Novel OS Drives the '$100 laptop'

jrwr00 writes with a link to a CNN story about the $100 laptop's unique operating system. We've discussed the OLPC's UI before but the article offers a few new piece of information on the project, which is expected to roll out this year. From the article: "The XO machines are still being tweaked, and [OLPC UI] Sugar isn't expected to be tested by any kids until February. By July or so, several million are expected to reach Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, Thailand and the Palestinian territory. Negroponte said three more African countries might sign on in the next two weeks. The Inter-American Development Bank is trying to get the laptops to multiple Central American countries."

Comments

Novell OS? Whoops

[dreddnott]

I read this story on CNN first as well, and my first thought at seeing the headline was nightmares about a Novell operating system.

In any event, it doesn't really sound particularly novel to me.

Re:Novell OS? Whoops

[rholliday]

Yeah, me too. I don't think "novel" is the best choice of adjectives in the OS world.

Most insightful thing I've read in a while

[fiannaFailMan]

From TFA:

"In fact, one of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary school computer labs (when they exist in the developing world), is the children are being trained to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint," Negroponte wrote in an e-mail interview. "I consider that criminal, because children should be making things, communicating, exploring, sharing, not running office automation tools.

Go on my son! Kids should be exploring, not training to become the paper-pushers of tomorrow. Computers have so much more to offer than that.

Quote FTFA

[dayid]

"It doesn't feel like Linux. It doesn't feel like Windows. It doesn't feel like Apple," said Vota, who is director of Geekcorps, an organization that facilitates technology volunteers in developing countries. He emphasized that his opinions were his own and not on behalf of Geekcorps. so we have: a) kernel b) operating system c) hardware vendor It doesn't feel like any of those? Wow.

Re:Where can I find the "Sugar" Windowmanager or D

[DragonWriter]

Surely, it must be possible to build the same "Sugar" interface on any full install of a moder Linux OS... Where are the OS packages? Where is the SVN respository?

Look at the OLPC wiki.

Re:Where are the apps?

[uwog]

AbiWord. We have kicked abiword into a library, with the GUI stripped off. This allows one to build a GUI on top of it in python, like the rest of Sugar is. Seamless integration. This will be the writing Activity the children will use. Then we are working on special import/export filters for abiword to read/write the 'fileformat' of choice of sugar: crossmark. This will allow perfect integration with the Journal. Neat trick is that you can even embed abiword in mozilla to do inline editting.

Also, a collaboration plugin for abiword is being worked on, that will use the mesh infrastructure and sugar presence framework to find and communicate with other users. This will allow realtime collaboration on documents (for example, 2 or more children working on an assingment simultaneously).

So there you have an application that takes full use of the offered platform.

Sun should take a lesson.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of Sugar, the OLPC's desktop environment, is written in Python. The source is here:
http://dev.laptop.org/git.do?p=sugar;a=tree

I just tried it out, and I am pleasantly surprised! It's amazing how much faster Python is for desktop applications than Java is. Even when using IBM's SWT for developing Java applications, they still feel far more bloated and slower-responding than OLPC's Python-based GUI applications.

I would have expected Python to be slower than Java, but apparently that is not the case. It could be that the layers upon layers that make up Swing really slow it down. Maybe it's time for Sun to take a page from OLPC's Sugar project, and develop a UI framework that is fast and easy to use.

Re:Sun should take a lesson.

[Nasarius]

Sugar apparently uses PyGTK, so all the heavy lifting is done in C. wxPython works the same way, and it's what I write most of my GUI tools with. Even with lots of callbacks into Python code, it still runs fast. It's amazing how much you can do with just a few lines of code and no need to compile.

Re:Where are the apps?

[Nazgul_Cro]

OLPC can give kids Internet connection where they would usually have none.
Web browser is, overall, the killer app. The pure difference in being able to access the Web, and not access it is remarkably huge. By giving children access to Google, Wikipedia, Slashdot, and billions of other sites and web applications it is the single most useful tool a child could have. It also comes with RSS reader, chat, AbiWord and eToys along with several games.

Mesh networking is the point by itself, as its main function is not only to connect OLPC laptops together, but to also connect them to an Internet gateway, which will be provided by schools... This will have an overall effect of propagating Internet access through OLPC-targeted countries.

I just don't see what would children "need" Office and Photoshop for.

In developed countries, a child will have its computing needs satisfied already, by having access to regular computer. OLPC targetted child has no such privilege, and a difference between owning an OLPC laptop and not owning it will be huge.

Porting software to OLPC is not hard. While Sugar is the interface, it is still founded on X Window System, and it runs Python apps as well... And newer versions of OS will have more apps that are already announced.
Plus, judging a platform for not having enough software for it when it hasn't actually been released to its end-users yet isn't really fair. I predict it will create a very decent software library of its own, and that we'll see first of it quite soon after it goes fully public. It has happened to pretty much every platform around during the last 50 years.

Re:Where are the apps?

[Vellmont]

Where are the apps for this platform?

How about a web browser, or an e-book reader? Those certainly sound like important apps for learning. Or how about a scientific graphing calculator? Perhaps some interactive learning software? There's already apps that could be very usefull. Really the hard part isn't really the apps, it's the content and curiculum that're more important.

  Can anybody name one app, accessible to end users (e.g., no recompiling required), that is compatible with the Sugar UI, mesh networking, low-end specs, and other unique features?

You're asking the wrong crowd here as there's not many people on slashdot develop for, or familiar with this machine. Just because no one has given you an answer means very little.

Go into a shopping mall and give a random person an OLPC -- what would they do with it?

