Hacking the XO Laptop

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."

Comments

The Subtle Jokes are Always the Best

[Rie Beam]

Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of theOH GOD MY EARS

Re:The Subtle Jokes are Always the Best

[Rie Beam]

Obviously mods missed the joke, so I'll explain. The XOs make a chirping noise (that's my best description of it) to locate one another. A Beowulf cluster of these would, therefore, be very noisy, and having a room full of these is, indeed, noisy, as several users have posted previously on /.

Re:The Subtle Jokes are Always the Best

[itismike]

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.

Re:The Subtle Jokes are Always the Best

[WK2]

So, would these not be appropriate to bring into a classroom?

Go on

[saibot834]

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

Re:Go on

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it should be, I figure kids will be able to learn more through slowly screwing up their XO's. (I know I did back in the day.)

These are just preliminary hacks

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the linked article, none of the hacks were completely successful.

Everything about the OLPC is optimized for its intended end use. It isn't just a bunch of computer bits slapped together. If you want to hack the OLPC successfully, you have to take a bunch of stuff into account otherwise the results will be suboptimal.

Example: The browser that comes with OLPC is optimized for the display and works about as well as could be expected. Opera, on the other hand, gets worse results display wise.

Re:These are just preliminary hacks

[pallmall1]

Opera, on the other hand, gets worse results display wise.

It's working great for me. I'm posting from my OLPC XO right now, from the Opera browser. The XO is great. It's small, light, and rugged. Not only does Opera work, but so does wvdial, so when I'm in the field in rural locations I'm able to use my cellphone as a tethered modem. Works great for reading pdf's and ebooks, too. The Youtube vids are a bit slow, but I've got a developer key so I can try out other optimized linux distributions made for multimedia performance.

Maybe you should try one if they offer the "Give-One-Get-One" program again. Maybe the kid who gets the XO you donate will create hacks you might find satisfactory.

Sad

[WarlockD]

Ordered mine last November and still haven't got it. Getting worried too as the email they sent said it be in before the 15th of this month and the website doesn't seem to do anything when I put my confirm number in....

I want to play with the damn thing:P Maybe I will look into getting a a Zipit 2z. I have the first generation and the second one looks very nice.

Re:Sad

[supersat]

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

Re:Sad

[Mr. Slippery]

Maybe I will look into getting a Zipit 2z.

What a painful and useless website this product has! Looks like it was desgined by a fourth-grader. Someone, please beat their web staff with a clue-by-four.

Since you've got one of these gizmos, can you give us a quick rundown on what it is and why you find it useful? 'Cause I sure can't figure it out from their site.

"not designed with the American consumer in mind"

[rindeee]

Yeah...because what American consumer wants a rugged, durable, affordable, polished, easy to use *nix based laptop that can run untethered for extremely long periods of time. No interest here.

OOLPCPLH

[jovius]

Featuring One One Laptop Per Child Per Linux Hacker

Re:"not designed with the American consumer in min

[nevali]

[Ob] So... a Mac, then?

"designed to be hackable"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious as to what hacks for the XO exist that exemplify it as a (hardware) platform "designed to be hackable".

Mind you... I don't consider the things from the article to be hacks. Using the CLI is not hacking, downloading and installing software is not hacking, and hooking a sensor up to a soundcard MIC in and using a monitoring app (could easily have been any ol' sound recording app) to look at the sensor's output is hardly a hack either (using the USB for power isn't a hack by any stretch, as the ports are designed with this very thing in mind). Not to mention that all of these can be done on -any- computer.

I may have missed something more subtle, but I really don't think the XO is any more, or less, hackable than any other computer - and I'm really not too sure about 'hackable' being a design goal for the thing. Cheap, rugged, open and all the other things... but hackable? Especially in terms of hardware?

( Don't mod this up - this is just a question post to which I honestly hope to see an answer that makes me change my mind. If one does get posted, please mod that up instead. ~ aether)

Re:"designed to be hackable"?

[swillden]

software is not hacking

Huh?

I really don't think the XO is any more, or less, hackable than any other computer

Since when does hacking refer only to hardware? And from a software perspective, Sugar is clearly more hackable than anything outside of a Squeak environment. Sure, you can hack anything you like on, say, Ubuntu, but there's a world of difference between that and pressing the "show source" key and modifying the app you're running. And, of course, there's simply no comparison with a closed system like Windows or OS X.

Re:"designed to be hackable"?

[PaintyThePirate]

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.

Re:"designed to be hackable"?

[MsGeek]

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.

Re:"not designed with the American consumer in min

[wbren]

Nope, he included affordable in his list of criteria.

Inferno is running in Xo

[DrSkwid]

pfft, that's not hacking

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

Xubuntu on the XO

[quixote9]

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.

Re:"not designed with the American consumer in min

[Sir_Kurt]

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-

Installing Opera is "hacking"?

[karmaflux]

I guess you have to be pretty leet to do "yum install opera." I got slackware up on mine. Freelikegnu got ubuntu running on his. There's a guy on IRC who put a tiny usb GPS dongle inside the thing, soldered to the mainboard. These are hacks. "yum install opera" is not.

Re:"not designed with the American consumer in min

[Lumpy]

You can buy one right now.

Ibook G4 12". Best linux laptop you will ever own and I get 5 hours runtime out of mine daily.

and they are cheap on ebay, if you look hard enough. only problem is that they are not rugged or durable.

Now, the XO peaks my interest as a backpacker/bicycle camping laptop. if you can rig a solar charger for these that would be perfect for the outdoorsperson that wants to have a pc with them (blogging from the backwoods W00t!)

anyone know if they are fine with being used open in the rain?

Re:one important piece of hacking

[Tacvek]

I'm not sure if this is true or not but apparently every OLPC unit has a piece of kill code in it which will brick the unit if they think a unit intended for a child has gone to a third party. Even if I was to do the BOGO option, I'd feel incredibly uncomfortable knowing my unit has the capability to be bricked at will.

Am I paranoid or gullible or does this worrying piece of software exist on the unit? Is anyone working on a patch to remove it?

With a developer's key (which you can get from the OLPC project) (it might even come with the laptops purchased trough the program) one can turn off virtually all security features, including the one you are referring to. My understanding is that to get the key requires evidence that you obtained the laptop legitimately, and that the laptop has not been reported as stolen. (It is not entirely clear if the key can unlock the laptop if it has been locked. But the key can definitely disable the anti-theft features.) Further the antitheft feature would be disabled by default on the laptops purchased through this program. Turning it on would require the developer's key or the OLPC master key (if one exists). Normally there would be a country key held by the Education Ministry that could also turn this feature on, but presumably there would be no such key installed on the laptops purchased through this program. Oh yeah, the developer's key is specific to the machine to which it was issued.