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Jobs Offers Free Mac OS X For $100 Laptops
bonch writes "Steve Jobs offered Mac OS X free of charge to the $100 laptop effort by the One Laptop Per Child project. However, his offer was declined because the project was looking for a 100% open source solution. The laptops will now be running on Red Hat Linux on AMD chips."
Gee if I was an OS writer Id do it too - its free publicity!
:D
I feel so glad for the red hat crew right now, because theyre going to get lots and lots of promotion from this
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Does this seem like a little bit of zealotry? I mean, why not use a nice, EASY*TO*USE OS instead of something the under-priviledged people using this machine will have to struggle to learn?
Cemil.
However, his offer was declined because the project was looking for a 100% open source solution. The laptops will now be running on Red Hat Linux on AMD chips.
Sometimes it's tough to stick to your principles. However, in the long run it is always better not to compromise on your beliefs.
Idiots.
Give them a laptop the kinds can more easily use to accomplish their task.
I am an avid Linux user.. But i sure hte hell wouldn't expect most kids to figure out how to configure or install some applications at this point in Linux's development.
Red Hat? It looks like they've been helping, but wouldn't using something like Debian Embedded be better, as it could be less bloated?
> I thought it was offered free? So where's the problem?
Your understanding of the word `free` in this context.
To really get publicity, he shouldoffer it for free to the general public! Now that would get media attention.
While fast for what it does, OSX does quite a bit. Will you really get a 3d accelerated GUI environment to run on a $100 machine? That seems like asking a lot from the hardware which costs so little. While OSX is nice, I've heard that it can be somewhat slow on even a 700mhz iBook. Do we really want to use it on a $100 laptop?
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I don't see any reason why they couldn't take a nice bare-essentials distro, and build to it from the ground up. I've set up Slack boxes to work rather pain-free for computer illiterate users. No worrying about having to use bundled crap.
Oh well, I'm biased. Grain of salt ;)
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
Free installs doesn't mean all upgrades and software will be free and the choices might not be as high when you don't want to spend any $ for the software that you'll need to go along with the OS.
By choosing Red Hat not only do they have a free OS and practically guaranteed free upgrades, they'll also have a huge selection of free software to get maximum use out of the laptops.
It is akin to offering cigarettes to school children for free. You get them hooked early then they pay for the rest of their life (yes I borrowed this from Stallman, and poorly paraphrased too I might add). These guys firmly believe common software should be open source. Especially those wanting to find an opportunity with computers, open source offers them a free way to learn coding methods and such that they may not have access to in their schools. They get free upgrades t their machines if they wish, and do no have to fall behind in the newer software. It is a win-win situation for them.
Whether you believe in open source or not, it is hard to argue it will not benefit those who are receiving these laptops. In the future if they want to use MacOS they can pay for it themselves and leave Linux behind if they feel it will make them more productive or happy.
As much as I love my Mac, I must admit that the last thing a developing country needs is to be helplessly tied to a major corporation. If Microsoft offered them Windows and was accepted, we'd all be up in arms.
Red Hat, however, doesn't take an overwhelming amount of system resources, which I presume is ever so slightly important for something that's supposed to be able to be powered by a hand powered generator. Besides, Red Hat is also donating a couple of million to this project, something which Steve Jobs doesn't seem to be doing.
Uh, how about kids who are actually using the notebooks to get their homework done... and not needing to FIX their linux installs at all!
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Well their reason for not selecting it might be zealotry, but I have to beleive that they can create a Redhat based distribution that will work with their hardware all the time. That is part of the Apple secret. If your hardware is a small handpicked set, then having an OS that just works is that much easier.
Think Deeply.
Be afraid, be very afraid..
And Mr. Negroponte, after meeting with Mr. Gates, now says, "The machine will run anything, including Windows."
MS might be planing a way to ursurp all those laptops after they've been distributed. Hope Jobs does the same.
It is said that the Linux window managers are imitating Windows. Could it be said that it was really Windows imitating X/Motif/Open look? Didn't windowing systems happen on Unix workstations before they happened on PCs, and wasn't Windows trying to be more like the workstations than like the Mac?
