Comparison of Windows XP and Linux/Sugar On the OLPC XO

griffjon writes "OLPCNews has a comparison of Windows XP to the Sugar/Linux OS on the One Laptop Per Child XO-1, based on the Microsoft Unlimited Potential video, touching on video recording, power usage, boot times, and mesh networking. An interesting, if saddening, read."

Comments

What's the real plan?

[clang_jangle]

I thought MS was determined to kill XP, so what point are they trying to make showing how well it can run on the XO? I find this a bit confusing, like MS is talking out both sides of their mouth or something. Are they really going to stop selling XP as they keep claiming, or are they going to build a "new" windows netbook edtion based on XP, or are they just going to keep offering XP alongside Vista? Seems to me either the second or third options would be the most realistic, but they keep saying the opposite. What gives, MS? TFA also links to a blog containing a claim of an XP RTM for the Intel Classmate
Puzzling.

Re:What's the real plan?

[belmolis]

Well, if I put my tin-foil hat on, I figure that Microsoft hopes to make the OLPC dependent on XP. With XP no longer available anywhere else, people who really want it will have to get it from OLPCs, rendering them unusable. In this way, MS will satisfy customers who really want XP, while destroying the OLPC.

Re:What's the real plan?

[ConceptJunkie]

I thought MS was determined to kill XP, so what point are they trying to make showing how well it can run on the XO?

They were. Then they realized that Linux would eat their lunch on the OLPC and they knew that Vista boot times on an OLPC would be geologic... if it could run on the machine at all.

Basically, Microsoft got caught with their crappy product being wholly incapable of supporting a new market that was emerging. XP would get a reprieve from this death sentence only to prevent Microsoft from (rightly) looking incapable of supporting low-end hardware. Basically, the cold hard reality of Vista's bloat is too big for even Microsoft to ignore.

Hopefully more and more people will realize that Microsoft hasn't done anything useful since XP was released, except for fixes to XP.

Re:What's the real plan?

[Drakonik]

Have you ever tried to talk out of ONE side of your mouth? Nobody can understand you.

Re:What's the real plan?

[stavros-59]

Microsoft really don't get the point of the OLPC. They've missed the market for mini laptops and only have Windows XP to offer that market. Shoehorning a kludgy XP and Office, antivirus and protection onto the OLPC makes it a far less useful product.

They are doing the same thing to the EEEPC.

Microsoft's Plans for the distribution of EEEPCs in India

Re:What's the real plan?

[RobertM1968]

Microsoft never claimed they were killing off XP. They claimed that for normal desktops and most laptops, it soon will be no longer available.

Microsoft still "maintains" and sells their older operating systems for a variety of other needs, such as embedded devices, low power devices, etc. This move coincides with that. In the Windows world, the XO is far from what people would consider a normal PC. While Linux variants, eComStation and OS/2 can still run on "outdated" hardware, newer versions of Windows cannot (run being defined as run in a usable fashion, including doing such things as word processing, etc). While their OS strategy is largely to blame for that, their policy does address it by their continued selling of older operating systems when the requirements are met (ie: slower and/or less powerful hardware, embedded devices, set-top boxes, xBox/xBox360s, etc).

The sadder point, which would have been a valid one for you to bring up, is that the current bloat in their newer OS incarnations is the cause for them having such a policy. Bloat which is not needed in any form or fashion - as an example, a fully implemented (we can hope for that day) Wine or Odin on Linux or OS/2 or eComStation would be able to run virtually any Windows app on OS's that require a much smaller CPU and memory footprint, and make far better use of the available resources.

Thus, (to bring this conversation full circle), Microsoft, instead of being technologically innovative in OS design, has decided to hold on to their older operating systems for the hardware still being built that they know their newer ones cannot run on. It's the same reason why Win3.1 sales in similar vertical markets is just ending now.

Re:What's the real plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it could be the XP on the OLPC is an offshoot of XP embedded, and as such kind of unrelated to XP's EOL in the consumer space.

If one looks at the OLPC as more of a computing appliance, and it seems to fill a kind of grey area, but kind of more on the appliance side, it makes a lot of sense. But I own a number of shares in a world resource fund, so your tin/aluminum foil consumption eventually benefits me. Rock on overlord welcoming/fearing soldier.

Re:What's the real plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Worked for Jean-Chrétien. /duck

Re:What's the real plan?

[Mr. DOS]

Darn, and just when I run out of mod points. Even if it is AC, and even if it does just back up the parent's point ;)

      --- Mr. DOS

Re:What's the real plan?

[couchslug]

"With XP no longer available anywhere else, people who really want it will have to get it from OLPCs, rendering them unusable. In this way, MS will satisfy customers who really want XP, while destroying the OLPC. "

No longer available? It's easier to download a copy or a key than go buy one. Anyone geeky enough to bother with an OLPC is geeky enough to have multiple copies of every MSFT OS since DOS...

Re:What's the real plan?

[RobertM1968]

Keep modding me down for being correct. You dont have to like the truth... how about spending the mod points on the GP instead - it's not like this hasnt been covered on /. enough.

Gotta love /. - glad I have karma to burn...

Re:What's the real plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's bullshit. They have to use WindowsXP for minimal installs because miniWin kernel was dropped from win7. This is the only reason behind this.
Microsoft hasn't done anything useful? Windows 2008 server ROCKS. .NET framework, ASP.NET MVC, etc...

Re:What's the real plan?

[YttriumOxide]

Many points here that I could debate on end, but I'm not really in the mood, so I'll leave those.
I do however have a question. You said:

It's the same reason why Win3.1 sales in similar vertical markets is just ending now.

Can you point me to such a vertical market? I haven't seen 3.1 in a LONG time. "NT Embedded", yes... "3.1", no.
(not saying you're lying, I'm actually just genuinely interested if there's a hole in my knowledge somewhere

Re:What's the real plan?

[shutdown -p now]

Microsoft still "maintains" and sells their older operating systems for a variety of other needs, such as embedded devices, low power devices, etc.

Indeed. For example, did you know that last November, Microsoft announced that it will stop selling and supporting Windows 3.1 to embedded device manufacturers. Which means that it was sold/supported before that, and apprarently there were customers. Go figure.

Re:What's the real plan?

[phillous]

But does it run linux? Oh wait... I see

Re:What's the real plan?

[DrSkwid]

see, you answered your own question

Re:What's the real plan?

[MathFox]

It is not just the OLPC, there are many manufacturers making sub-notebooks (think EeePC), that run Linux nicely, but have not the power to run Vista. Microsoft could have just given this market to Linux... but that would have been "defeat".
So spin spin spin, Microsoft allows OEM sales of XP for small laptops... while other manufacturers hear that XP can not be sold anymore...

Re:What's the real plan?

[Exanon]

Oh cmon. Even with the "Vista Certified"-bs even MS can't press Vista into the OLPC.

Re:What's the real plan?

[Isao]

Have you ever tried to talk out of ONE side of your mouth? Nobody can understand you.

Except dentists.

Re:What's the real plan?

[JohnBailey]

Same plan as always.. Try to take over the world.

Get Microsoft products on anything that can come close to running them. CE/XP/Vista, it doesn't matter so long as it is a Microsoft product. Microsoft would love to kill XP, but they can't get Vista to run on the available hardware, so they either allow some other product to take the place of Windows, or they keep XP around for sub normal specifications, and limit the markets it can be sold in so that they don't damage the Vista and later the 7 markets. If something came out that was successful enough to get noticed that could only run 3.11, Microsoft would very quickly dust it off and create USB 2 drivers for 3.11, and sell it as an ultra light weight OS.

Being a large corporation, there are many different departments and many different spokespeople, so they can talk out of all orifices in all directions at once and still be consistent. So OSS being a cancer is perfectly compatible with OSS being a valuable market which Microsoft needs to address and participate in. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were some Microsoft employees who did genuinely want to contribute to open source stuff, with no ulterior motive.

Re:What's the real plan?

[ConceptJunkie]

the dummies around here tested it on crappy old hardware for 5 seconds when it works perfectly fine on modern hardware made in the last 2-3 years.

Would that be the dummies that sold me a brand new low-end Gateway in 2007 that, because it was saddled with Vista, was literally the slowest personal computer I've ever used and that counts my floppy-based Amiga 500? Ironically, when I bought the machine I bought an extra gig of RAM, so I never even tried it with the meager half gig of RAM it came with. If you are calling Gateway a dummy, then I would have to agree. It is absolutely insane that they would saddle a perfectly nice sub-$500 machine with a really bright display (but a somewhat cheap-feeling keyboard) with the Vista boat anchor. I pity the poor people who don't realize there's nothing wrong with the product, just the abominable choice of software. Gateway foolishly caved in to the Evil Empire and made, by any objective standards, an insanely stupid business decision. They are dummies indeed.

