year. What happens to your unit costs? Even if the contract forces you to make and sell those 10,000,000 machines at a zero profit/losses the extra buying power means your regular sales items rake in at a far higher profit margin than before.
Also when you include the new equipment/plant/employees needed you will quickly find all sort of local governments/banks offering deals that they never offered before.
There are big bucks in non-profits!