Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Looking to Run Windows on OLPC
pete314 writes "Microsoft has been provided with a number of test models of Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop per Child computers and is trying to get Windows installed on them. The current design runs a custom version of Red Hat's Fedora Linux. Running Windows will take quite a bit of additional memory: the OLPC has 512Mb of Flash, where XP requires a minimum of 1.5Gb storage."
I thought the OLPC project had definativly decided to be open source so that no company would have control.
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Why wouldn't they just try to run some variant of Windows Fundamentals on them?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Why don't they run Windows 2000 on them?!? Wouldn't that use less memory?!? It seems stable enough to run (I still run Win2K, I used to run XP), and perfect for the OLPC systems, though M$ wants it to run the latest OS, bloody EG0's.
Bundled with level of corruption in OLPC-buying countries it seems pretty scary.
The author of the article (and slashdot) quote the disk space required for XP, but why wouldn't they use XP embedded on a device like this? According to Wikipedia XP Embedded only needs "32MB Compact Flash, 32MB RAM". They should be able to get it running even without using the SD expansion slot (although that certainly wouldn't hurt).
The borg^H^H^H^Hmicrosoft are not fair.
Won't someone PLEASE think of the children? Ohhh, looks like Microsoft is.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
One Laptop $100, One Copy of Windows ~$150, Seeing Microsoft Profit from the Third World...Priceless
This is Microsoft wanting to get a grip of a future potential market, and locking them in. That's what this is all about; before you know it they get slapped with activating their laptops, DRM-enabled features and what not.
I really hope the OLPC-project wont get seduced by the money Microsoft is willing to put into this, it wont pay off in the long run.
It's clear Microsoft wants to do anything to stop alternatives from spreading; just imagine a future where these OLPCs have sprouted a whole new generation of Linux developers who now write code to feed themselves instead. But they don't know Windows, and Microsoft has an entire continent of PC users who they cannot sell licenses to, while they're writing their own applications building further on an alternative to Microsoft.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Both instances of the letter 'b' in the article summary should be uppercase 'B'.
B = bytes, b = bits.
What happens when thousands of these laptops are connected to the internet by little kids with no prior experience? What next, install AVG, Spybot, and the rest before distribution? Teach kids about spyware, bots and viruses before they even learn how to browse?
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
I bet Microsoft gets together a version of Windows for OLPC and then offers it to OLPC users for free or next to nothing. That's how it works, they give you the first copy free and then you get hooked -- pretty soon you're turning tricks in the alley just to get the security updates. I've seen it a thousand times.
If they can fit Windows on a Pocket PC device, some suitable modification of this might work on the OLPC PC. Pocket PCS between 32 to 128 MBytes of RAM and 32+ MBytes of ROM so would fit nicely. Remove the touch screen functionality, add some keyboard and other minimum functionality needed and you should still be well within the memory requirements.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
512Mb graphics memory is exactly what Vista needs to run properly!
Oh, wait a minute...
If all you had to do was install a fresh copy of XP on the machines then MS wouldn't need to do any work in porting the system to OLPC. Almost certainly by cutting out inessential features MS could reduce the memory demands for XP significantly, though given Mc's notorious interdependence problems perhaps not enough. But this is why MS has a specialized mobile OS just for this sort of problem.
Sure OLPC is inclined to go with a FOSS solution and has some good justifications for doing so but I don't see how they in good conscience could refuse an offer from MS to pay for some *huge* number of the laptops complete with a guarantee of a free version of windows for all the OLPC machines.
Whatever I might think of the technical and design features of MS software it does get the job done not to mention it's extreme ubiquity means that knowing how to use windows is a more useful skill than knowing how to use some random other interface. The worries about MS controlling the project could easily be dealt with via the right sort of contract, and unlike other corporate agreements signing a contract in bad faith or weaseling out of it in this situation would just be too horrible from a PR standpoint for MS to ever consider. So as much as I might wish all these kids were brought up using Linux if MS is going to give away millions of these devices just for running windows the offer should be taken.
Hopefully more companies start taking a long term view of things and donating their products to the third world to prepare for when they become consumers.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
As long as it has a programming language included, and a course on how to use it (Basic has lots of open courses available ... and I kinda don't think C++ would be very appropriate :-p)
As much as I hate Windows, I think it's unfair to imply that it requires so much more than Linux does. I've installed Fedora before and it isn't small - definitely not small enough to fit on a 512MB footprint. But RedHat altered it so that it would require less. Likewise, Microsoft could alter Windows to require less. The big difference is that anyone has the right to alter Linux whereas Microsoft is the only one that can do that for Windows.
I can't quite imagine how this would work. Windows is a much harder OS to maintain in the long run. All this virus, spyware and adware crap - those poor kids' lives are bad enough without it.
Besides that, I don't trust MS's intentions. I bet they are now working on how to squeeze some money out of this in the future. This is not exactly what I've expected from OLPC.
I thought the OLPC had to be about 100 USD and was lately priced 150 USD at costs. Raising the memory to 1,5 Gb of memory will not make it any cheaper.....
Or is MicroSoft also willing to donate the costs for additional memory? This would make them even more suspicious, paying more money to get THEIR software to run on it.
All good and all about the OLPC, but in a capitalistic world we are in, there are to many huge businesses involved who wouldn't care less for their own employees. But when it comes to 'charity' they are on the front row. Scary. Teach children about morality, not about capital power and Marxism.
- Unomi -
You might be a tad disappointed then.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of versions of Windows, including Windows Embedded and Windows CE, which run in a lot less RAM and reside on a lot less Flash. And even from the "normal" XP, there are a _lot_ of things which can be removed without the end user noticing much.