However, the real dummy here is Microsoft. The fact of the matter is that Vista offers absolutely nothing for the insane amount of resources it consumes. An OS is a means, not an end, and when I have to upgrade my hardware for a new OS that doesn't do anything fundamentally new, something is very, very wrong. By your standards, finding this situation ridiculous is the fault of the user? Vista, in demanding almost an order of magnitude more power than would adequately run XP offers what? Eye candy? Meh. It's not half as nice looking what Compiz was doing a couple years ago. More security? I got hit by a virus once... in 1989. No problems since then... and you still need anti-virus software and a hardware firewall for the best protection. A new snazzy filesystem? No wait, that got cut. Support for new peripherals and media hardware? OK, that's the only significant thing Vista has to offer (don't forget the DRM performance penalty!), but that's not applicable to people upgrading their hardware... and consider yourself lucky if drivers exist in Vista for what you already have. Oh, and be prepared to upgrade a lot of your applications because a lot of big name, mainstream Windows apps from before 2007 don't work in Vista.

By the way, that Gateway laptop, which my wife uses, is perfectly usable and snappy running either Ubuntu or XP, and with those OSes, it can do everything that it can do with Vista, more really because it was literally not usable with Vista. For instance, I could double-click to launch Firefox, and 30 seconds would pass, not before the app would launch, but before I would even see an hourglass. This was on "modern hardware" not from the last 2-3 years but less than a year old.

It's funny. I've been using Linux on and off for almost 10 years, and in the last couple years, more on than off, and in the past couple months, exclusively. There are hot 'n' fancy new Linux distros showing up almost weekly, and yet every one of them will run adequately on a machine that is not 2 or 3 years old but 8 or 10 years old. You see Linux is modular enough that you can turn off the parts you don't need or can't use. If you can't run KDE or Gnome then there are a dozen or more windows managers that will get the job done, even on a 486. In fact, Linux runs on practically anything that has a processor. Windows, in its latest incarnation, being the great big monolithic loaf that it is, needs what would have been a supercomputer only a few years ago just to boot up. For what? So you can browse the Web, read your e-mail and write a letter? That's what 95% of people use Windows for... something I did perfectly well on a 486 back in the early 90's, and you could still do (minus things like Flash) today. XP was big and bloated compared to Windows 2000, and there was a performance hit, but it was nowhere near the quantum leap between XP and Vista.

I started using computers with Microsoft operating systems with DOS 1.1 out and I've used every non-server version

Re:What's the real plan?

[RobertM1968]

Microsoft seems to think there still was one and needed to kill it. See the post below. Here's the link even (or search /. for the topic that discusses it - you'll find info on what it is used for there):

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=627113&cid=24355759

Re:What's the real plan?

[RobertM1968]

Here's an article. A correction to note: my post should have said WfWG3.11 (Windows for Workgroups). Some items to note... MS is still selling it till Nov 2008. The announcement was made June 2008.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/11/microsoft_retires_windows_311_for_workgroups/

Now... where is it still used? Notta clue... but there are people who commented to that article pointing out places it is still used (some they work at, some they just know about), and it includes some embedded uses. Here's one:

It's used to control a piece of laboratory equipment here. Running on a P75 Dell

An occasional archiving of data files to cure slow down and it does the job fine.

No idea where "here" is or what laboratory equipment... but I can see hardware vendors not wanting to need to update software and apps that run a specialized embedded app that doesnt need to be changed.

Besides, I wasnt debating whether it is still in wide use, limited use, being purchased for embedded systems, etc. My point was that this is a policy that MS has had in place for over a decade and a half - as evidenced by the fact that they havent yet but will finally be stopping sales of WfWG in November for embedded markets.

Killing off one of their OS's has always been a multi-step process. Home user sales, OEM consumer install sales, business sales, and then specialized markets (en masse, or a market or two at a time). That was solely my point (with my perceived reason that strategy is needed by them - continued bloat). Sorry if it was not properly communicated in my original post.

Re:What's the real plan?

[florescent_beige]

Ok look, here we have two perfectly fine posts containing perhaps a certain level of snark but for God's sake why must they be modded this way?

We all have our stories about mod kiddies getting power mad but if a thread like this is judged so beyond the pale of /. sensibility that it must be hidden from default readers then holy heck I'll just go ask my grandmother how much she likes big band music, it would have about the same about of bite as this place does nowadays.

Soon it'll be to the point where the members with the worst karma will be the most interesting and the ones with the best karma will be so boring we'll all want to kill ourselves.

Re:What's the real plan?

[ConceptJunkie]

Karma's kind of a joke. I maxed out after a couple months... 8 years ago.

I've got a long way to go before my karma is "bad", but thanks for the support. I thought the moderation was unfair too. I mean, if I can't bash Microsoft (in the middle of several paragraphs of legitimate complaints) on /., where can I?

Oh, well, there's always my blog where I can go full-bore Grouchy Old Crank and no one can do anything about it! :-)

Re:What's the real plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

XP is available on nearly every BUSlNESS line of computers.

$3

[Anonymous Coward]

MS has no plans to Kill XP. Its the best OS they have going. Now that it is a stable version, and no longer "for sale" on new pc's, they can sell it for $3, and put it on low end laptops in order to reach a new set of customers, and keep them in the MS loop forever.

Re:$3

[Yfrwlf]

Sure, because MS would prefer to get as much money from you as possible, but if not they'll give you their OS for free just to have you using it at the very least as doing so helps them. Piracy helped make MS what they are today. It's really too bad schools don't band together and support the Linux OS instead, they could even each pay some money toward Linux software development, though I'm sure most of the crappy Windows educational software (and it IS crappy) will run through Wine any way.

Sugar is worse

[r00t]

Sugar is god-awful slow. It's not even a real program; it's just a Python script.

Sugar has this thing called the journal. It "manages" your files with less sophistication than the 1984 Mac. There are no directories. It's all one big pile. It's full of spam even; every time you run a program you get a useless file in your journal.

Re:Sugar is worse

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you read and understand the philosophy behind OLPC, the XO laptop, and Sugar, before posting such blatantly ignorant posts as this one.

Re:Sugar is worse

[edalytical]

Besides slow, which I can't comment on, everything else you mentioned is a feature. I don't think they're all that bad either.

If sugar was a "real" program (whatever that means) as opposed to a script it wouldn't be user modifiable (at least at runtime).

Honestly when is the last time you saw a novice user create a directory? My mom and my sister certainly don't. On that same note it's not like you couldn't use a naming scheme that would effectively manage your files like directories. All you have to do is prefix related files with some kind of identifier. For all intend and purpose that's what a directory name really is, a prefix. It doesn't matter if it's not supported at the file system level.

If those so-called "spam" files contain the amount of time you spent with a program and other useful things like your interactions with the program then I think they aren't useless. Tracking your time is an important skill that many people haven't learned. Doing it for the user is very useful. The Wii tracks your time it's pretty interesting and useful too.

Re:Sugar is worse

[sumdumass]

What would the philosophy have to do with anything? Maybe you meant specs or white papers or something. Google's philosophy is to do no evil yet if you ask the right people they have. The philosophy really has nothing to do with the actual implementation besides being a guide.

BTW, I'm not looking anything up on this so what did he say that was wrong and such blatantly ignorant posts?

Re:Sugar is worse

[oldhack]

Sugar is god-awful slow. It's not even a real program; it's just a Python script.

That's a really bright thing to say. What, you program only with solder?

Re:Sugar is worse

[grumbel]

That the underlying philosophy is good doesn't change the fact that Sugar has still a lot of problems. The journal getting filled with tons of completly useless entries, which basically render it unusable, is just one of them, the other is that even a "Hello World"-app takes almost 10 seconds to start up, while it starts instantly when started from the terminal.

Re:Sugar is worse

[TerminaMorte]

Novice users create a directory all the time; it's not a concept people have difficulty with.

I find it very surprising that there are no directories, especially if these "spam" files are getting dumped to the same place you save your documents and other files.

This is a feature that is embarrassing not to have.

Re:Sugar is worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Directories are stupid. But you need an alternative MORE powerful -i.e. categories/labels, not nothing, to replace them.

