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Installing Ubuntu On an OLPC XO
Matt Lincoln Russell writes "Installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix on the OLPC XO is not for the faint of heart, but Drew Beckett has got the process down. This setup is pretty slow on the XO, but the good news is that Netbook Remix is a work in progress, and can be expected to get better."
db
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Nothing new here.
I have ubuntu with xcfe running on an XO for quite a while. Dual boot off of a SDHC.
teapot is the one to thank for this.
When Ubuntu Hardy was being released in April, I have posted installation instructions for it on XO. This is still probably the best way to install a "mainstream" Linux distribution on that laptop -- XO has rather unusual screen pixels layout with 1200x900 "visible" resolution, so Xubuntu desktop with a GTK theme made to accommodate XO's unusual screen behavior is better suited for it than a desktop made for plain low resolution and mostly touchscreen input that XO does not have.
I have posted videos of this version of Ubuntu in action on Youtube, and photos of the installation procedure (still with old GTK theme) on my Livejorunal.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
How in the world do hackers get their hands on these while the children they're intended for don't? BTW there's an interesting article about the OLPC XO's current situation in a recent article in Business Week.
Harold
I installed Gentoo on my Vaio S460. You guys want to read about that? Or how about the time that I installed OpenBSD on my desktop? I know, it's amazing the way operating systems can be installed on computers.
I guess this is a real item, though it seems a bit strange OLPC Postage Stamp
..when will the one-iPhone-per-middle-class-white-man campaign start?! I can't bear the view of those still not having one :(
Actually, I'm jealous, I'd really like to have an OLPC =)
I have ubuntu with xcfe running on an XO for quite a while.
You are dualbooting *STOCK* ubuntu of your card.
What TFA's author is trying to do is to test Ubuntu *Netbook Remix* which is a distro variation specially developed for sub notebooks.
He wasn't just trying to get ubuntu up (as already done by countless other howtos) he was willing to test the new flavour specially geared for this kind of machine.
Verdict : kidda works, not snappy enough, but will probably improve in the future
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Qemu? Oh dear. I guess this guy never heard of debootstrap.
Why Ubuntu gets again this kind publicity and not other GNU/Linux distributions what has be working on it long time and has instructions too?
Is this again one kind trick to separate Linux community by promoting Canonical as 'superior' OS manufacture?
Doesn't Ubuntu users anymore know what Ubuntu means?
I'm not trying to bash olpc -- I liked it enough to donate one. But I wonder whether the olpc is simply coming to market too late, and at too high a price, to be relevant. This article is an example of how fuzzy the boundary is between xo+sugar and a standard linux distro running on commodity hardware such as a eeepc or a standard laptop or desktop machine. There are basically three reasons I can see why olpc can be relevant:
I've never tried sugar, so I can't say anything for sure about #3, but I'm pretty skeptical. My own kids use gnome, and it works fine for them. The fuzzy boundary demonstrated by the article makes me doubt whether sugar by itself is all that relevant.
Re #2, I'm not convinced that it's really all that important for these kids to have this particular combination of features. Is portability really that critical? How much does it matter if the machine stays in the kid's home, or at school? Is the wireless really that useful in real life, in the environments where xo's are getting used? These features seem to be tied to a particular educational philosophy and imagined model of use, but it's not clear to me whether that's really happening. One of the big killer apps for olpc was supposed to be distribution of free electronic textbooks, and that is something I know something about (see my sig); basically the free electronic textbooks that exist today are disproportionately slanted toward esoteric graduate-level books on things like quantum field theory, with less for college freshmen, and essentially nothing for K-12.