Sure, at that point you can still do the retarded thing and go "ha ha, so the full install didn't fit and they had to strip it down", but may I point out that the average Linux distro is even bigger than the full XP? SuSE Linux for example (to use an example from everyone's favourite, Novell) comes on a DVD or more than half a dozen CDs. Compressed. So that wouldn't fit there either.
As for slow, I don't know where you get your data from, but comparing my gaming XP box to my SuSE Linux 10.0 box, XP actually boots faster, and the GUI is quite a bit more responsive than X with either KDE or Gnome too.
I think MicroSoft's best bet at success would be a heavily stripped down version of Windows CE.
It might come as a surprise, but some of the devices running Windows CE actually have less RAM and ROM/Flash than an OLPC. So why would MS need to strip it down?
So please, let's cut it down on the arrogant-fanboy-disconnected-from-reality act. MS does have a lot of faults, but being stupid isn't one of them. They _do_ employ some of the best programmers, and can (and do) throw ridiculous amounts of money at a problem, if they really want to. And both Windows and compilers are something they have two decades of experience with.
They already know how to compile something for size instead of unrolling and inlining everything for performance. It's not like they have yet to discover "wow, there's this 'size' option in the compile options of MSVC."
And they already have the experience with porting and stripping Windows to a variety of platforms. They actually used to have NT versions for pretty much everything including RISC and a few other architectures. The XBox 360 itself isn't an Intel machine either. And there even was a version of CE that ran on the Dreamcast.
The only question is whether they want to, exactly what they want to do there, and how much effort do they want to put into a computer whose price would more than double if they actually sold a Windows OEM license with it.
Then again, they already know how to play the fake-charity card by giving away a 50 cent CD and counting it as the price of a full Windows license generously donated. (In addition to some real charity too, it must be said.) So they could just give away a locked down version of Windows to some kids who otherwise couldn't afford a Windows computer anyway, thus ensuring that a whole generation in those countries grows on Windows and Windows Media Player formats. It's good marketting. _And_ write it off a some hundreds of millions of dollars in Windows licenses generously donated to the poor countries.
On the whole, I wouldn't be surprised if the effort right now isn't getting Windows installed, but figuring out how best to lock it down and how much and what bait they can build into it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Win 95 would be very happy with 512MB. So would CE, I guess.
But the real question is why has Linux got so bloated ? When I started using Redhat, it ran very well in 16MB, with X. At the time Linux the system you installed to revive your obsolete PC with 4MB of RAM. And you could recompile your kernel with those 4MB of RAM. Now that Linus has moved to making multiprocessor kernels, you'de better buy an up to date machine to install any current distro.
I can't wait for OLPC, because the necessity for supporting it will mean the resurgence of a slimware distro.
This is not a signature.
Memo to Microsoft
Why should children get second-class operating systems like XP when Microsoft should be getting Vista to run on this baby. The children deserve the best and you say that Vista is your "best operating system ever". Please Keep in mind that children are very visually oriented when it comes to learning especially in the early years so it needs to run Aero in full mode of operation.
Like a 'pharmaceutical' dealer or cigarette company they are trying any trick in the play book to extend their 'product'.
First hit will be free.
Back end for networking will be free at first.
Then the small hits start.
Upgrades. Support costs.
Before you know it, low cost open source is turned into a revenue stream.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
They won't stop until every computer is running Windows with its activation and DRM garbage. Other countries hate America enough, do we really need to introduce these poor people to the woes of Windows and corporations? I hope OLPC gives a big fat "fuck you" to Microsoft. This is one big and very rare chance we can make an alternative widespread, don't ruin it!
Consider these unofficial tools:
1) nLite can minimize the storage requirements
2) LitePC has managed to produce working installations of Windows (ok 9x only but still you can run most modern Windows apps) at 9MB flash cards (http://www.litepc.com/eos.html)
It's relatively easy to compress 2K to fit into 512MB and still leave space for apps.
Got some sand in your vagina?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Geez, can we not mix up our terminology like we're a bunch of noobs? Does Windows require quite a bit more memory? Or hard drive space?
As much as I dislike Microsoft, this is an unfair comparison.
Does the OLPC box need support for token ring network, color laser printers, and digitizing tablets? No. But people buying XP might. Microsoft offers a version of Windows that consumer electronics manufacturers can slim down, if hardware resources are limited.
In fact, you can buy an RCA model RM4100 thin client directly from Microsoft. It's a thin client with only 128MB of RAM, and only a 64MB Compact Flash (SanDisk SDCFB-64-201-00).
The RM4100 has a serious memory leak problem whenever one visits a website using Flash - but failing to free up memory when you're done with it is careless programming, not a hardware limitation.
As a OLPC contributor (see this) and as a friend of an OLPC staffer, I have to say this is a pointless endeavour. The OLPC staff won't use Windows because it's too insecure, and isn't free.
Remember, they want to send MILLIONS of laptops into the field and avoid downtime caused by viruses, bugs, overflows, etc. The laptops are going to be hardened down quite a bit so even if a user app is exploited the laptop as a whole is still ok. They're using GNU/Linux for more reasons than the fact it costs $0 to license. They have to be able to recover from flaws in the field, of which they want to have precious few of.
And besides, even if Windows were secure, they would have to give away fully functional copies for FREE to make the budget. Even charging OLPC $1 for the license would hurt the budget ($1 * millions of laptops == no good). In short, there isn't really a "market" here other than trying to expose another generation to inferior software.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
"The latest developments in XPLite now see clean installations of Windows XP in under 350MB..."
http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html/
Windows XPe, as the wikipedia entry at which you point says, is a componentized version of Windows. By striping out components, you can reduce it to the bare minimum - just the strict minimum needed to run Win 32 API with the specific drivers needed for such hardware.
.NET Framework, ASP.NET, IIS, Media Player.