Re:Sugar is worse

[Mista2]

I think it is also a point about whether you want to provide a tool for kids to learn about computers, and hwo to make them work, or just another PC to edit documents and browse the web on like good little trainie consumers. I cut my PC teeth on breadboarded motorolla CPUs and hacking my z80 based spectrum. I also has an amiga and commodore 128 but I didn't use them except for games. However my speccy got to run a robot, interface with my lego, drive my fathers model railway (track moving trains, route them and set points etc) I learnt about electronics, code, hacking, memory management and why not to bump the ram add on. The keayboard was terrible, so I built my own. On my commodore I learnt how to wait for games to load on serial floppy disk. My Amiga got used for a little video editing and sound mixing, but again mostly games. I cannot see a viable entry level box for learning on (and cheap enough to replace if an experiment fails) apart from the XO. I'm glad that sugar isn't perfect, because then my son & daughter might be able to have a go at learning how to fix it, rather than just post up more trash on facebook and twitter. Putting XP on it fails to get the point of what the XO is for. It is very well designed, just not for Microsoft to run their apps on. If you want XP on an underpowered laptop, buy one second hand.

Re:Sugar is worse

[walshy007]

scripts etc are handy, I'm not sure about you but I consider 'real' programs, to be programs that can be compiled into native machine code for the system to run.

coding in python, php etc I think would still be considered coding, but the resulting item would not be a 'program'

Re:Sugar is worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly when is the last time you saw a novice user create a directory?

I see it all the time, although I'm guessing most of the time it is by accident and so it remains unused and under the name "New Folder." I've seen this often by "novice" users when I have to fix their machines. I'd imagine that most of them don't even know it's there or that they created one, or screwed up and don't know how to delete/rename stuff.

Re:Sugar is worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Go and improve this, if you really care. Python programs are usually really easy to hack.

Re:Sugar is worse

[cp.tar]

Sugar is god-awful slow. It's not even a real program; it's just a Python script.

So you're saying they should have programmed it in Lisp or Scheme?

I recall Sawmill/Sawfish; one of the best window managers at the time, highly configurable, blazingly fast, written in Scheme.

As for "a real program"... sorry, but AFAICT even a VB program is a real program. If Sugar were written in Logo, it would still be a real program.
I mean, what other kind of program is there? Unreal programs? Fake programs?
You could say it weren't a real program if it never worked at all.

Re:Sugar is worse

[Haeleth]

So you're saying they should have programmed it in Lisp or Scheme?

Yes, or maybe Smalltalk. Something with a fast implementation that still provides users with the ability to tinker with the program while it's running.

Re:Sugar is worse

[Ren.Tamek]

Baby? Bathwater?

Re:Sugar is worse

[giantweevil]

Wait, you mean your mom and sister have NEVER made a single folder on any operating system?

Because that's what you appear to be saying. A folder is just a GUI metaphor for a directory.

An interesting, if sad, read?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so I'm a Linux fanboy. I don't find tfa the least bit sad.

Re:An interesting, if sad, read?

[Paradigm_Complex]

It's sad the same way a car crash is sad. Even if the car crash comprised of jerks and sellouts. It's hard not to stare... with a smile. Because it's sad.

Comparison of Windows XP and Linux/SugarOnthe OLPC

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess in a word it is like a mermaid half something we recognize and the other half (windows) we are not really sure how it affects the half we know about.

I suppose if it hadn't been changed, bugs fixed, assurances that one could buy one without windows on the machine, completely open source as before, wifi working, webcam, good screen, etc. that it could be thought of as the new TSR -100 under linux. I'd buy one for $100, but how does that help the desperate children of the world or their governments who may or may not want this machine for their children? Very sad.

Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[Manip]

Comparing Sugar to Windows XP is kind of like comparing a pushbike to a 747 engine...

They're designed to do different things. Sugar is designed to be incredibly simple needing little training (or reading skill). It allows people to use a computer without having to learn how to use a computer.

Windows XP is a versatile monster trying to offer all things to all people. It is hugely complex and requires the average person a great deal of time to pickup and use.

I can understand why Microsoft might wish to run XP on the X0 but what I struggle to understand is why anyone is comparing them to one another.

If Microsoft develops some kind of child friendly interface that children can use then we can start talking about it. But until that happens you just aren't comparing the same thing at all.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[Kangburra]

You mean like Bob? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[Flavio]

I can understand why Microsoft might wish to run XP on the X0 but what I struggle to understand is why anyone is comparing them to one another.

The point of comparing Sugar to XP is to demonstrate what most of us predicted -- i.e., that XP is completely unsuitable for this application.

Having XP in the marketplace annoys me, but my irritation is limited because people have alternatives. A child who gets XP preinstalled on the XO will probably have no alternative and will be left with an inferior product. I hope reviewers keep denouncing Microsoft's involvement with the XO, because no good can come of it.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[_Sprocket_]

One of these two OS environments was designed to be on a XO and one wasn't. That's why they're being compared - and why the comparison is valid.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[perlchild]

but what I struggle to understand is why anyone is comparing them to one another.

Because there have been pressures on the OLPC to replace one with the other. To know how useful such pressures are, you have to compare them. That the pressures are lobby-driven and really have nothing in common with what people associate with "sense" is the result of that comparison.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[edalytical]

Well, good thing the comparison was XP vs GNU/Linux with Sugar and not just Sugar in and of itself.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, exactly like Bob, only done right. Face it, that's all Sugar is. Apple had a similar idea, around the same time, assort of "Finder Litiand theirs was better, but still far from perfect. But was not a bad idea. It was a great idea, a very simple interface to let you quickly do what you need to do. It was, however, a horrid implementation,

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[RobertM1968]

The thing I dont understand about BoB is that it was a blatant ripoff of PackardBell's crappy similar entry - which went nowhere at all. How Microsoft made the mistake of "borrowing" their design, adding "Clippy" and the rest of his idiotic designs, and thinking it would go anywhere still amazes me.

You have no idea how many thousands (palettes worth) of BoB they sent to each CompUSA for launch...

It was quite funny. Well, for us... I dont think anyone at Microsoft thought it was funny... (or if they did, they probably didnt keep their jobs very long).

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[fm6]

The point of comparing Sugar to XP is to demonstrate what most of us predicted -- i.e., that XP is completely unsuitable for this application.

And that, believe it or not, is actually good news.

People want Windows on the XO because they think that kids need "practical" tools, like Microsoft Office, so they can develop "marketable" skills. Which is nonsense. There aren't that many jobs for people with those kinds of skills, especially not in rural villages in the developing world. Kids in those places need learning tools that help them build their knowledge and skill base on their own.

So Windows on the XO is unworkable. Great. Now the OLPC people can get back to doing something more useful than producing yet another Wintel clone.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[griffjon]

The point of comparing Sugar to XP is to demonstrate what most of us predicted -- i.e., that XP is completely unsuitable for this application.

Exactly -- It seems... obvious? But the pushback (slashdotters in favor of Windows over Linux? Is it Opposite Day??) is pretty amazing. Sugar is built to be an educational tool; XP was built to be a business tool. There are many, many great arguments why XP is a bad idea for the OLPC XO; but they are often lost on people. TFA is just trying to do a straight, point-by-point comparison to show how bad XP really is as a replacement for Sugar.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

And look at what MS did to the BoB project manager. Makes Gitmo look like a summer retreat.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[hairyfeet]

What amazes me is that nobody at the OLPC seems to be even thinking this through. You are putting WinXP,which can be hijacked in no time flat if it isn't running AV,anti-malware,firewall,and patched up(and the patches can take up a TON of space). Since we know that a machine with specs as low as the OLPC can't run all those,not unless they run something ultra stripped like "XP Beast Edition" to make room for the extra software and to cut down on the avenues of attack,which of course MSFT isn't about to give them, we can assume that it will be no time at all until the XP OLPCs will be hijacked.

As someone who fixes Windows machines for a living I can tell you that no matter how much RAM and CPU you have the average virus or malware is going to thrash the hell out of the drive,that is just the nature of the beast. Since the OLPC uses SSD for storage the XP machines will burn through the write cycles pretty damned fast once they get pwned. And unless they are planning to give out read only flash drives containing the OS I'm guessing the hacked together version of XP they are getting is going to be a royal PITA to reinstall once it burns up the SSD. So they are going to end up with a bunch of dead OLPCs,and since we are talking third world and I doubt they have crates of SSDs to replace all the burnt ones from viruses, the OLPC goes from being a tool for schoolkids to learn with to just another piece of dead Windows junk.

Maybe when the OLPC goes out of business someone will buy the fab and the design and sell them to everyone so the economies of scale will kick in and we can all have cheap Linux Netbooks. Because going with XP on the OLPC seems to me to be a recipe for failure.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[Tacvek]

Are you talking about the Packard Bell Navigator software? It was a piece of shit much like Bob, and presented a "house" with rooms, organizing your software according to room or some such nonsense. IIRC the keyboard on my Pack of Hell even had a key specially marked for launching the software.