For starters, the Mac hangs on to the application program menu as this shared resource where the app that gets the focus also gets control over the single on-screen menu. That may have been fine back in the day of small screens and limited pixels, but in these days of monster displays and ever more pixels, for crying out loud, give each app its own menu as is done by the Linux window managers and by Windows. The Mac system of you have to think which app has control over the menu is too much a distraction. Interestingly, Java apps running under OS-X have their own menus along with a bare-bones Mac main menu.
You had a fantastic little platform in the Newton. The profile of the educational version was perfect. If you would simply provide such a platform again, at a reasonable price, and provide development tools such as HyperCard, you wouldn't need the hundred dollar laptop effort. YOu could create your own!
Making it easier for us to contact your company with such proposals would be nice also.
Morton's Steakhouse offered to give all of the kids a free steak dinner, but the project declined, saying they needed to stick to their previous decision of powdered eggs for everyone...
I think you'll find it's more like:
Fluffy Bunny's Candy Shop offered to give all of the kids a free lolly bag, but the project declined, saying they needed to stick to their previous decision of providing fresh vegetables, books on farming, ploughing and harvesting equipment, irrigation systems and bags of seed for everyone.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Perhaps you could point out some open chipsets and video cards they could have taken advantage of, given their budgetary and quantity needs?
Unbelievable the reactions.
Apple offers it's OS-X free and everybody in this sections says take it.
Imagine Microsoft would offer Windows for free for this device? Everybody cries out loud.
(You can already see some reactions like that around this reaction)
I think it's very wise not to tie yourself to any vendor.
With commercial OS makers, you will have to hope they keep the terms the same in a couple of years and as Seymour Papert said: you can't tinker.
It's also a bit weird that Mr Jobs refuses 3rd party hardware makers to use OSX and now he suddenly 'donates' OS-X...
Apple, for offering up their hard work for free for a great idea. Apple wants people to be able to have a good, modern system for people to work with that is easy to learn and use.
Thank you, Apple.
I also admire the laptop project for turning them down. The point of a computer is not just to "do things" - it's to learn that things can be done. It wasn't pocket calculators that changed the world, it was readily-available, general-purpose, programmable computers.
Having a tool you can study and modify in great depth is a wonderful thing. It's not just a tinker-toy set, it's a tinker-toy set and ready-made large-scale projects *in that set* for you to study and alter/improve upon.
This is the same thing that brought about "hacker boom" of the TRS 80, of the Apple ][, and, yes, even early DOS - except this is larger scale, more sophisticated, and more flexible.
The $100 laptop is not about writing school reports, it's not about web logs, and it's not about accounting software. It's "here's what you can do, here's the tools to do it, and here's how it can be done - come join us."
That is the ultimate goal of Free software, and it can not be accomplished using Mac OS X, no matter how excellent a system OS X is.
I think sir, you will find that kids are FAR more adept at grasping unknown concepts than you and me. We have our ways and are set in them. To learn something new, we need to get away from what we are used to. Kids don't have that disadvantage. Believe me, I know from experience. They grasp Linux as fast as they grasp Windows. From what i've seen (I setup a linux computer lab for an orphanage in India and helped them decide the computer syllabus for the school), Linux helps more because the brighter kids start poring through the man pages and start mucking around with shell commands and scripting after some time (all we told them was that if they needed to know about something, use "info " or "man " - nothing else). They actually learn from it and sometimes they ask you about options that you didn't know existed :) With Windows, the help from both Windows and the command shell isn't too great and the chance to experiment isn't really there. They also appreciate choice. Give them an option to choose their window manager at the login screen and they will go through every single one! Why? Because they can and because they're curious.
:) Sure, there will be those who dont want to learn. That is something that won't change regardless of WHAT you're trying to teach them. But for those that DO want to learn, anything will do.