Huh? What does a random person in a shopping mall have to do with the needs of someone in a 3rd world country that's never even used a computer have to do with each other? I think you're really missing the point here.

Hardware has always suffered from a chicken/egg problem. You need interest in the hardware to generate interest in developing software, but you need available software for the hardware to do something.

My guess is the hope is that more specific apps will be created for the purposes of learning. But using a pre-existing OS will bring enough apps that're already available for Linux to make the thing usefull from the start. Personally I'd be more worried about the curriculum and infra-structure for kids to learn how learn from these things.

Re:OLPC Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

You and I can do a lot more by donating to charities or 'adopting' a child through a group like World Vision.

Fuck charity, we need to change the global economy. If you want to help the poor in the third world then don't give them charity unless they are literally starving. If you want to help you should buy what they produce, lobby your government to write off the debt they made them take on and lobby your government to remove trade restrictions. Your country is fucking the third world in the ass and given you live in a democray they are doing it in your name. You need to stop the fucking, not start the giving.

Re:Where are the apps?

[wall0159]

Where are the apps for this platform?

The OS is Linux, so it will run anything that runs on Linux (subject to computing power, RAM, etc).

no recompiling required

There will (hopefully) be hundreds of millions of these machines. I think someone can make binaries for the kiddies if they want.

Linux desktop is getting nowhere, despite it's technical excellence, because it lacks key apps (i.e., Office).

Ahhh! so you really mean commercial applications. I don't see why 'perfect' compatibility with Word documents is so important to children.

Look - it comes with applications: Broswer, RSS reader, text editor, and others. And it has a compiler, so kids can write their own applications. This computer is about liberating these kids, and giving them computer expertise - it's not about making them consumers of software. Difficult to understand, I know.

I like to repeat myself every time an OLPC story is posted

Well, saying the same thing many times doesn't make it more true or relevant.

Re:Where are the apps?

[DragonWriter]

This "mesh network" idea is pretty pie-in-the-sky for the technically barren regions the idea is being pushed on. Is someone going to establish transponders or regenerators, bridges, etc for Internet access?

The point of the mesh networking is to enable certain network applications without a persistent connection to the internet, but yes, a company has developed and will be making available a satellite earthstation designed especially for rural village and donating satellite time to provide internet access to accompany the OLPC project.

Does anyone even know if the schools are going to participate?

The purchasers of the laptops in the involved countries are the national ministries of education, who tend to be the people that run the schools. One might surmise, then, that the schools will participate.

Sometimes I think a bag of rice would be better spent on these areas than air dropping pastel, wind-up computers.

And, if you want, you are free to send a bag of rice to any region you think needs it. There are even many charities that you can contribute to that will take care of most of the logistics of providing food aid for you, so you just can give them money. OLPC will continue working with interested countries to develope and deliver educational tools that both the people behind OLPC and the countries to whom they are being sold, rather than air-dropped as unilateral gifts, believe will be useful to those countries educational systems. The two kinds of projects are not opposed to each other.

Re:Where are the apps?

[QuantumG]

Ya know, back when I was 11 years old, I would have given all my pocket money and done weeks and weeks of chores just to be able to write BASIC on one of these things. These kids, who have never even seen a computer before, will get to code in Python/Smalltalk, browse the web, talk to their neighbours, and write a blog..

Fixed specs != planned obsolescence

[KlaymenDK]

Personally I think the whole $100 laptop thing is a huge marketing gimmick to prime the populations of third-world countries for consumerism (Linux aside, $100 cost aside, it still falls victim to engineered obsolescence). The following would be true for any contraption: the device needs not change if the usage pattern does not. I have a PDA that by current standards are outright archaic, but it fulfills my needs just as perfectly as when it was new. Sure, new products offer more features, but that does not detract from the old product; unless you are made to think the product you have is no longer good enough.

It is my impression that the whole idea of creating a brand new interface is to escape the eternal upgrade spiral. On the surface, they do away with folders and mainstream OS vendors, but consider how this affects the entire paradigm of computing. In a few years these people will be old enough to work in an office (not saying they will, it's just a possibility), and set me tell you, I think they're not going to *want* to touch Windows, MacOS, or KDE/Gnome with a fire poker -- it's too messy. They won't want to work on their computer, they'll want to work on their *tasks*.

You and I can do a lot more by donating to charities or 'adopting' a child through a group like World Vision. Great! By all means, if you are so inclined, fund and donate all you like! :o) But this is completely separate from the OLPC project. Both are valid options in their own right; it's just that you can't make individual contributions to one of them.

I used to work for an electronics recycling company, whose business was increasing partially because of SB20 and SB50 and partially because a lot of companies were no longer being allowed to ship their junk computers (many components of which are toxic waste) to third-world countries to be disposed of or scrapped, as opposed to properly recycled stateside, for a fee. We got all kinds of junk, from Dreamworks to Viewsonic, but I couldn't handle the third-world pay anymore. I don't know the "SB*0" you mention, but I for one think shipping waste "under the carpet" *should* be regulated, if not avoided altogether.

I think the "OLPC" is just a first wave in a new corporate strategy to "legitimately" dump difficult-to-dispose-of old hardware and then sell new hardware in developing countries. Irrelevant. This has nothing to do with old hardware. The entire concept targets an environment where traditional computer devices would be useless (power, wired networking, harsh conditions, &c).

As you state in a later post, hardware failures are a different topic; that's mostly a question of build quality and durablity. While it is to a high degree possible for a manufacturer to skimp in this department, and thus encourage more purchases, it's not my impression that the OLPC project has chosen this path -- quite the opposite.