But I'm pretty sure Bob was not a true ripoff of Navigator, as they both came out the same year. I suspect they were really just simultaneously developed, and modified to add interesting fewatures they heard were going to be in the other.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[DarkOx]

I think that is sorta the point. What is "needed" on the OLPC and XO is something simple that someone with not experience, and limited reading skills, a child in the developing world for example is something like sugar.

If you are trying to decide to ship Windows XP or Linux with Sugar on top, it might be useful to compare them from the point of view of the target user. Also Sugar is just the shell, the linux based operationg system its running on is still a "versatile monster trying to offer all things to all people. It is hugely complex and requires the average person a great deal of time to pickup and use."
Once they start learning they can go on to use just about and UNIX software which as a general rule has a lot better odds of doing something useful on such a limited hardware platform then any Windows based counter part.

Sugar / the windows shell, in this case should be almost thought of as a boot strap for the user. Its supposed to be providing them enough access to get started without much prior education so they can go on an teach themselves from there. Having never used sugar only reading about it a looking at pictures that it appears it might be a success where XP is obviously a total failure at such an objective. Evidence you say just look at all the thick dead tree books, and traning videos designed to teach basic Windows usage to extreemely well educated by comparison users here in the Western World. Windows is not some magically intuative system most people can just figure out, its just that its so popular everyone gets exposure.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[Anne Thwacks]

Obviously, you have not been to rural Africa! Ability to use MS Word is a highly marketable skill there.

Since a high proportion of the adults are functionally illiterate, they need to employ someone else to write for them. This applies most especially to those who control the money and power - and in the best position to pay for your services.

Furthermore, if you have plans to go to the big city and get a job with the government (who have stolen most of the money from the people), you will need a good working knowledge of MS Word to construct a credible CV.

Your post should be modded "-1 Rubbish"

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[uassholes]

The whole idea behind Xerox Star(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star), Apple Lisa/Mac, then Fuckroass's knock-off, "Windows", WAS to make computers "friendly" to non-computer people.

But the youngsters who grew up with it now think it's a real OS.

Be a shame for millions of yound minds in the developing world to be twisted the way they have been where MSWin has become the default.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[Ebirah]

How Microsoft made the mistake of "borrowing" their design, adding "Clippy" and the rest of his idiotic designs, and thinking it would go anywhere still amazes me.

As far as Bill was concerned, MS Bob was a big success, as he got to marry the project manager, which might not have been an option if the project had been ignominiously canned as it deserved to be.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[gbjbaanb]

Having as many copies of Word as you can carry is not much use if you cannot write in the first place.

Education comes first. Being sold an expensive software product, way down there at the bottom of the 'things Africans need' list.

so first get a teaching tool to the chidren, and teach them to read and write. Then they can buy their own copies of Word when they're older.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[JohnBailey]

As far as Bill was concerned, MS Bob was a big success, as he got to marry the project manager, which might not have been an option if the project had been ignominiously canned as it deserved to be.

Ahh.. so Bob was the equivalent of a wife/girlfriend chosen hifi component..

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[Anonymous Coward]

And when have you been to Africa? Where will these functionally illiterate and rural people find the resources to employ you?

Believe it or not, the people in charge (who "control the money and power"), although often corrupt, are quite literate and educated.

As someone who lives in Africa, I find your post quite insulting. It perpetuates a well known stereotype of stupid, corrupt and illiterate Africans who needs the someone (prefereably white) with MS Word skillz to come and save them from themselves...

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[Anonymous Coward]

the windows admin / training / add ons overheads add significant cost to the end users.

OLPC is profit seeking (so selling out is fair enough) but let's not pretend it is about educating children.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I don't know. I have a pretty damn credible CV made with LaTeX, which is easily installed on the OLPC. If that is too hard for you to use, abiword is also available and makes fine doc and pdf files.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[dhasenan]

Terminal, nano.

Or if you prefer a gui, x11 + (nedit || gedit || kate || ....)

If you need an office suite, OpenOffice works as well. And there's always LaTeX....

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, constructing a credible CV, or even a readable document, is not possible without running MS Word on XP.

Jerk.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[__aaqvdr516]

A child who gets XP preinstalled on the XO will probably have no alternative and will be left with an inferior product. I hope reviewers keep denouncing Microsoft's involvement with the XO, because no good can come of it.

At least the child will have a laptop that they did not have in the first place. Regardless of the OS that's installed, there is plenty of good in that alone.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[PPH]

I've found that getting computer illiterate people familiar with basic concepts is the biggest leap. Once they are comfortable with a keyboard, mouse, file storage, etc. differences between O/Ss and applications are easily handled.

A dual boot system would go even further toward teaching theory vs rote learning.

Re:Sugar and XP accomplish different things....

[fm6]

Fine, people need to be able to use word processors. But why does it have to be a Microsoft word processor?

Microsoft Word is the "default standard" in most big businesses because people need to share word processor files, and copying complex documents between word processor formats in not practical. But if you're writing simple letters or preparing a CV, any word processor will do — and Sugar/OLPC comes with one. And it's probably better suited to a casual user than is Word.

So - the moral is...

[silverdr]

that GNU/Linux is not for children...

Negroponte

[Stephen Ma]

Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the OLPC project, has a brother named John Negroponte. Yes, that Negroponte: the current Deputy Secretary of State. So it's probably not surprising that the OLPC project is now under Microsoft's thumb: the huge octopus in Redmond has a lot of tentacles inside the Bush administration; this political influence was probably how Microsoft escaped being seriously punished after losing the anti-trust case.

By the way, John Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras in 1981-85, and to Iraq in 2004-5. We started hearing about death squads in both countries not long after his appointment. Death squads started appearing in El Salvador and Guatemala at about the same time as Negroponte's stint in Honduras. There is no proof that he was the instigator of the death squads, but I would not be surprised to learn that he was the evil force behind them, not surprised at all.

So Nicholas Negroponte has some heavy political connections, not all of which are entirely savory.

Re:Negroponte

[johnlcallaway]

Amazing how one can take pieces of disparate information, couple it with nonsensical comments and very flimsy commonality and turn it into a conspiracy theory.

Remember, just because someone is paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get them ...

Re:Negroponte

[Anonymous Coward]

You REALLY need to go outside once in a while..

Re:Negroponte

[Anonymous Coward]

In the famous words of Stephen Colbert, did you also know that the "Golden Gate Bridge's suspension cables form the exact same geometric shape as the Pyramids of Giza"?

Compare... this with this! There must be a conspiracy.

Also, the Golden Gate Bridge shares the exact same colour as the surface on the planet Mars! This obviously means the Golden Gate Bridge was built by evil Martian overlords, the US Government has been in contact with these evil overlords for decades, and that therefore, the US government is planning to rule the world. Oh, and the moon landing was faked, the government did 9/11, and the government is intentionally planning to "ruin" the OLPC with Windows XP.

See? I can make up conspiracy theories too.

Re:Negroponte

[roster238]

There is no proof that John Negroponte was not in Dallas in November of 1963. I'm not implying anthing, I'm just saying that there is no proof. Coincidence? I think not.

Re:Negroponte

[Stephen Ma]

Wherever Negroponte went, there were death squads. You can call it coincidence if you want. But remember the following military maxim: once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action.

Re:Negroponte

[RobertM1968]

Amazing how one can take pieces of disparate information, couple it with nonsensical comments and very flimsy commonality and turn it into a conspiracy theory....

Ummm... this IS Slashdot... why is that so amazing? Happens here every few minutes!

;-)

Re:Negroponte

[johnlcallaway]

By it's very definition, it can be called a coincidence until there is more than simple causal connections . I don't have to call it that at all, it will be that until there is physical evidence. And then linking two people together simply by an accident of birth takes it just beyond conspiracy theory in my opinion.

Or a good story to scare young children and influence naive adults with.

Re:Negroponte

[Stephen Ma]

By it's very definition, it can be called a coincidence until there is more than simple causal connections.

Tell that to the military then. As they say, "three times is enemy action". When death squads appear wherever Negroponte shows up, without exception, a reasonable conclusion -- not ironclad proof mind you, just a reasonable conclusion -- is that one is a consequence of the other.

And then linking two people together simply by an accident of birth takes it just beyond conspiracy theory in my opinion.

Yeah, you're probably one of those who believe George W. Bush earned his presidency by merit, not because he was the son of George H. W. Bush.