Sure, Mac OS X is a great OS that just works. Sure its a real steal at no cost. But for kids, the cost of the OS doesnt matter. The fact that it just works is good. But what they really want to do is get into the internals and rip it apart to see what makes it tick. What better candidate than something that's open source? They dont have deadlines to meet. They are not bothered by customers who inist on their documents being in the MS Office format. For kids, it's about the concepts. If it doesn't work, they'll try for some time to see why. They will ask you why it doesn't work. They will try to fix it. If they can't they will ask you. They will listen while you tell them what's wrong. If you can fix it, they will watch you doing it very carefully, trying to understand what you are doing and asking 100 questions in the process. If you can't fix it, they forget about it and move to something else.
Do not underestimate the kids' thirst for knowledge and their ability to acquire it
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Actually, having had a lengthy private conversation with the gentleman, I think I can say that RMS is a sane fellow with a sincere belief that liberal programs help people. /usr/portage/distfiles, but I do look at them now and then. Having that latitude is not to be casually foregone, for all OS X is eyecandyville.
I shared with him that quote from Civ IV "The bureuacracy is expanding to support the needs of an expanding bureaucracy" but the point seemed to elude him. Possibly he focuses on the results, rather than the ethical vacuum existing within the Beltway.
At any rate, among the problems with the opaque OS X binary is that people can't learn much from it. I can't say that I have spelunked deeply within all of the tarballs in
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
We want to educate these children, not torture them with litigation and incompatibilties.
(or they could just admit that the whole thing is a giant pile of vapourware and has only gotten any attention because it has the MIT name associated with it -- just like everything else the Media Center "produces")
Free Hans!
I have to agree with this. I recently needed a second computer at home, so i broke out my old 400Mhz G3 PowerMac. I installed OS 10.3 on it and with only 128M of ram it's still pretty fast. It impresses me every time I use it. For web surfing and email there isint a whole lot of difference between it and my PowerBook G4 1Ghz.
My sig can beat up your sig.
Probably their payoff would be cohorts of students who were weaned on RH Linux moving into the business world, in countries where the IT infrastructure is minimal or based on pirated software. Instead of the usual dilemma of lock in to MS these countries face when they want to go legit, they'll be free to choose Linux if they want. MS will have to fight for the market instead of having it fall in their laps as it does now due to lack of support or familiarity with anything else.
And how, exactly, does the fact that they're donating money indicate that they're not in it for the publicity?
He didn't say it wasn't publicity. He said it wasn't FREE publicity.
Red Hat is not getting free publicity. They are buying publicity for two million dollars. That's pretty fucking far from free.
Then again, Red Hat has been stretching the definition of "free" in a lot of ways over the last couple years, heh.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Doesn't it seem like pro-proprietary software zealotry to think that refusing an opportunity to lose one's software freedom is pitched as "zealotry"? No, framing this issue as zealotry won't help you understand what is really going on.
Ease of use is not freedom. Ease of use is a subjective assessment (everything is probably roughly equally hard to learn when you have no experience with computers) that doesn't address educational goals to the degree software freedom does. Any software can be made easier to use and people don't need to rely on proprietors to do it for us. We can and should do it for ourselves and share the results with people (particularly those who will share their improvements with us). This is part of the spirit that got us the free software OSes we enjoy today.
What Apple is offering here is a gratis opportunity to put on some handcuffs and choose between a set of masters. Some of MacOS X is free software but not all of it. Why subject the kids to a computer they can't control completely? Why help them grow an addiction to proprietary software that will be hard to break? I realize that /. readers tend to think this way only of Microsoft, but Apple is offering a comparable deal here: no software freedom, more like "the first bite is free".
For more on this, I recommend reading Why schools should use exclusively free software.
Digital Citizen
You can bet your bottom dollar that Red Hat is seeing dollar signs out of this deal. Big dollar signs.
/. saying, "Eh??? But <<Insert distribution name here>> sux0rs. Redhat is so much better!", just like half the gits who have commented on this story.</rant>
Yes, you're right. Big red dollar signs to the tune of $2,000,000. The only dollar signs they are likely to see out of this are years down the track, when these students are making purchasing decisions for their employers...