:
And that's where the problem is : Once you've crammed Windows XP inside 32MB of flash, what do you do ?
According to the entry, Win XPe is mostly used for embed device. The kind of device on which you run one single function-specific application, and Win XPe is only here to provide kernel functionnality.
You can use it in ATMs in which case WinXPe is only here to provide a kernel, a graphics driver, an input driver and a network stack. And all you run next to it is a single application that does all the ATM stuff. And nothing else.
Robotics is another even better exemple. Sure it can be cramed into 32MB : because, all you need is a kernel to provide a communication stack and memory management. There's even no display and regular HID devices.
Compared to the Linux world, that's akin to having a system with only a striped down Kernel (with only a couple of necessary drivers compiled in), busybox (to provide all the necessary tools with minimal foot-print) and a micro C-lib and nothing more. All of which you run along a few simplified server inside a router. It's something you could run on This kind of boards.
*BUT* that's *NOT* what the OLPC needs. The OLPC needs to provide a full desktop environment. They a GUI. The need a desktop. They need application to browse the PC, they need graphical wizards to connect to the WiFi mesh. They need a browser, they need a mail clients, and mayber IRC and/or IM too. They need software to display ebooks. They need an office suite that covers most functionality that the kids need to write their own stuff. They need various developing environment (classical C/C++, scripts like Python or Perl, maybe web scripting like PHP) because, all OLPC was initially about was to encourage the kids to hack. Maybe also some multimedia apps.
Not just a single application.
Does this exist on WinXPe ? Yes because it's fully compatible with it's older brother, WinXP Pro. You have plenty of microsoft apps already available that could provide such functionality : Windows Desktop, Explorer, IE7, Outlook express, MSN, XForm viewer, Office, Visual Studio,
But can it all get crammed together inside the OLPC ? Hell no. You'll need a rather beefy setup with eleventeen gazillions of gigabytes just to install this madness. (And that's all functionnality most non-custom Linux distros offer out of the box for a foot-print of only a few gigs).
What the OLPC needs isn't the Microsoft equivalent of an embed linux. What it needs is something similar to Damn Small Linux (or, I guess, what the current customized Red Hat is), id est : most desktop functionnality crammed inside a small space of only a few dozens of MB. *Not* GB.
And thats something WinXPe fails to provide. It only provides the envrionment (kernel, etc.) not all the apps.
If they want to cram WinXPe inside, the would have to put along specialized applications. Applications that already exists in the open-source world, do the needed task nicely, but are NOT made by Microsoft. I would be mostly like just replacing the kernel on the customized Linux distro with a Windows Kernel, and keeping the same apps. And admitting defeat, that they can't provide a fully microsoft alternative.
The closest thing Microsoft could provide is a Windows CE-based solution (and Pocket- / -CE version of office, IE, etc...). And then again it won't be optimal for them because
- Win CE still lacks some functionality that is granted on Linux (hackability, programming and scripting tools in standard with a tiny memory foot print).
-
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I noticed a lot of Red Hat/Fedora books that looked useful on the shelves in Indonesian bookstores when I was there doing tsunami related work last year. I think both OSes would be hard to teach to people who had never been allowed to use a computer before, but I think that linux will be useful in teaching more fundamantal internet skills - creating websites, doing e-mail with text-based MUAs like PINE, using shell accounts. I was lucky to get provisioned with one of the laptops that IBM gave away after the tsunami, and was able to write up project proposals that got funded and work with images and create websites about the project I started, and keep my e-mail inboxes from always being overquota, but I was a little bothered seeing many of those useful tools used for entertainment in the midst of a tricky disaster recovery situation. Indonesian Red Cross volunteers used a neat satellite based remote site in Teunom mostly for viewing porn, and it was not maintained and usable for random people who showed up (like me) that often had critical information about the situation in sorrounding districts. IBM distributed laptops that were useless witout downloading a lot of free software, so having time and access to download OpenOffice and Adobe Reader was critical. I guess I see these laptops mostly as being useful in humanitarian emergencies, because that is my experience, but I cannot imagine growing up in that grinding poverty, with the occasional flash website to view for my edification.
We Love Cash Uncovered Flanners
One of the initial ideas about creating the OLPC was to enable every child in developing countries to have a notebook computer. Microsoft Windows is a proprietory and problematic operating system that would require a significantly more powerful machine and still run painfully slow. This would introduce a multitude of problems from an exploding per unit price to the many well known virus, spyware, and security problems.
Linux has become the major operating systems in countries such as India and, for good reasons, is now becoming popular in developed countries as well. It is an inherently better operating system that does not suffer those problems and more suitable solution for the OLPC as well as for any other computer system.
Obsolete the hardware, and rasie the 'hidden costs' before it even gets in the kids hands. Good move, morons.
Why couldnt they just run embedded XP, if they *really* want to go windows and raise the cost? It isnt that much of a resource hog.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you select the right pacakges and not include useless crud like wav files or themes or IIS servers. You can make a trimmed
custom XP using Embedded XP taking less than 300meg easily. Hell even 64meg if you are desperate.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Gates has fallen in love with his born-again persona as a human rights campaigner that he hopes everyone will forget was financed by years as a blood thirsty take-no-prisoners capitalist hun pushing zillions of dollars in license agreements on public school districts, threatening open source projects, patenting protocols, bullying and buying out competitors etc.
And so now he's so far into his own navel gazing delusion that he thinks XP is a good fit with the OLPC project. Oh wow man, he's just like up there with Ghandi and Jeebuz, aint he? What a joke of a man. It just goes to show you that money is indeed quite like a drug. The dude is HIGH.
Oh sure, he's the principle funder of the BSA by day but . . but, but by night he's the Poverty Fairy. Whoo.