Re:Negroponte

[johnlcallaway]

A coincidence doesn't imply that one shouldn't be careful. If I find that money is missing from my car whenever I give Freddie a ride, it doesn't mean Freddie is stealing. Police use coincidences all the time. Fortunately, our legal system requires physical proof rather than coincidence most of the time. Three coincidences probably would not be enough to convict anyone, that damn reasonable doubt thing and all.

I might be more careful leaving money in the car when Freddie is around. But I sure wouldn't go around telling all my friends Freddie is a thief either.

I don't find it a reasonable conclusion. An interesting theory, but without facts it is baseless. That's like saying 'I don't know where those lights in the sky came from, therefore aliens spaceships must be the cause'. Interesting theory, but I'll need more facts.

Your last comment is irrelevant, there could be hundreds of reasons George W Bush is president without any merit that have nothing to do with his father. Sidestepping a discussion this way is a common tactic that conspiracy nuts use when they run out of evidence. That doesn't mean someone who uses it is a conspiracy nut.

It's just a coincidence, I'm sure.

Re:Negroponte

[Stephen Ma]

Remember, the death squads always follow Negroponte's appearance on the scene. Always! That is more than enough coincidence for a strong suspicion. Police routinely arrest people on far less. Negroponte should have been tried long ago by a war crimes tribunal.

Proof is a different matter, but I am willing to bet that Negroponte will be found guilty by an impartial international court. The evil coincidences are just too strong to ignore.

Re:Negroponte

[Stephen Ma]

There was no proof that Joe Capone was a gangster chieftain (he was convicted on tax evasion, believe it or not).

And yes, there is no proof that John Negroponte was behind the death squads in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Iraq. But isn't it amazing that the killing fields appear wherever he shows up? If you think that is still a coincidence, fine. I think he's evil.

Re:Negroponte

[johnlcallaway]

Wow .. that was some convincing argument. I think that maybe you've convinced me and everyone else with your unbelievable use of strong arguments based on sound fact gathering and irrefutable evidence.

Oh wait .. we were talking about coincidences, and I switched to sarcasm. Sorry ....

Police can arrest anyone, anytime. Whether a DA will prosecute or a judge and jury will convict on 'strong suspicion' is highly doubtful.

I think I can safely ignore future posts as just being more of the same. Yawn ... I think i will search for intellectual discussions elsewhere.

Re:Negroponte

[Stephen Ma]

Feel free to keep banging your head against the same brick wall. You probably think it's only coincidence that your head is hurting.

Re:Negroponte

[johnlcallaway]

Funny ... I was just thinking the same thing about you.

Re:Negroponte

[Hucko]

It is just a coincidence see...

Re:Negroponte

[Stephen Ma]

You're the one who keeps banging his head against the brick wall, not me.

I am quite confident that international war crimes tribunals will find Negroponte guilty. They will laugh at any argument that all the death squads were coincidental.

Re:Negroponte

[johnlcallaway]

I see we have reached a stalemate. I keep responding to your arguments with discussions why I disagree, and you just keep repeating the same old tired expressions without any attempt to enlighten other than 'Oh yeah -- well I'm still right' and making statements that you cannot back up with any facts, just conjecture and 'confidence'. Good thing you didn't go to lawyer school, those types of legal discourses would probably get you a job that includes those famous words, 'you want fries with that??'

Maybe someday, when you have matured, you will be able to have discussions with adults. Until then, I will leave you with the only thing that I think you understand based on how you have responded to my posts.

No I'm not .. you are.....Phhhhlllpppptttttt!!!!!!

Re:Negroponte

[Stephen Ma]

Shrug. It takes an adult to avoid being a sucker for propaganda.

The following is verifiable fact, not propaganda: there were death squads in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Iraq when Negroponte was in the respective neighborhoods.

Now for a deduction: wherever Negroponte goes, the killers appear. Feel free to call it a coincidence.

I don't care what you believe. I do care what a war crimes tribunal will believe, once it gathers evidence. And I'm pretty sure what its conclusions will be with respect to John Negroponte.

Re:Negroponte

[roster238]

I think you meant "Al" Capone not Joe (did Al have a brother?)

It could be that Linus Torvalds is a sleeper KGB agent trained by his father to help re-establish communist domination of Europe by defeating capitolism through the use of the open source concept. More evidence exists for this than your Death Squads idea. FYI - The leader of the Honduran Death Squads was Colonel Juan Lopéz Grijalba, a native Honduran.

Re:Negroponte

[xtracto]

Dooooon't feeeeed the trooooooooolls!!
Brrraaaaaains!

haha,

Just give Stephen a fit tinfoil hat and forget about it :P

Re:Negroponte

[LingNoi]

He's also directly responsible for 911 and the killer tsunami in asia.

Re:Negroponte

[Stephen Ma]

Yes, I meant Al Capone. "Joe" sounded wrong, but it was late at night.

Yes, Lopez was one of the front men. But read this: Was the CIA involved? Did Washington know? Was the public deceived? Now we know: Yes, Yes and yes..

Re:Negroponte

[johnlcallaway]

Sorry .. it was too much fun to see how he would react and if there was anything intelligent that might come out of it.

Guess not....

It's an easier smear than that.

[twitter]

Despite all the shortfalls mentioned, M$ marketing will tell you that XP is better than that toy OS but XP is all you can run on toy hardware and be able to do "real work". If you want to do real work right, they will tell you to buy Intel's latest and cripple it with Vista. I know, that has nothing to do with reality but that's what they will tell you.

When it comes to education, they will point to piles and piles of really awful "educational" software available for XP that will soon be ported to Vista. Or they will do what they did here and act like XP + Office and a thumb drive for "sharing" is all you need. Who knows, as the article pointed out, none of it will work once you put in AV and viruses eat it anyway. The sad fact is that XO and Sugar met a real need in a way that M$ can't, but M$ is going to bribe and lie until XO is destroyed.

Re:It's an easier smear than that.

[palegray.net]

Listen everyone, I dislike twitter as much as anyone. However, the parent post appears to contain a valid statement of opinion regarding Microsoft's tactics with respect to the OLPC project. Moderation should probably be according to the content of the post, not simply the poster's name.

Re:It's an easier smear than that.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sick and tired of the whole twitter bullshit, but I agree with the other AC (no, that wasn't me, I'm posting AC because I don't want to get hit with offtopic moderations).

You can't run around a website insulting everyone's intelligence, pretending you're a group of ten people who agree with each other, start yelling at everyone when it doesn't work, and then expect everything to just go away.

He had his chance. If I believe what his detractors are saying, he's had 12 chances so far, and so far it's the same thing as far as I can see. No kidding, this guy thinks Microsoft is actually on Slashdot attacking him personally!?

I hope to hell I can troll a website like that for months and then expect bygones to be bygones.

Re:It's an easier smear than that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderation should probably be according to the content of the post, not simply the poster's name.

I agree, except when the poster "contributes" to Slashdot with things like these.

Re:It's an easier smear than that.

[Anonymous Coward]

So am I, and so is my wife...

Re:It's an easier smear than that.

[Hucko]

Months? He has been doing it for years!

Re:It's an easier smear than that.

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

Why speak of XO and Sugar in the past tense?

Last I looked, they are nowhere near dead yet.

Re:It's an easier smear than that.

[rtb61]

They are how ever running into much stiffer competition, competition that oddly enough the OLPC project created. Low cost UMPCs are starting to appear all over the place and their numbers will rise. A lot of first world governments are moving to get a laptop into every students hands, as such it is a huge market.

Quite simply FOSS has matured and gained sufficient public attention that it is the most desirable solution to ensure cost effective solutions. First world governments can save a huge amount money in text books costs alone by digitising them and distributing them schools. With FOSS companies can offer customers complete software hardware solutions at very low prices, no B$ licence audits and the customer retains full control of their software installation.

XP on the XO is M$ attempt simply to pull some popularity out of the XO and from their point of view trying to force up the cost of hardware to prevent the software appearing as such an expensive waste of money in comparison, hence the resource hog vista. They really have become a myopically greedy company with a complete disregard for the harm their actions cause.

Re:It's an easier smear than that.

[cp.tar]

XP on the XO is M$ attempt simply to pull some popularity out of the XO and from their point of view trying to force up the cost of hardware to prevent the software appearing as such an expensive waste of money in comparison, hence the resource hog vista. They really have become a myopically greedy company with a complete disregard for the harm their actions cause.

OLPC is an educational project.
Microsoft wants, more than anything, to keep infecting younger generations.