And then there's #1, price. So far they've only got the xo's price down to $200, and $200 is not all that competitive against commodity hardware at this point. I'm going to have to compare with retail options here in the developed world (US), since that's what I have experience with. You can get a gPC from walmart for $200. I recently walked in to a Salvation Army thrift shop and bought a perfectly fine used desktop system for $89 -- and that wasn't a fluke, because there were two other machines on the shelf at the same price point that looked just fine. Memory upgrades for used machines are ridiculously cheap these days, ~$13 (including shipping) on ebay for 512 MB. So for the same price as the xo, I could spend $89 for a used desktop, $13 for a memory upgrade, $8 for a mouse and keyboard (typical sale price at Fry's), and maybe $70 for a cheap LCD (again, not an unusual sale price at Fry's). Now I'm not saying that this particular method of assembling a cheap, used desktop system is appropriate for getting a machine into the hands of a kid in Cambodia, but I think it does show that commodity hardware is getting so insanely cheap so fast that there's a real possibility that olpc will simply become irrelevant because it's overtaken by events.
Find free books.
How is this different from installing ubuntu mobile on OLPC?
Sent from my desktop computer
I've been running the Fedora tree for a couple of years because at the time of my last installation, I wished to play around with the IBM Cell development tools, and Fedora was best supported. Since then I moved a server to Ubuntu and was anticipating moving my desktop as well, which I attempted last weekend.
I was expecting the Ubuntu migration to be relatively pain free, but that was far from reality.
The first disappointment was that dual head did not activate itself automatically. I haven't tried to import my old Xinerama config yet. Pages I've found on the internet talk about xrandr instead, with this annoying 2048x2048 limitation. My screens are one LCD 1680x1050 and 1280x1024. I can't put them side by side without exceeding the 2048 horizontal limit, which will disable compiz effects (should I even care?) One post suggested stacking them vertically, 1050+1024 just barely makes it under the 2048 fence. The post doesn't explain the consequences of arranging my screens this way. Will it affect how my task bar functions? I'm left completely in the dark.
I did this install as a network install. I have a bootp server and prefer to install everything by this mechanism. Many of my machines don't even have CD/DVD players. I built my current desktop when SATA was catching on, but SATA DVD drives were hard to find, and I just flatly refused to pay the "floppy tax" by buying yet another useless PATA device. Instead, I spent the money on rock solid Intel network cards with PXE support.
I added Ubuntu to my netboot server in five minutes, and it fired up the first time, only to fail halfway through. After half an hour of tedious slogging through support forums, I found a link to an updated netboot which doesn't fail. Surprised that this problem could persist in HH for so long. It wasn't released last week.
Since installation, in less than eight hours of use, I've already had three desktop crashes requiring a reboot to cure. The keyboard become unresponsive (not even caps lock) and there are strange effects on screen. Sometimes the mouse continues to move, but does nothing else. I figure it's a rendering glitch. The machine still responds to SSH, so I'm able to SSH in and do an orderly reboot. I tried killing a dozen processes, but gave up without managing to crash the desktop back to the console: every process that looked vaguely gnomish or X-ish.
A surprise about the installer was that it allowed me to proceed with the install with *no* desktop selected. There was no text explaining "if you proceed, all you will have is a command line". There was no text helping me choose *which* desktop to install.
It wasn't hard to install the desktop from the command line in a second pass (I almost prefer it) but I was definitely unimpressed by the amount of guidance offered by the installer.
One feature I love about Ubuntu is that when I type a command command for a package not yet installed, it tells me "you need to install X, Y, or Z". Guidance. What an amazing concept.
My immediate reason for making the jump to Ubuntu last weekend was the desire to set up Eclipse to duplicate my development environment at work. My old Fedora was way behind the curve, so I had 3.4 at work and 3.2 at home.
I managed to install Eclipse on Ubuntu and ended up with ... 3.2 again. True to its Debian roots, Ubuntu is a full year behind the times with this important package. There is a bit of frenzy on the forums to get 3.4 packaged since the 3.4 release. Appears they've given up on 3.3 completely. Word is that the Ubuntu team lacks enterprise Java expertise and that if a cutting-edge Eclipse matters to you, you should install ... Fedora. Fortunately, my aging Fedora was still kicking around as I tend to do my OS upgrades onto fresh hard drives. I'm back on Fedora today, having not yet bothered to solve my Ubuntu problem with dual head.