If Windows is installed on the OLPC laptops, then we'll have to also get antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-adware and perhaps a few system recovery apps. There will also have to be a Windows key on the keyboard, which in my view, may be a stopper right there.
I am afraid that if OLPC machines are distributed throughout the Third World and Windows is the OS, we may see a global conflagration. We better be prepared to train a few million of the world's poorest people to be Support Techs. Microsoft might be willing to donate a few million MSCE training DVDs.
If we took the cost of the Iraq War for six months, we might be able to improve these folks' situation enough that in a year or two they could afford to buy their own PC parts from Tiger Direct and put it together themselves, just like God intended.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No one said it had to be a recent version. 3.1 would run a dream on the olpc machine. And probably be enough of a hook to get them into other Windows variants later.
"No, no, no, don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to."
the applications included are probably the same ones as Puppy includes the same system just provided by Red Hat.
In much the same way as you can save an install profile and replicate that to all machines (therefore not stock install, a customised install) but it is still standard Linux.
Microsoft should have a look at TinyXP for this kind of project. or Win3.11, i think most viruses wouldn't run on it :)
I have a bunch of routers with Linux based small footprint OS's on them and by small I mean a coupla meg. My print server does too (I think) and my cable modem has an RTOS microkernel. So from the perspective of why would you plunk Windows on an OLPC, the real question is what benefit do you get by bootstrapping Windows to an OLPC in order to take advantage of the applications that you can't get otherwise? Seems to me, we ALREADY have solved the OLPC OS problem - the question now is how many interesting applications can we cram on it.
One Loan Per Child!
FLR
This thing doesn't come with a HDD.
First Novell, now this. The evil empire has again resumed actively attacking freedom, now all around the globe. The poorest should be easy to crush, agreed. Nice one.
And the OLPC, some "non-profit humanitarian project". Ha!
"We put in an SD slot in the machine just for Bill." - OLPC chairman Nicholas Negroponte
average Linux distro
EXACTLY!
Now why would a typical "user" need most of that shit. Honestly, does a typical user need the kernal source, an IDE, a debugger or any other dev stuff, how about an HTTP server or an FTP server. The problem is that for some odd reason Linux thinks I want to install a bunch of worthless shit unless I tell it not to, then if I decide to add some worthles shit i need to do more then just put the CD or DVD in the drive.
WTF?
Perhaps it's worth trying upstart and Xfce.
</plug>For the purposes of this project, Open Source is as much a non-negotiable requirement as low power consumption. The intention is to produce a whole generation of computer-literate people. This requires that they have access to the internals, in order to learn to work with the hardware and software. Anything else would just be creating dependency -- and it would be wrong on many levels for the West to try to keep the Third World dependent.
Of course this means that there will be a whole generation of programmers who will never have known of any development methodology besides Open Source. Isn't that a good thing? Closed Source is no more or less than electronic slavery. Its time -- if it ever had one -- has been and gone.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
One MS strategy could be to offer XP for nearly free. They have played that game before after all. It would have to be a specialised version anyway, so there would be no risk of it getting installed on a regular PC. Hopefully they don't get a chance to do that, even though I suspect that many buyers will be dumb enough to not see the bigger picture.
Bill Gate's idea of charity has been very variable. Whilst he sometimes supports vaccination programs which really can't be faulted, he has very often been involved in schemes which seem primarily designed to trap third world countries, and even the poor in general, into IP taxies. Specifically, he's supported supply of windows to many schools (under him, Microsoft used to write these off at full value to reduce their taxation). Also they have been involved in undermining efforts to make generic drugs by supplying much smaller quantities of the branded original.
Do not think Bill Gate's charity comes for free.
An anti-Windows chip should detect the attempt to install of Windows and stop the installation, including wiping the flash. Then the original OS can be properly reinstalled. If an anti-Windows chip is not put in, then the poor third world children will be tempted with the evils of software piracy! We must save them from that. Don't those poor children have enough problems with malnutrition, disease, lack of education and poverty such that we must expose them to the sordid temptation of software piracy also. Please, let's do them a favor and save them from that additional burden. Put in a hardware anti-Windows chip in the OLPC.
Surely MS would just look at XP Embedded, rather than reading the retail box system requirements of their current OS and saying "oh wait, it needs 1.5GB of disk space..."
d ed/default.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/windowsxpembed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_Embedded
32MB of RAM, 32MB of storage space on CompactFlash is all it "needs", and a ~200MHz processor.
Running it on the OLPC would be a breeze.
I dont fucking think so.
How is saying that a typical Linux install leavs me with undesired software a troll. Hav eyou ever even fuckign installed a Linux Distro. Even the ones that have a desktop option install all sorts fo crap I dont want, GIMP, I have no need for gimp, IRC, I woudl rathe rnot have an irc client sittign around.
This is one place windows got it right. Install teh OS, let the user decide what other shit to install.
Small, fast, up-to-date, user-friendly: everything linux was supposed to be.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Not that Gates is fine-looking or anything, but a Ballmer icon would be just too ugly.
And I'm not talking about some Redmond VP's income.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
To be fair, it only says that Microsoft want to "make [Windows] available" on the device, not pre-install it.
Here's my theory: MS wants to create a version of Windows for these devices, which it can let out into the wild, where it will be relentlessly pirated. They hope that the first thing that people do with their shiny new OLPC is zap the Linux install and dump Windows XP Micro (or whatever) on there instead -- even if it's pirated. It may not make them any money immediately, but it might give them a future customer, or at least prevent someone from growing up as a Linux user.