If kids learn to live without Microsoft's software, if they learn to program and hack on a massive scale, there is no force in the world that will make them endorse Microsoft's expensive solutions unless they are significantly better than the competition, i.e. really worth their price.

This is something that needs to be stopped, as it cuts in their future userbase; it is as if the sheep suddenly started developing civilization: not very good news for shepherds at all.

Re:It's an easier smear than that.

[The_Wilschon]

I really hope you're being sarcastic. If not, you really need to lighten up. I have never had difficulty with slashdot due to twitter, trolling or not. However, the pages and pages of people screaming "ZOMGWTFBBQROFLCOPTER ITS TEH TWETTTX0RS!" really do ruin a good article.

So get over yourself. You're not some brave chivalrous hero. You're just as much of a troll. You do more damage to slashdot than any of the other trolls do. For goodness sake, just shut up!

Re:It's an easier smear than that.

[Caetel]

Shouldn't moderation always be according to the content of a post, regardless of poster/subject?

Re:It's an easier smear than that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a deep breath and hover your mouse over the link to the user page of the person you're replying to. Now compare to this.

Another twitter sockpuppet.

But wah, he deserves to be modded up, wah.

Re:It's an easier smear than that.

[dedazo]

Wrong person.

Sorry you got nailed by the troll. Happens to everyone once in a while.

I have an olpc and would love windows 98' most

[magsk]

Firstly let me just say I purchased my olpc to use while I travel to third world countries and off the grid (as mot of them are), I like the olpc for its battery life its ability to be recharged without an outlet, and most of all its ruggedness. Now while I understand that xp is a great operating system and modern. I must say that I would be thrilled to use windows 98' on my olpc. . For a few reasons... 1)Suger is very boring, its like using a graphing calculator. 2) I would prefer to use word 97 and excel, along with IE (or ideally firefox, but beggars be choosers) 3) I am more familiar with windows and do believe that my ability to connect to other computers and receive files will be much more successful than using sugar. 4) hopefully will not need to load from SD card Let me finish by saying I know what the olpc was made for, but as someone who did the whole give 1 get 1 because they genuinely appreciate the innovations of the laptop I am an adult and do use it for work.

Re:I have an olpc and would love windows 98' most

[nawcom]

Note that this is only an outside opinion, but your whole paragraph equates to someone being served a a nice wet-n-sloppy dog-shit sandwich, and quickly getting back in line for seconds. Though myself a unix dev, I'm sure any Windows user would prefer Windows 2000 to a horribly coded frontend to DOS. Hell, I still use 2000 (either Windows 2000 or Windows FLP) on a VM in OS X, *BSD, or Linux.

What am I saying? You would like Win2000/WinFLP more, since it's up-to-date and doesn't require heavy memory. But me telling you to use an NT OS instead of a DOS/9x one isn't really help at all; it's about as equivalent to telling a Heroin user to give morphine a try as a better alternative. ;)

Re:I have an olpc and would love windows 98' most

[magsk]

You are probably 100% right, windows 200 sounds really good. I am not IT or software savvy and only know thru my own use of windows 98'. I assumed 98 wold be lite on the memory needs and such so thought that it could be a good choice. I will have to post requests on the olpc newsgroups to see if anyone can configure windoes 2000 for the olpc.

Re:I have an olpc and would love windows 98' most

[Anonymous Coward]

Beggars are choosers now? Interesting...I would have thought that they were not in a position to be picky.

Re:I have an olpc and would love windows 98' most

[nawcom]

I know xp drivers usually use the same resources as windows 2000, it's just that the installers might check to see what OS you are using, and freak out if you aren't using XP. I usually use WinRAR to pull these files out of the EXEs, and if i can't I run the installer and then copy all of the extracted files from your $TEMP folder before closing the installer app. I was checking out AMDs site for geode level support for windows, and it's pretty low, so I would personally depend on the drivers that came with the OS. There's always Windows FLP too, I prefer that over regular XP since its XP without the unneeded bloat. Also I feel bad for sounding harsh, just had a bad night so far; and putting it on someone else was wrong - so I apologize for that.

The main reason I suggested 2k is because the amount of memory that OS needs is considerably lower than XP; if you install it on an updated PC or laptop right now, you'll see a big difference. Same with Windows FLP, but not as much. Anyways, good luck with whatever your end goal with your Eee ends up being ;)

Re:I have an olpc and would love windows 98' most

[sensei moreh]

After reading the article, my first thought was that maybe Win98 (or Win2K, but I've never used Win2K) would be a decent match for the XO. Glad to see that I'm not the only one who thinks this.

Re:I have an olpc and would love windows 98' most

[atamido]

Windows 98 will run smoothly on much lower hardware specifications than Windows 2000, and it also takes much less space. Granted you're not going to want to use it without a firewall, you'll have to reboot it regularly, and even thinking about the internet with it's IE would be a disaster. But yes, 98 with a firewall and Opera would be much faster on the OLPC than 2000, and it would be otherwise functionally identical for most purposes.

Re:I have an olpc and would love windows 98' most

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like the OS on the X0, why not put a different OS on there. I was going to suggest trying Win98 on it if that's what you really want, but then I realized drivers for the hardware might be an issue, so why not a lightweight Linux distro like Puppy Linux, and you could probably get Word and Excel installed under WINE, if the word processor and spreadsheat included (I think Puppy Linux has Abiword and Gnumeric) don't suit you.

I don't really care if you do choose to use Windows, but I'm just suggesting Puppy Linux because has a Windows like GUI is very lightweight (it is ~90MB), yet a lot of work has been put into it to make it as easy to use while still keeping it lightweight, so it might work better for you than the default OS installed on the XO.

Biased Write

[Anonymous Coward]

The author of the article was clearly biased in his opinion. I won't take a position in the matter, but the author doing so made the facts more difficult to grasp when reading the article.

Re:Biased Write

[Vexorian]

You mean (Intel) OLPCnews is biased? What a shocker.

Help me out here???

[roster238]

Please help me out here, does the author really think that kids in third world countries are going to be doing development work on these limited devices? Based on the quote below from the article the author really beleives that these devices should be open to tampering/fiddling. Does he think that if the device fails there will be a geek squad near by? Are hacking skills of value when you live in a mud hut?

Windows is designed against this, with no programming tools built in, and an almost anti-hacker/explorer/fiddler philosophy that goes beyond it merely being "closed source" to putting up impediments to learning any useful skills.

Re:Help me out here???

[Anonymous Coward]

Please help me out here, does the author really think that kids in third world countries are going to be doing development work on these limited devices?

The guy displays the stereotypical self-centeredness of the OSS crowd.

Re:Help me out here???

[oldhack]

Please help me out here, does the author really think that kids in third world countries are going to be doing development work on these limited devices? Based on the quote below from the article the author really beleives that these devices should be open to tampering/fiddling. Does he think that if the device fails there will be a geek squad near by? Are hacking skills of value when you live in a mud hut?\

Kids today. Many of us had Apple/Commodore as the first computer, mucked around a good bit just for no good reason, and learned a good bit of how computer works, and there were no Geek Squad. That's how you learn.

Btw, these are going to developing countries where computers for kids makes some sense, not cavemenistan. It'd be nice if they marketed these things here (US) also rather than only those countries though - today's mainstream PCs just ain't designed for kids to learn the basic.

Geek Squad, pah.

Re:Help me out here???

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

Please help me out here, does the author really think that kids in third world countries are going to be doing development work on these limited devices?

I think that was generally the idea, that the kids would be able to change almost anything they wanted in the user environment they were given.

Based on the quote below from the article the author really beleives that these devices should be open to tampering/fiddling. Does he think that if the device fails there will be a geek squad near by?

If I understood correctly, there was supposed to be a reset feature that would restore the original state of the OS if you really screwed it up, so that there needn't be any fear of allowing them to fiddle with things.

Are hacking skills of value when you live in a mud hut?

Again, if I understand correctly, the idea was to avoid putting up artificial barriers by assuming that kids have no need to poke and prod and see how things work. Maybe hacking skills will be of little interest and/or value to most kids, and for them the OLPC was supposed to be at least a container for a lot of textbook material, at a cost less than a big stack of textbooks. And, as a bonus, for the kids that find hacking on software interesting, maybe it's something that will help them.

If you think money is better spent on something else, please agitate in favor of that other option instead of railing against a program that (whatever you think of their chances of success are) is trying to provide education to people that can benefit from it.

Re:Help me out here???

[nawcom]

The concept is to integrate computer technology into areas that cannot afford it. This is more than just "learning how to click things and checking your email", it (at least the initial plan) was to spread the knowledge of computer technology, programming, and to expand interests to areas that are involuntarily cut off from it.

