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 /.

"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.

"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: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.

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:"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-