Or maybe, rather than relying on piracy, they could co-opt governments and teachers as a way of forcing Windows down onto students' computers. They'd "give" "free" copies of Windows (taking it as a charitable contribution no doubt) to schools, along with some sort of incentive package. Maybe a free 'real PC' for the teacher, running a full version of Windows. It would have educational software on it, but in order to be useful, all the students would need to be running the Windows OLPC version. So they can effectively leverage schools to use their power to eliminate Linux and replace it with Windows, even if Windows is less functional for the students themselves. All they have to do is make it a sweet enough looking deal for the government or administration, which they can easily do by making it look like a substantial "gift" on paper -- even though most of that dollar value will be in software. A "free" $99 copy of Windows has to be better than a $0 copy of Linux, right?
I had more hopes for OLPC when Microsoft was just ignoring it. Microsoft's attentions are like the Eye of Sauron -- you really don't want it resting on you for any length of time, and when it does, it probably means something bad is going to happen.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Right on the nailhead, if I may... ;-)
Now, seriously, very Zen.
Congrats!
You are forgetting about the embedded version of Windows. That doesn't require 1.5 GB, it only requires about 256MB. So we will see if they succeed or not. But this would be a good project for the Gates Foundation to fund.
Imagine a world where companies sell "individual" license to people to use their products. You pay your "daily,weekly, monthly,etc" Coke license and you can drink coke products anywhere they are offered.
When you apply for a job, you list what software you are "licensed" for. Hiring will be done by qualifications and the completeness of your personal licensing. "I'm sorry, you are not licensed for our version of Microsoft Office. Next!".
I once thought such scenarios were just a figment of my imagination, but more and more I see that this may well become reality one day.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
As much as I want windows in any situation.
If I HAVE to run Windows, and there are times that I do, I would want to run whatever version comes out of this. They'll have to cut services and cruft and neato-cool things which take space and power.
Stuff I'd remove if I could.
So whatever version they ultimately cook up to run on this little box, I'd want it. But I doubt they'll productize it for PC.
Sorry, but there's no need for an additional operating system. The OLPC is already running linux.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In short, Mono is good for developing apps directly for Linux. It has also made it easy to port stuff from Linux to Windows, but to run Windows apps or convert the other way around is very very rare. Given how Windows apps are made and the gaps that Mono has it's not surprising. No need to look for conspiracies like some people like to do, but the fact remains - Mono does not bring any Windows apps to Linux, and doesn't look like it will in short/medium term either, despite that being cited as the main reason to start the project.
It's no surprise people like you would think this would work, because Mono is marketed that way. It just does not work that way. Sorry.
Tell that to all the Dell users that were getting uppity because they had to purchase their computers with a Microsoft Windows license :)
Fedora? This project is doomed. I pity the poor kids that get saddled with these machines. Fedora is not Linux, it is a hideous and unstable perversion of it. It is evil to corrupt poor children with this OS.
Fedora might be "open source", but it is far from a standard Linux distribution. Loading Fedora on these laptops is clearly designed to ensnare developing nations into paying the parasite known as RedHat great sums of money in the future. Having been corrupted by Fedora, these kids will have a hard time working on a real OS.
It lets you know what these RedHat people are really like, it makes me sick.
Right tool for the right job. Sometimes it is open source, sometimes it is not.
Licensing cost is like $7 last I checked and I remember in high school (9 years ago now) seeing it run on a Phillips Nino PDA, mine which was a 75 MHz processor. Granted Windows CE (now Mobile) is beefier now but I don't think there is any reason it can't run almost out of the box on the OLPC. With **plenty** of room to spare.
...like CE, tabley, embedded XP, et cetera. A one-off for this laptop project is not beyond the realm of possibility.
Loading...
... with the best IDE, period. Microsoft Visual Studio, Express Edition. DirectX is also a free download along with many hours of free video and online training sponsored by Microsoft. (I'm not a shill but I don't stand for inaccuracies)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
$3 for Core, $15 for Professional
Chances are for several million units, like any other vendor deals would be made. If not distributed for free (see earlier posts)
Who's going to write the kid friendly GUI? Office tools? etc...
.NET/DirectX/the other 1,000 SDK's they have/etc.
My two-year-old can go to start and find Notepad and bang on the keyboard and write Grandma a 'note.'
Windows CE already has office tools... Word, Excel, Powerpoint.
Not sure what 'etc' is.... Remote Desktop Protocol? Already there. Drawing tools? There too. Media players/recorders? Yup.
Which even under the guise of "corrupting minors" would still cost them a pretty penny and probably get them in a world of legal trouble.
Free download on MSDN. Just like all the other little goodies like their robotics toolkit, Windows CE SDK,
In short, I just don't see it being anything more than an intellectual exercise.
The hardware is a lot beefier than the cellphones CE presently runs on. I'd assume they have loftier goals.
They are just trying to steal attention away from Sony's one rootkit per child project.
I think your comment is a bit extreme. Bill G didn't STEAL anything. He may have used some backhanded ways of doing business, but he most definitely did not steal anything.
I am all for bashing MSFTy when appropriate - and for legitimate concerns - but suggesting that Bill stole his wealth is disingenuous at best.
There is no point in putting Windows just for the sake of putting Windows if there are no apps that would fit on it. Such as http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Software_components#Appl ications_.28and_ports.29_under_development_for_B2
Firefox Power http://firefoxpower.blogspot.com/
What about the WinPE/BartPE Live CDs? They might be able to be tweaked to fit in a 512MB space... Anyone?
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
..hardware upgradeable? Or is everything hard soldered to the board? RAM, Flash, etc are pretty cheap now, some price drops even since the original specs were determined. Seems like buying the parts in millions of units they could double the RAM and Flash capacity for pennies per machine, maybe not even an entire dollar.
Heh. Exactly in which way is "for the same price" relevant in a discussion about supposed Windows bloat? No, seriously. Please do enlighten me, because I find it such a fascinating concept. Do DLLs automagically double in size if you raise the price? Or?