<rant>...or putting up annoying posts on
What you neglect to mention is that there's a fundamental difference between hardware and software. Hardware costs money every time you make a copy of it. Copies of software can be "made" for virtually nothing.
for a kid, something like GIMP is MORE than enough...heck, they will use the default paintbrush tool and the default color and start drawing. At the end, the drawing is a bunch of squiggles. But to them, it's an ice monster. They will ask you how to change colors. You show them, they're happy. They will find out the rest in their time. You then show them gradients....they play with them...Sometimes you get a little ahead of yourself and try to explain to them layers, opacity and filters...they lose interest. Why? because they want to draw their ice monster and all they need is 3 shades of blue.
With kids, what I've seen is that their imagination plays a MAJOR role in what they do. So, something even as limited as paintbrush is good enough to them. The ones who want to learn more about drawing will do so. They will come to you with questions. You show them how to do what they want and they will remember because that is what they are interested in.
Same with word processors. They will play with font sizes and bold, italics and underline fonts and will explore every button on the word processor to see what it does. They'll use character and line formatting to write "their story". Maybe a few figures here and there. it won't be structured and it won't need a table of contents - and openoffice is more than capable for those needs. They are also not bothered by it's sluggishness...to them...that's the way it works...no complaints.
Its the same with something like inkscape...as long as they can print their pictures or save them to work on them again, they're happy.
And yes, I do know what you're talking about and when stuff goes wrong, they will wait for you to fix it and then they're happy to get back to what they were doing. One thing with Linux stuff...you generally only have to fix it once. Once it works, it works well. That suits kids perfectly.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
You can bet your bottom dollar that Red Hat is seeing dollar signs out of this deal. Big dollar signs.
/sarcasm
Yeah, because the kids that are buying/getting $100 laptops will surely turn around and license RHEL for thousands of dollars.
Way to sidestep the global marketing brainwashed groupthink and reject the use of sex to sell products! You certainly are creative and revolutionary. Well done.
....Mac OS X, especially free, would have been the best possible choice....
Would that choice not depend on what the primary uses that this $100 machine were to be used for? Also would that include the iLife programs and would there be enough RAM to run those? Certainly for e-mail and web surfing OSX would likely work quite well. OSX set up as a limited user is very easy to use by almost anybody. If the $100 hardware were certified by Apple to truly work with OSX for the intended uses, the rejection of the offer smacks of pride by someone associated with that project.
All theory is gray
Because they may be doing it for higher causes. Some people, even those in corporations, still would like a better world for their kids.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Open Chipsets? Are there such a thing? You might as well build a whole new architecture. The foundation of this project is standing on the shoulders of older technology that is somewhat tried and true, and now cheap to manufacture. It's pointless to design new chipsets from scratch.
"10001110101 - periodic table with a centerpiece of mind" -Clutch
"very well?" You must have a LOT of patience. I've placed OS X on older G3 Macs, and I've found it incredibly difficult to be productive. Processes take forever.
I can hardly stand OS X on an older G4 with 256 megs of RAM.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
They want an operating system "that can be tinkered with," which displays the standard Slashbot geek assumptions:
1.) That everybody is a goddamned operating systems kernel engineer instead of a user who wants to get some fucking computer work done. 95% of you people have never even modified a single line of your local Linux kernel source tree.
2.) That there will always be a majority of kids who aren't interested in staring at lines of source code to feel good about their "software freedom." Give me a break.
3.) That the tiny minority of kids who would actually be interested in Linux and 100% open source would just wipe OS X off the laptop and install Linux for free anyway.
4.) You guys obsess over making every little kid a coder, when XCode/GCC ships free with OS X, and these kids could have been designing the next great Cocoa apps. Cocoa simply whips the butt of everything else out there.
5.) There are TONS more creative kids than coder kids, and think of all the incredible creative stuff that would have been nurtured here. iLife ships for free with OS X. Now these kids won't get to have Garageband for free, or iPhoto for free, or iMovie and iDVD for free. But hey, now they get to experience the joy of having to install two entire desktop environments and libraries just to run each other's apps! Have fun with a "package management system" and a fragmented filesystem hierarchy that dumps files all over the place instead of in well-designed bundles!
6.) Which leads to my final point. These kids will be taught the wrong ways to do things instead of the right ways. App bundles, real application APIs, real drag-and-drop, etc....
