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OLPC Operating System Available to Download
ThePopeLayton writes "Engadget is reporting that the operating system made specifically for the OLPC project is now available for download. 'Apparently, the Linux-based Sugar OS from the One Laptop Per Child project is now available via a bootable LiveCD ISO, and according to user reports, works quite well aside from the lack of WiFi capability on a certain MacBook.'"
Yeah! Another choice for me to choose what I going to replace vista with!
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
Would that thing work well on an old ThinkPad 760XL? That thing only has a Pentium MMM 166MHz, 64MB RAM and 4GB of storage...
I actually want to try this. I'm interested in the OLPC project and I hope they release a laptop in the US for sale, because I'd buy one in an instant. It's cheap, lightweight, and I don't demand much from a computer, so the low performance isn't an issue with me.
I think I also saw a vmware image of the OLPC OS floating around a while back. But anyway, for those of you who haven't had a chance to explore the Sugar UI, it's a pretty different model that totally shitcans the "desktop" model for more of a community model, where one performs "activities" rather than run "applications". Worth taking a look at just to see another approach to how computers can be used from a user experience perspective.
Is there a supported hardware list? On what hardware does WiFi work?
Another OLPC distro is also available from the makers of the pepperpad. You can find it at pepper.com. They claim it may even be quicker then the perl based interface on the official OLPC desktop.
There exists some positive integer N that you are the Nth person to read this signature.
Well, the entire OS is designed for kids to be able to learn and explore on, so it shouldn't be hard for any geek to find something to have fun with on it.
As far as the security, please please break it and tell them what's up. I went to a talk by the project lead recently, and the impression I got is that they could really use more eyes on the project, especially on security. Once you distribute millions of an identical OS to people with low computer literacy in an environment where they may not have access to the latest patches the potential for mischief goes through the roof, so it's very important that everyone goes over the security BEFORE it goes into production. break it!
Not to sound like a troll, but "activity" vs "application" has raged for years.
The problem with the "activity" metaphor is that it's restrictive: you can perform the activitites we've thought of in advance and presented to you. People don't use computers that way, even first-timers or little kids. And the UI programmers never really put together a comprehensive list of activities. No matter how much beta testing, they always leave something out.
Computer UIs and tool sets are the original mashups--I pull out and use tools in different combinations to get tasks done that I think up on the spot. The "real life" metaphor works this way. My kitchen isn't a set of tasks, it's a set of tools. Ditto my closet, my garage, etc.
People get frustrated with the "activity" metaphor quickly. It's not even a useful introductory tool because it wears thin too fast.
Sugar looks cool. But like Bob or the Harmony Remote control's interface, it looks like what a computer scientist thinks looks good to a simpleton user. Nobody ever asks the computer scientist if he thinks he'd be a better computer scientist today if he'd started out on something like that.
If you're going to download it, get the latest version instead.
The lazy 'article' is just a link to an already out-of-date Endgadget post. Thank ThePopeLayton and Zonk for schilling instead of informing, and then climb the dirtree to find the latest.
http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/sdk/
see also
http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/
The browser lacks an address bar!!! Why would anyone want this OS? If I had an OLPC in a third-world country I'd just download xubuntu and use it. I'm sure full Epiphany or Opera will run on it just fine. But the built-in multitasking just sucks and there's no reason a child should be restricted in features beyond that provided by a regular OS. They should learn to use a typical OS right from the start so they can accomplish real work with the capable computers that they have. It should be made easy for them to learn Perl or C++ and run 5 copies of xterm alongside 2 different browsers for development. Debian+Fluxbox runs great and fast on a 90mhz PC, full Opera works fine on a 300mhz, so I'm sure a full-blown OS will run fine on the $100 laptop.
In the case of pipelines, an activity is established as a flow of data between things - applications, devices, who cares? You can set up whatever pipelines you like and then your activity is triggered by dropping the initial data into the initial pipeline. Very simple. Anyone familiar with Jackson Structured Diagrams or a flowchart could put together as many activities as they liked without working up a sweat. It becomes nothing more than shell scripting with a GUI shell, and what one of us couldn't write whatever app they wanted in a shell script? Many probably have.
In the OO concept, you create activities by linking the applications as objects. Basically the same idea as pipelines and it's still shell scripting, the difference is that pipelines are isomorphic and isolated, whereas objects are polymorphic and inherited.
It would take most coders maybe a day to write a full-blown "shell" environment using one of these two approaches that would preserve the activity metaphor but give you absolute, total freedom.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
(To a user it may be different, but that's the user's problem. From an engineering perspective, a rose by any other name is still a rose. It is to an English major, too, if they study Shakespere.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
There is a pretty obvious address bar from what I see
h _library.png
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Sugar_browser_wit
The starting point for info on OLPC security is the Bitfrost specification. I've only skimmed it, myself, and don't have any particular comment except that it looks interesting.
http://duggmirror.com/linux_unix/Test_Drive_the_OL PC_with_a_LiveCD/
thanks for finding this. I hadn't though to look at the pirate bay
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
I don't know much about the "activity" metaphor outside of the context of OLPC, but the OLPC idea of an Activity isn't restricted in that way.
It is better viewed as an alternative to the more traditional application/document model as far as the relation between a running instance of a program and the associated data; in the activity model of the OLPC they are more tightly bound. But that misses quite a bit too, perhaps the best thing is to read the OLPC Human Interface Guidelines, which elaborates on the OLPC concept of Activities, and a lot of the context surrounding it.
One Azax Per Child!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)