But ok, if you need an extra strawman there to make the mandatory anti-MS point, by all means, let us discuss the extra price of all those: exactly 0$ total. OOo costs just as much for Windows as for Linux. Ditto for Apache. Ditto for GIMP. P2P programs also tend to be available for free. IRC client? You can find lots of free, if a bit limited ones, and occasionally you even find one bundled with what you'd expect least. E.g., Unreal Tournament had a built-in IRC client. Development tools? You can download MS's compilers for free. Or GCC if that's what floats your boat. Or download Eclipse and Java for free too. Etc.
So while I might tolerate a smart straw-man, this one seems to me like it's not even particularly useful: again, we're talking exactly 0$ difference between Windows with those and Windows without those.
Oh, but wait, you probably meant the usual "but MS Office and MSVC.NET and Photoshop cost sooo much more" thrust. Right? Well, see, that would be relevant at all if you actually had to buy those. But since OOo and Gimp and the gang run just as well under Windows, you don't.
What MS Office and the rest are is an extra _option_, in case you think you need/want it. If you think MS Office or Photoshop have some feature you need, you can buy them. If not, not. (And believe me, just about every normal person I've shown the Gimp to, quickly decided they'd rather pay for Paintshop or Photoshop.) Options are good. _Lacking_ an option in Linux isn't actually an advantage over Windows. Sometimes it may be no great loss, sure, but an advantage it ain't.
Or for that matter, how's "includes all of these on the base install" relevant to a discussion about size? Do the installed packages take less space if you just bundle the installer on the same CD as the OS? Will my OOo install under, say, Linux take more space if I download it from Sun than if it's included on the SuSE DVD? Or? Enlighten me please.
But we've lost enough time on that silliness, so let's get back to size and the OLPC. Since that was the whole topic.
May I point out that you don't have room for all those on an OLPC either? That's the whole point.
In fact, you don't even have space for a reasonable base system that can from there on run any Linux program I might download. The dependencies of Linux programs are spread between so many libraries and frameworks, that, seriously, if you want Joe Sixpack Jr with an OLPC to be able to just run any program like in Windows, he'll actually need all those libraries or space for them. At the very least, he'll need both KDE and Gnome, plus of course the system and X libraries, plus a whole bunch of others.
Have you looked in your KDE directory lately? The libraries alone are well over 200 megabytes. Gnome? Not exactly small either. Just between the _libraries_ of those two alone, you're using more space than a minimal Windows install. And that doesn't even give you a usable desktop yet. It's just the stupid libraries to run programs based on those. Talk about bloat. By the time you crammed everything else onto an OLPC, you don't actually _have_ those extra programs, or space for them.
So the whole "muahahaha, Windows need to trim out the fat to fit on an OLPC" is moot
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
OLPC is an important project: If OLPC achieves the number of units they want to put out in the field, they will tip the balance in operating system market share and mind-share in the field of personal computers.
Microsoft has a minority share of servers. While Windows Mobile is a worthy effort, Linux, Symbian, RIM, Palm OS, and other RTOSs dominate the mobile handset business. Linux straddles a large number of embedded application categories and has dominant mind-share in the embedded space, overall.
A world where ubiquity is no longer a good argument for choosing Microsoft would be a calamity for Microsoft. They didn't gain dominance in servers, or game consoles, or mobile OSs, or media devices, or handhelds. Microsoft cannot count on Linux developers or Apple to have an OS 9-like failed development cycle. The conditions for Microsoft gaining dominance in desktop OSs was unique.
On the contrary, luck doesn't seem to be shining on Microsoft, even in markets like game consoles where issues like proprietary code and DRM are mostly moot. Sony stumbles badly. XBOX 360 is a fine product. And Nintendo comes charging back into the market with a relatively underpowered console, quirky games, a difficult balance of competing with game developers, and sells out millions of units in a perfectly times Christmas blitz.
If Microsoft loses a dominant position in PCs, the odds they can get it back before there is the next big unforeseen shift in the business are not so good.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Why is this comment moderated troll? It brings up the issue of people constantly using b and B interchangeably, which has gotten us to the point of rarely knowing whether a person is really referring to (b)its or (B)ytes (which is 8 bits).
And in keeping with the spirit of the T.M.B.G. song, Mr. Negorponte can't shake the devil's hand and say he's only kidding.
If Mr. Gates was a genuine philanthropist, rather than the lord and master of greed, he wouldn't have disparaged the project and instead would have bankrolled production without any hooks for his toy OS long before any of this crap hit the press.
Now, it's nothing more than another public relations kiss on the wrist and the OLPC becomes a vector for locking poor countries into the web of proprietary licensed software. Don't we already export enough of our technical garbage to some of these countries?!
They need Windows as much as they need Monsanto's GM seeds.
If you can't grow crops from the harvest then you're always going back to Monsanto.
If you can't own the software then you're always going back to Microsoft for every possible browser start and update.
Why does Microsoft want to feed the Anti-Ware lampreys who live off the inability of Microsoft's crappy OS in order to gain a toe-hold in developing countries? This is just another blatant example of the fat-cats co-opting something.
Why curse people in poor countries with a crop of laptops which can be made useless with viruses and malware, legitimate or otherwise?
Kids don't need Microsoft, Microsoft needs kids and mindshare and they'll do whatever it takes in the short-term to lock in the future, even if it means OLPC's become nothing more than plastic bricks when some jackass horks an update, or a virus/worm exploits their wireless networks.
The legitimacy and altruism of the OLPC project has been squandered with the inclusion of Microsoft, if altruism was ever a genuine goal.
OLPC just became another fat rubber cock in the schweaty hands of big business and government, aimed squarely at children.