During the Eclipse install, I experimented with installing most of the recommended package
Control over knowledge is the most effective way to maintain monopolies and totalitarian regimes.
Many of the poor countries are in the awkward position of one totalitarian regime having said, "Okay, let's see if the people can handle freedom." and no one in their society able to fill the power vacuum. Teaching the children how to access knowledge is a great way to help them (and their parents) figure out good ways to fill the power vacuum.
Now, why do the established educational institutions find the concept uncomfortable?
While I'm wondering how to find out whether the current openmoko is compatible with my docomo foma contract here in Japan, I'm also wondering how to hook a keyboard up to it.
It's really hard to blog on a phone pad, and I can't see a touchscreen of that size being much easier than a phone pad.
An OLPC with a phone modem in it, or a rollout of wifi hotspots equivalent to the cellphone networks would either one make the iPhone obsolete.
I have quite successfully used Fedora on laptops.
YMMV
Ubuntu live CD boots fine on an old clamshell iBook, but does funny things to video on similar vintage iMacs, making it impossible to install from a live CD.
Again, YMMV, but I think having both is a very good thing for the desktop, as well.
XOs are built differently from the eeepc. If I had a choice, I would get the OLPC over any of the "netbooks" or other cheap ultralightweights, even at the same price point.
USD 200 to USD 300 is not a small increase, either. But the price of OLPC will come down as the volume ramps up.
The price of eeepc and similar is at the bottom of the commercially viable pricing point for this kind of hardware. There's a reason that you don't see anything dropping under that price point, or anything really beating it at that price point. Market pressure for this class of machine is still to drive the price of the hardware up. (Look at the recent eeepc models.)
I wish the OLPC people could find a way to like the hardware into the regular market at the USD 300 price point. Or even reinstitute the G1G1 program at USD 500 so they can build the commercial delivery and support infrastructure.
At this point, all I can get in Japan is the MSWxp model at JPY 50,000 (roughly USD 500 at current exchange). I'm saving up to get one so I can type on the train. I'd far prefer the OLPC.
On the other hand, some people *have to* test it while it is still at this point, in order to provide useful feedback.
It's because *today* people are already trying Netbook Remix on OLPCs (and pretty much every other similar platform like Asus' EEE PC, MSI Wind, etc.), that the developers will get some valuable feed back (in this case : the interface is sluggish compared to what stock ubuntu achieves) and that down the line, five years later, netbook remix will be a successful and valuable platform as today the Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu family are.
And given the TFA content, it was worth testing because even if it's only still 5 packages currently, as those seem to make a significant difference : the UI doesn't work optimally (yet) on the OLPC.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It has USB host access so I don't see why a keyboard is out of the question.
Money is the root of all evil?
The contract shouldn't matter as long as it is GSM service as the phone companies normally don't care about the phone your using.
As for the keyboard you have a choice of usb or bluetooth.(I recommend bluetooth for geek cred)
One of the things that keeps consumer prices high is that consumer oriented companies think that pushing the price below a certain point will ruin their profitability. (Sales channels, mostly, I think, but packaging and advertising, as well.) So they push the functionality up to keep the price up.
But, as far as used computers for the underprivileged, in yesterday's USofA, it worked because power is cheap and generally available. Also, the environment in the USofA tends not to be as punishing. (Although, in houses on the bad side of a West Texas town, you have cockroaches and sand and that mold in the dust from the refinery smoke, so it is not all roses.)
OLPCs are targeted at dirt floors and houses with essentially no power, or unreliable power at best.
I'm not sure why you figure the specs that were good enough for sugar last year are not good enough this year, but I've been ignoring the sugar lists for a while, so you might be right. The original intent was otherwise, however.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
...to pay your $699 licensing fee you cock smoking teabaggers!