But, the designers' wishes triumphed. Oh? What's this? Red Hat donated $2 million to this project, and now they're getting used over OS X? Ah, that's why. So much for free and open. Only the designers got what they wanted. I guarantee a kid given a choice and presented both systems would have gone with Apple...
"Sufferin' succotash."
They are doing just that. The fact that RedHat is doing it, doesn't mean they are just installing a stock Fedora release on the boxes.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You'll notice that you said some people in corporations. The official stance of the corporation however is not to give everyone a warm fuzzy feeling inside. The only purpose that a corporation has is to make profit. Yes many individuals want to create a better world. Some of those individuals work in corporations. Those individuals should be commended for their forward thinking views.
The corporation would be pissed if it participated in any community service that did not receive any attention, publicity, mind share, or free advertising. The bricks and stones of a corporation headquarters don't shine a little brighter when it has helped another person.
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
but why? That doesn't make much sense in the context of this project. if the goal is to help people - why put this software ideology and zealotry ahead of the wants or needs of users?
Despite all the Mac fanboy protestations, going with OS X would have been a step backwards.
What the hell does this have to do with "Mac fanboys"? It seems that it is the Open Source fanboys who are damaging this idea by excluding helpful tools, based on their narrow ideology and zealotry. OS X has many advantages. Linux has many advantages. They are not mutually exclusive, if it were not for this ridiculous thinking. Why not allow people to choose? Do poor people have to have their decisions made for them, unlike the lucky wealthy people? Do we know what's best for them? Imperial hubris.
If your plan is to indoctrinate the developing nations and poorer people through software - then you would be better off not bothering.
... and then they built the supercollider.
"In one Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home."
http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html
So this $100 laptop does not necessarily have to be used as a computer.
Heck, if they can overclock it, maybe it can be a hotplate too!
Linux is just as easy to use as OS X (I use both), especially GNOME (which is designed according to many of the principles of classic MacOS). Ease of configuration is irrelevant here --- these will be closed-box systems that come pre-configured. They won't be any different from cell phones that use Linux, in this regard.
The decision to stick with open source is not a matter of ideology. The whole point of this exercise is to come up with a computer that can be provided to developing nations without "strings attached". That's why they're working so hard on the hardware to get the price down to $100. They're not trying to start a charity to give away computers --- if they were, they could easily use second-hand computers, or donated machines. Using OS X means depending on the charity of Apple. What happens if Apple decides to withdraw support for the program? What happens when new versions of the OS come out --- will Apple provide those for free? Using an OS that isn't tied to a corporation is the only way to deliver these machines the way they want to deliver them.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You can't fix a country from the bottom up. It's a losing endeavor. Clean water, while a problem, isn't the root cause. It's fine to treat the symptoms, but thinking like "we could supply a family with safe water for years for the price of one computer" is counter-productive. Without that computer, we will have to supply that family with water, permanently.
Let me tell you a story. There are dams in parts of Bangladesh that are designed to keep out flood waters. Ever year, the government spends money repairing those damns. Every year, many of them fail. Why? The contractors are corrupt --- they never fix the damns completely, because they know if they fail, they'll have more business next year. So what's the solution. To keep patching the damn? Or addressing the corruption?
Bangladesh has two big problems: political corruption, and economic stagnation. Fix these two, and while the other problems won't magically fall into place, it will allow progress to be made on the rest. One of the best ways to fix these two problems is education. Bangladesh needs to develop a nucleus of talent which can build businesses that can act as the nucleus for economic recovery. Moreover, Bangladesh needs to develop local talent. As it is, large numbers of well-educated people leave the country for Europe or the United States. This drain, in conjunction with the poor economy and poorly-educated populace (along with rather deep-seated cultural issues) is what allows the continuation of the political corruption that strangles the country.
I say these things as a Bangladeshi who now resides in the United States. Most Bangladeshis, at least the educated ones, will tell you the same thing --- while water safety is a noble endeavor, it's not arsenic that's killing that country.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
...instead of getting things done and interacting with the rest of the world, these kids will have the pleasure of fucking around with RPM dependencies and libc incompatibilities. Great, principled move fellas.