What's up with the rich and powerful wanting to exploit children?!
Traditionally big business does some pretty terrible things in developing countries because the governments involved like money and control more than they will ever appreciate freedom or empowerment for their people.
Maybe the project should be renamed "One Key-logger Per Child" after Microsoft has had its way with things.
"OKPC" sounds like a marketing dream, doesn't it?
The kind of dream you can sell to government and the military in developing countries.
Cheers.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
You know, most people here (including you) seem not to have noticed what this thing is actually about. It's not just a normal Linux distro! For this purpose Visual Studio would not be the "best IDE," because the OS is the IDE!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I'm too late for this to count, but here's my theory. They get Windows running on olpc. It costs money, but the Gates Foundation is made of it. In other words, this might end up being another way to funnel money from the Gates Foundation back into Microsoft while helping to prop up and extend the Windows monopoly. They go to corrupt governments (think Thailand as a recent example) and say "too bad about those crappy Linux computers your kids are using, but the Gates Foundation would love to donate a million copies of Windows, which retail for $100 each, so that your kids can get some real use out of them". The mesh networking might not work as well with the standard Linux version, of course, meaning that you need to convert them all.
Those of you who don't believe Gates is evil need to step back and look at how he's been using the foundation, and the dollars there, to spread Windows. I'm guessing this is another ploy along those lines.
Do you have ESP?
Parent is making an appropriate correction. There is a difference, people!
the children using OLPC and I WinCE!
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
I heard they made 1000 demo units.
Instead of giving them out to developers who might actually contribute to these people but rather to a closed source company trying to make money off of them.
Especially considering Microsoft's previous comments regarding the OLPC project.
Given how Microsoft 'innovates', my guess is that they're attempting to reverse engineer the OLPC device so they can release their OLPK model. It'll cost them more to make, be less useful, cost them billions in losses, but be marketed out the wazzu until the naive think they want one. Think WinCE and Zune.
Oh and those billions in losses for the project will mostly be due to Microsoft paying 3rd world governments 'marketing dollars', 'evaluation dollars', 'creating training centers', etc for accepting the OLPK instead of OLPC. ie, they'll find a way to pay people to use the product so that the competition gets no traction or loses what it has.
Too bad the OLPC gang are not as agressive at marketing as Microsoft is. They should be blasting the market with news of Microsoft validating the OLPC product by trying to get Windows on it. Remember, Bill Gates went public with bashing the OLPC project and totally spreading the typical MS FUD with misinformation on the project goals. Ofcourse a MS Windows laptop would solve the problems Bill said the OLPC had...
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Too bad anybody listens to this master snake oil salesman in the first place.
Blast me as TROLL but Gates is a fraud IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
here's the deal, bill gates doesn't care about the children unless it is in "self interest" to do so. people are very adept at lying - and bill is a good liar.
the olpc initiative will help children. does bill gates want to join in and help children?
NO WAY! imagine what TREMENDOUS educational vehicle olpc could be for the parents! specific educational information could be included in a "parents only" folder - and it can be customized by region. how to make water safe, how to avoid aids, how to get help for emergencies, etc...
this would be an excellent place for bill to dump a $1 million or so.
instead, he sends msn to attack the project - the same project he's trying to exploit for the benefit of his company.
now, don't get me wrong. i'm glad the selfish sob is giving (and getting others to give) to help the needy. i hope his promises aren't more lies, though, and only actions will convince me.
but don't say this dude is a humanitarian out of the kindness of his heart.
his *actions* indicate he views his charity as a vehicle to push his company's agenda and as a great advertising campaign (other people give him money and he gets his name and his company's name trumpeted in a good light) to further his business agenda.
now, if he actually did charity against his financial self interest, like help out the olpc initiative, because it was plain and simply the right thing to do, I'D BE IMPRESSED.
i don't think it happens. i think he defines "right thing to do" as pushing his company's agenda and making himself look good. helping others seems to come in third place.
as i said, i'm glad he does it, for whatever reason. lots of less fortunate people need help.
... when you press the XO's "View Source" key?
The director of the project is quoted as saying the SD slot was added "just for Bill" is that true? As a Zaurus owner, I'd say that Windoze is the last thing I'd want an SD slot for and that a SD slot is very useful. 512 MB is large enough to run a good Linux distro but several gigs will run a better one and give the user room for their file storage.
It's hard to share and grow your culture without storage space, even if you have good network connectivity. Without storage space, you at the whim of others for what you keep and share. That makes you a consumer instead of a participant. Information consumption is a nice start where people can't afford text books, but it's not the end goal. The end goal, I would think, is the end goal of education - to create new socioeconomic participants who can help themselves and others.
It goes without saying that blowing all of your storage space on non free binaries defeats the purpose. It eliminates your ability to share and even reduces your ability to consume. Doesn't running Winblows on the OLPC go counter to the entire mission?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
He didn't claim that Gates stole the worlds riches. The statement was in the form of a generalized saying. As with many such statements, it's obviously a purposeful exaggeration of the situation intended to make a point: A person shouldn't be thought to be generous for giving away a portion of an ill-gotten fortune. At best, it's partial (not full) atonement for bad behavior.
The form response in less than three minutes. Do you have a script to post that garbage? How many botnet members does it take to assure at least one is up to the task?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
By leaving Red Hat on there, and providing a nice GUI, which honestly is what their forte is anyway. I'd love a Linux Distro that looked and felt exactly like Windows. So would about 90% of the market, and since no Linux Distro will do it on their own......
Come on MS. Get off the idea that your IP is somehow inherently more valuable. Windows is a bloated, buggy beast, everyone knows, and for these kind of applications it would be stupid to even bother.
Now if you could make a replacement for KDE and GNOME, which both kinda suck, really, well, then at least THIS geek would think you've done something pretty worth while recently.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Well, there's a typical Slashdot-centric, OSS zealot response.
