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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."
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.
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
"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.
Look at the OLPC wiki.
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.
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.
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.
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.
AccountKiller
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.