And for your GeekSquad comment: People who work at GeekSquad are stupid. 99% get confused when "unix" is mentioned, so they whip out their nutsack to show that they haven't had theirs removed. I've had to help GeekSquad kids multiple times with issues; in fact one time I had to tell one of them that they have to use the 48-bit MAC address from the person's laptop in order to set up the router, and he blatantly stated, "Well, we only support Windows." Nuff said.

If you can find someone who is struggling with their preinstalled Linux laptop due to the retarded causes (like spyware, horribly fragmented filesystems, viruses, un-needed bloatware, driver irq issues, etc) that are common in Windows, let me know. Hell, Submit a post here when it happens. In the mean time, when someone in a third world country decides, "Hey, I want to make a program just like this (points at app on the screen) they have the freedom (as in costs) to learn about it and complete their goal.

Re:Help me out here???

[roster238]

My first computer was an Atari (yes young man they made computers back in the day) and it was a far cry from these systems. We did tinker with our hardware but these devices are made to allow access to information to school children in remote villages where power is an issue. I personally consider anything east of London to be Caveministan but having lived in Europe for a few years I do remember a few folks who thought some parts of France were civilized.

Re:Help me out here???

[roster238]

No one is railing against the program just the author who is missing the point of providing this device to children in "the most remote regions of the globe". Making a device that is easy to break makes failure of a noble endeavor that much more likley. As long as it runs reliably (which apparently the Sugar OS did not) who cares what OS it uses.

Re:Help me out here???

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

Oh, as far as I could tell, you were talking about fiddling with the software, not taking a screwdriver to the machine. Sorry.

Re:Help me out here???

[oldhack]

Yeah, but how many years have you put into your abacus before your fancy Atari upgrade? Oh, they lied to you about France.

Re:Help me out here???

[markov_chain]

This argument comes up a lot; I guess it has a lot of appeal for the geek types, who started out early, tinkering with their {Atari|Commodore|Apple|Spectrum}, learning to program, etc. Sugar is almost exactly aimed at those types of kids. But I can't help but think that such users are a minority, and that the effort is lost on most others. When I think of average kids in my grade they would probably just stare blankly when told about "source code" and go send penis pictures to each other or something.

Re:Help me out here???

[oldhack]

But that's pretty much the basic premise behind the whole project, no? Sending penis doodling is the purported goal, but if it doesn't work for whatever reason, the kid will try a few things to get it to work, in the process learning a thing or two. Or so the expectation goes.

Re:Help me out here???

[DarkOx]

Does the author really think that kids in third world countries are going to be doing development work on these limited devices?

I don't see why he would not expect that, I learned my first programing in basic on a much smaller machine in terms of power and storage, even if it was much larger and more power hungry (TI99/4A).

Are hacking skills of value when you live in a mud hut?

I don't see why not, not every application has to be some complex financial app, or web browser, big gui anything. Maybe you need a basic calculater to help you decide when to plant crops. I can easily imagine some farmer wanting to record daily temperatures or rain fail year over year and have the computer provide some basic trends. That is the kind of thing you could do in BASIC or Python and could be highly useful.

Re:Help me out here???

[sammyF70]

Making a device that is easy to break makes failure of a noble endeavor that much more likley.

"easy to break" as in "booting windows and connecting to the internet without firewall or AV? The OLPC's SUGAR software can be reset to its original state by pressing one button.

Like many ~older~ people, my first computers (Casio PB100 portable computer and then a C64) were tinker-friendly. I learned programming because
1) I thought it was interesting, and
2) the OS I was using gave me the tools to do so right away. Checking the source code of most programs was just a matter of typing "list", and changing it was just moving the cursor and typing.

That's what SUGAR offers. most kids won't do it, but I'm pretty sure quite a lot will. Apart from a possible dev career, programming is a good exercise in logical and structured thinking. So, even if they don't go on and stay in the IT field, they'll probably be better at math and science due to it, and will have better perspectives

What does XP offer in that regard, except the means to learn how to use office software?

Re:Help me out here???

[jbengt]

Written like a true "End User".

Re:Help me out here???

[roster238]

Your comment was written like a true "Geek".

Actually mine was written by someone who manages support for thousands of "End Users". My focus does tend to be how to keep systems running rather than making them easy to break. I would have to say that your comment shows your disdain for end users that is typical of the open source community and is a significant contributor to the lack of success of the linux desktop. You can't expect to succeed if you abhor your "customer".

Re:Help me out here???

[sean4u]

It's not for geek types! Back in 1980 or 81, the first home computers were practically DOA. They didn't do anything when you switched them on, except print a question mark, maybe, if you were lucky. If you wanted to 'play' with your new toy, you had to find out how to make it do something. It didn't even look good. Unlike LEGO, you couldn't even sort it into piles of same-colour, or same-shape pieces. You couldn't really pretend it was a tea-set. On the face of it, it seems to be an appalling thing to have bought for a kid. But we didn't have penis pictures back then. We didn't have any kind of pictures, except the ones from the camera that was too expensive for parents to let you touch, and cost an arm and a leg to see the results, and then they were tiny things, hidden away like precious jewels. There wasn't any choice, back then. It was interesting new thing, or nothing at all.

I think a scripting language is essential as a primary way of "tinkering" with something like the OLPC. I had never even heard of "source code" when I submitted machine code as a list of bytes (as decimal numbers!) to Sinclair User Magazine when I was a teenager. It was just what I had to do in order to write games, which were still not easy to buy, and mostly not very good, back then.

I moved to a "Vibrant, Multi-Racial, Progressive, Developed South East Asian Nation" a few years ago, and many of my teenage neighbours spend their Vibrant, Progressive, Developing years chasing cockroaches, stealing fags or photocopying colouring in books to make them last longer. The OLPC is not aimed at kids who have considered the option of sending penis pics and decided a 'Code Poet' tee shirt goes better with their emo lifestyle, it's for kids who might develop better given a second or third choice when cockroaches and colouring-in appears to be all there is.

They do sometimes have a PC in the house, but because their parents care about their children's futures, they have gone out and bought a pirated copy of the World's Most Famous Typewriter Sim so their kids can 'write CVs', but they don't allow them to have Internet access because their government cautions that it's pretty much all penis pics, and if they want a 'good job' with the government, they should develop their Typewriter Sim skills, because that's what's really important in some countries.

I wish OLPC was coming here. There are places in the world where managing change is about ensuring the same incompetents remain in charge. If you want to succeed at their game, you really need to improve your World's Most Famous Typewriter Sim skills. If you want to develop, you need absolutely anything else.

nothing to see here, move along!

[AlgorithMan]

god, that article is crap! first of all he compares his XO to A VIDEO!? wtf!?

• i read the conclusion first (which i always do, to save reading time, since usually everything else is just explanations on why the conclusion is the way it is) but the conclusion basically says "sugar encourages learning, windows wants to be idiot-proof"
• so after the conclusion was useless i wondered how the mentioned battery-life comparison went out - but that section says "Microsoft claims 20 hours of battery life while watching movies - and I didn't really test, how long it runs with sugar"... great comparison, really - comparing a marketing statement (yes, with our cars we all get as far on one fuel filling as the commercials tell us...) to nothing!?
• recording audio is easier to find in sugar, as is video recording (well, you don't get options on quality-vs-size, but who cares about disk space, right? everyone has 1tb nowadays, right? the XO has 3-5 gb online storage - not much and slow...)
• then he rants about how horrible sharing files is on windows-XO - you have to pass around a data storage medium - OMG!... oh btw it's the same thing with sugar, unless you have a file-server nearby...
• wifi probably might be shitty on windows - although they barely sayd anything in the video about that... but windows sucks anyways...
• security will be an issue, because kids might believe lies... anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-malware, anti-phishing will eat up battery life and performance

now i really hate microsoft and wish them all the worst, but this article is just plain ridiculous! nothing to see here, move along!

Re:nothing to see here, move along!

[pembo13]

Well a video is all Microsoft has provided, while doing their best to push their operating system onto the XO. And a video is likely all they are using to convince people that Windows XP is the only thing that can make the XO work. I guess the author could have waited for an actual working instance of XP on the XO. But there is no reason to be confident that such will ever come to past. In the meantime, just being to claim that XP on the XO is better is all Microsoft need to achieve their assumed goals.

I personally use Linux as my OS of choice, however, I think that any operating system that can meet the technical requirements AND meet the "open" (as in open software) requirement would be a good choice for the XO. Assuming that the XO works, someday locals could be writing their own software, and customizing and maintaining the operating system and desktop environment. Unless things change radically in the future, this is an impossibility with Windows XP -- ie. owners of Windows XP on XO, regardless of geography, will be forever dependent on Microsoft.