Without the useless inflammatory language, you have a point but you could not be more wrong. The mission, according to the MIT site is:
Education is about much more than software but software freedom is essential to the goals of education.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Windows mobile runs in 64mb of flash. Whos to say they don't modify that or it's base to run on the OLPC machine?
Also remember windows 95 ran fine on PCs with 64mb of ram. It's very possible for MS to get a working windowsish OS on there. They have 10 years of legacy code that fit into smaller footprints.
Gadget News at Gizmo.com
Information is very important, and is not something that only the rich should have.
It allows people to learn, live and build a better life, and innovate even better living solutions.
In our society, there exists an "Information Commons", which is available to everyone at no cost.
In the past, the "Information Commons" was the public domain.
But with current laws (century copyright,...), the Public-Domain has less value.
The replacement "Information Commons" is Free-Software/Open-Source/Creative-Commons.
Yes, one can effectively "rent" information from controlling companies, but you always have to go back to the controlling company for more copies or different iterations of the information.
By purchasing information for the "Information Commons", the information is purchased for all people now and later.
What exactly would you like to give to the poor?
Food? are open-source/creative-commons cook books useful? or open-source/creative-commons instructions of how to build solar stoves? Or open-source software that allows someone to design cost effective stoves or cookware?
Medicine? Are patent-free medicines useful for the poor? Are open-source/creative-commons medical programs useful for the poor?
Education/Science? Are open-source/creative-commons creative commons textbooks/libraries of information helpful to the poor? Are open-source/creative-commons science/engineering useful?
Is a "wikipedia" of information useful?
The point is that whenever money is spent for "information rights", that money could have spent to buy physical items, or to further innovation or information in the "Information Commons".
That money could buy an OLPC with a library of information pre-installed.
What I don't get is the lack of public response to this news story from the 'other side' - it would have been good to see someone from FSF or OKF reacting badly, publicly, to the idea.
This is a very bad idea. Trying to lock the poorest countries into using an expensive commercial operating system of foreign origin amounts to behaviour bordering on the criminal - even if Microsoft do offer Windows at no cost initially. I can't see Microsoft expending much effort to help maintain such systems. At least, when source is available, a community will be built and maintained to look after these systems, and patch security holes as and when they occur. Running Windows is a big risk, both in terms of the future intentions of Microsoft, and in terms of the likely security liability.
Also, I would have some concerns about how damaging the Windows disk access patterns would be to flash memory. Windows seems to frequently write to a partition when booting. This is bad news for a system operating from flash memory.
"Wrong! Price is irrelevant; the only consideration is that the device must be hackable by the user."
Whose ass did you pull that out of? Of course price is relevant. They made a big point of the low cost which would allow many, many units to be placed into the hands of children. Cost was a PRIMARY concern. If cost wasn't a consideration they would just buy regular laptops and install Linux instead of going though the pain of designing the cheapest system they could.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
One has to ask, what has changed since: http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/16/bill-gates-has- his-say-of-things/
I don't doubt the potential for good of the OLPC. However, it is simply wrong to deny or minimize the tremendous amount of good that Bill Gates has done for children in developing nations. His focus is on problem areas where the conditions are so basic and horrible that the OLPC is a sick joke.
What the heck is it gonna take? The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest charitable institution in the world. They're endowment sits at around 32 billion. They give around 1.5 billion per year. The amount given to vaccine programs is almost equal to the budget of the UN World Health Organization.
Why is this? Why must he donate to the OLPC project to warrant your respect, and that none of the other charitable work he does matter to you?
Who knows what's really inside Bill Gates head, or what's behind his intentions. But the same can be said about Nicholas Negroponte. To those who benefit from vaccines and those who benefit from the OLPC, does it matter!?
"The system requirements for Windows XP demand a minimum of 1.5Gb"
That's BEFORE service packs and any software applications folks. Service packs and patches can add up to a gigabyte.
You can still get BeOS (fully graphical) to run on a single floppy disk (approx. 1/1000th of a gigabyte)
Yes, that was my intention.
I do think Microsoft/Gates has exploited the world through their monopoly (which is very anti-capitalist), but i dont claim that it was illegal, and i expect he will end it giving more than 10% of back, after all he gets no return on it when hes dead, and this way he gets to buy some respect.
Does anyone else think it is just a little interesting that PRO Microsoft kiddy PR came out just in time to counteract PRO Linux PR from the Indiana 22,000 pc school rollouts.
From source post:
where XP requires a minimum of 1.5Gb storage.
Um... I doubt they are going to run XP on it. How about, say, XP embedded? You can run XP embedded on a 486.
That's what I love about Slashdot: these guys always whining about Microsoft and Windows, but never having any idea what any of it can and cannot do.
There was a big Lunix geek I used to work with, it was amusing shutting him up when he always complained Windows couldn't do something... when it actually could. The problem always seemed to be between his chair and his keyboard.
Seems like it would just be more of a "natural" fit....
A big-endian CPU would do the job nicely.
Windows is a joke.
You know, when MS bundles software, they get slapped with lawsuits; there's really no way they can win. If someone were to put together a base Windows distribution that included OpenOffice, The Gimp and whatnot, that would be comparable to Linux. But Windows as-is is comparable to a very minimal Linux install which includes X and maybe the base GNOME/KDE components.
Then again, MS got in trouble for enforcing agreements about what OEMs could or could not bundle, didn't they? So it really is their own darn fault.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The only problem I think might could be . Is the intended power source not just solar either . You have to read carefully. I am sure that they at Microsoft are sorry they did not come up with that. It is the manner in which the intended unit is to be refreshed as a hint out in the jungle or other far off remote places.