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Hacking the XO Laptop

Posted by Zonk on from the new-uses-tiny-toys dept.

dulceLeche writes "While the OLPC was not designed with the American consumer in mind, people that took part in the Give One Get One program have been having fun with their XOs. The XO has a number of limitations, but with some work you can get Opera running, chat over your mesh network, and much more. An article at Geek.com explains what a few folks were able to do with their XOs."

10 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Go on by saibot834 · · Score: 3, Informative

    After all, the XO is designed to be hackable (unlike most hardware today, unfortunately).

    1. Re:Go on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      The XO software is designed to be hackable.

      The hardware, not so much.

  2. Re:Sad by supersat · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apparently, there's been several issues with G1G1 fulfillment. They expected to have shipped every laptop by now, but discovered at least 5,000 orders that have fallen through the cracks. Those will be sent tomorrow, if possible. More information is at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/G1G1_Fulfillment_Information

  3. Re:The Subtle Jokes are Always the Best by itismike · · Score: 3, Informative

    I had the opportunity to get my hands on one of these last week and was very impressed. I wish the give-one-get-one deal was still available.

    [joke spoiler] The laptop is silent in normal operation. They only chirp if you launch a specific classroom activity designed to use acoustic signals to measure the distance between two laptops. It's quite neat actually. I guess if you have a classroom of students who all launch this particular application at once, it'll be pretty noisy.

  4. Xubuntu on the XO by quixote9 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I got one of these Dec 21st, and the whole rest of my life has disappeared while I play with it. Very addictive little machine.

    I have Xubuntu on it in a dual boot system, with ubuntu on an SD card. Followed moocapiean's directions. Works great. No glitches.

    So, as for it being hackable, I'd say that it's easy to *change*, in ways it wasn't originally intended to run. You don't have to break anything to do that, so maybe it's not strictly speaking hackable. But then, nothing open source is hackable.

    Depends on your definition hackable.

  5. Re:"not designed with the American consumer in min by Sir_Kurt · · Score: 4, Informative

    I bought 2 of the XO laptops. (four actually) There is a special version of Opera that has been compiled for the XO, including software that makes it a sugar activity. It is available here: . Works great. No need to set up an additional X server. These guys were just having fun and showing off.

    -kurt-

  6. How easy was it to make Opera work? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    One would think that Opera would be straight forward. After all, OLPC seems to already have solved the problem.

    The Opera web browser and the Real Networks Helix(TM) platform have been ported to the laptop and are available for download but not part of the standard distribution.

    http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Software_components

    When we look at what the guys in tfa went through, we get the idea that they didn't know something the OLPC people knew.

    Next up we decided to pull Opera down onto the XO since the built-in browser gets the job done, but not quite the way we want. In order to do that we created a nested X server, since there's already one running that you don't want to disrupt. So, we basically ran one X server within another, and the nested server-software called Xephyr-ran outside of the other applications we had running. Doing this you can have a traditional Linux desktop running at the same time as your XO stuff, as long as your memory holds out.

    Then they go through a screen full of stuff on the command line.

    By the way, one of the configuration changes that we showed in a picture above was to the dot pitch. By default Opera is basically unreadable in the X server, due to the XO's screen resolution.

    And finally they get it working.
  7. Re:"designed to be hackable"? by PaintyThePirate · · Score: 3, Informative

    You're right, it's kind of a stretch to call anything in that article hacking, but it is designed to be (software) hackable. Though, the line in voltmeter is unique in that the audio hardware was chosen to make that possible.

    It's the only laptop I've ever heard of that uses Open Firmware, or any open source BIOS. There are even tutorials on hacking it in the wiki. Plus, most of the GUI and applications are written in Python and are designed to be relatively easy to modify.

    The hardware itself is far from hackable though. There is very little, if anything, that can be modified inside the thing, even though it is easy to disassemble. I imagine its the result of making it as cheap and rugged as possible.

    --
    eclecti.cc
  8. Re:"designed to be hackable"? by MsGeek · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's the only laptop I've ever heard of that uses Open Firmware

    My iBook would like to have a word with you outside. Actually all Macs that belong to the "New World" generation have had Open Firmware. This stretches all the way to the iMac and the Blue & White Tower, and continues to the last G5 PowerMacs. All iBooks have OF.

    EFI has now replaced OF in the MacIntel platform that was introduced with MacBook, MacBook Pro and Mac Pro.

    --
    Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
  9. Java on the XO laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Java applications run nicely on the XO laptop. With a few simple tweaks you can see Swing and AWT apps full-screen.

    More details here:
    http://frequal.com/java/FirstLookOnTheOlpcXoLaptop.html