Re:nothing to see here, move along!

[cwgatling]

Agreed. TFA bitches about navigating to the Sound Recorder application. That's a little pathetic. It can be dragged to the desktop as a shortcut.

Ubuntu on the XO

[P3Ed]

I had to pry my wife's XO out of her lap to post this. Sugar may be good for kids & education or not, but I found it to come up short. Ubuntu on the XO works well, even plays SD video recorded on Myth TV with out stuttering. It's damn hard to type on this little keyboard.

Today one thing, tomorrow another

[Anonymous Coward]

twitter has exhausted the good will of Slashdot by blatantly gaming the moderation system with so many accounts.

That, and constantly spitting out lies, fabrications and exaggerated bull doesn't help him. A lot of people who are honest advocates of free software are probably tired of him making them look bad by association.

No, honestly I don't think he should be given a pass just because he posts something halfway insightful once in a blue moon. And I'd even disagree that this particular post is even close to being that. He usually makes sense only when he's talking about the MPAA and things like that.

OLPC is Irrelevant

[awitod]

They should have extended the BOGO (buy one get one) promotion or made it possible for people in the developed world to buy one. As it is, noone can develop software for it, because, near as I can tell, you can't buy one.

So, of course, TFA is based on a video. The OLPC is resigned to a third world ghetto and will eventually fade into obscurity, which is a shame.

Re:OLPC is Irrelevant

[MacTO]

They are supposed to be offering another round og G1G1 (give 1 get 1) this autumn. But based upon the last round, I don't think that you're going to get many buyers who will end up developing for it. Another indicator is that Sugar has been ported to other Linux distributions. If you want to develop for it, you can do so today. Some people do, but it is by no means a massive outpouring of support.

Don't get me wrong, the XO itself is a nice piece of hardware. Alas, Sugar is buggy and does not perform all that well. Many of the original claims simply have not be met, and it does not appear that they ever will be. Battery life is a classic example here. The XO does reasonably well: roughly 4 hours on a new battery. That is roughly what a new battery in my old PowerBook G4 managed, while the XO battery is half the capacity. Performance sucks, and you can expect the machine to lockup like clockwork. I suspect this is because it is in Python, which not only slows things down, but chews up an incredible amount of RAM. The joyride branch seems to be much faster and has bumped up the battery life to 8 hours or so in some circumstances, but it has a long way to go. For instance, RAM consumption is still beyond the means of this machine. (Remember, it has no swap file. Those who want a swap file are using disposable USB keys.)

I'm one of the people who picked it up thinking that I could program this thing. While I did learn a lot by exploring the internals (which are in the form of accessible Python code), I have a hard time seeing how a well-meaning but inexperienced adult can program the critter. Nevermind a child in the third world. The code itself is not very clear, and the whole thing is (or at least was) pitifully documented.

Will XP solve these problems. Maybe, maybe not. It won't make it easier to program, and it certainly won't allow kids to explore the internals. It will allow kids and schools to access more education software in principle, but who knows how well that would work out in the developing world because software licenses are often expensive.

Re:OLPC is Irrelevant

[Mista2]

A pitty because I guess it would just dissappear if given to 100 million chinese kids.

Re:OLPC is Irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

unless you want to write something that uses the hardware, you can get an iso and boot it in your favorite virtual machine program. thats how most people write programs for the XO

Re:OLPC is Irrelevant

[grumbel]

That you can't buy one is a really big problem in getting those things to the masses, especially now when Eee and other subnotebooks are taking over that market segment. However for those that really want to develop for the XO, there is the Developers Program over which one can get a device.

XP and Linux

[icedcool]

Are these two friends now that MS has disbanded xp?

they really are spam

[r00t]

Start some random activity. (terminal will do)

Having done nothing else, quit the activity.

You have spam!

You get a new spam each time. A kid can create dozens or hundreds in a day, limited mainly by the general bad performance.

These entries have no reasonable use. They are clutter. Important stuff gets lost in the mess.

You're expected to regularly delete these I suppose. This is busy-work. It's difficult too, because you have to take care to avoid deleting something useful. It's additionally difficult because the journal's UI is both unintuitive and abysmally slow.

Re:not Ubuntu -- DEBIAN on the XO

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched to Debian and saw a world of difference from XFce Ubuntu to Debian XFce gtk+ only!
No Gnome except the keyring.
Low memory footprint is essential with flash file system. Allows for lots of caching etc.
With Firefox Gvim and more I'm at about 100Megs ram for programs leaving 150 for buffers and cache.
I turn off disk caching in firefox. No Flash player now but can download the flv with right click so probably a net positive. Flash is annoying.(e.g. Ads)

Etch seems a good fit.. Let people know -- only hires solution yet. Works very well for everything if you tune it a bit. Mp4 movies at 592x256 mplayer sdl -- belive it.

http://layer-acht.org/debian/olpc/

Keep the XO alive...

Atrocious writing

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the first paragraph and had no idea of the author's conclusion. I read the second paragraph and had no idea of the conclusion. I read the third, fourth, fifth, and six paragraphs and had no idea of the conclusion.

Tech articles aren't murder mysteries. State your conclusion up front, then explain and confirm it in later ones. I may not have time or desire to read the whole article, but at least this way I get your point right off the bat.

Am I the first to say:

[Anonymous Coward]

IMAGINE THAT!

Re:eat my shorts slashdot !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh Balmer, for crying out loud - don't you have anything better to do?

they still think Microsoft is doing this to help

[Locutus]

Why would they do that? They are out to put the XO and OLPC out of business or whatever they are doing. We know that XP on this is going to suck and it'll take $30-$50 more hardware to make it even close to usable. That alone is enough to destroy the OLPC if they put all their eggs in the Microsoft basket. And seeing how Microsoft spent $25 million to tie the Egyptian government to Microsoft Windows, they've got plenty more to tie up a whole bunch of poor countries.

I only hope that Sugar lives on. It really looks like a great entry level desktop for educational use. Teachers wasting hours on teaching kids what buttons to push in Windows is not teaching them anything useful.

And what is with these idiots constantly saying that teaching kids Windows XP is going to prepare them for when they get into the work force. For many of these kids, that's ten years out and there is no way Microsoft's software is going to act the same in ten years. Besides, they are supposed to be using the XO for learning about the world, not how Microsoft decided to tie you to their money train. IMO.

LoB

... the real plan ...

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

Don't look at the plan on the wall behind the current. That was from a sales job we did to a different group of people, and they don't need to know the real story. Look over here at this white board that we've been keeping hidden in a top-secret closet and wheeled in just for this meeting.

Ya think?

No, it doesn't really require conspiracy against conspiracy theories, or even seeing through the old shell game here. This is all FUD. Worry the Boards of Education of some poor backwater (in Microsoft's opinion) easily deluded South American countries about advertised performance. Hide the fine print.

Specified values are 50% better than you will obtain.

to quote an old spoof of a Darkness Emitting Arsenic Diode spec sheet that I can't seem to find in my archives any more.)

I'm not dead yet!

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

(Sugar says.)

Run over to the sugar and other OLPC mailing lists, if you're worried that somebody has killed sugar off.

Re:I'm not dead yet!

[hairyfeet]

Who said anything about Sugar? The article may have called it Linux/Sugar,but the Sugar interface was not the big deal about OLPC IMHO,it was Linux. In fact,after reading on some of the major problems with Sugar,like the temp file bug,I wonder if they wouldn't have been better off going with either Edubuntu or the EEE Xandros. Either one could have been made VERY kid friendly with very little work instead of trying to reinvent the wheel with Sugar.

I also think that the management of OLPC,first by not selling to the first world except for the "give one get one" forced charity,and now by switching the main OS from one made for children to a MSFT OS running Office,is really running themselves right out of business. And yes,they need to treat this as a business,at least if they want to be around long enough to do some real good. In the first case by selling to the first world they could have easily gotten the economies of scale needed to drive down the production costs associated with the OLPC,and might have even gotten it down to the original $100,thus making it better for everyone. I know a whole lot of families that couldn't afford the "give one get one" but could have scraped up the $188 so their child could have a learning laptop.

In the second case they are tying the OLPC to an OS that not only needs several extra programs running as well as monthly patches to keep from being hijacked,but whose parent company has a long history of supporting the main competitor to the OLPC,to the point of hurting their own customers so Intel could keep selling underpowered chips. Do they really think if it comes down to the OLPC or the classmate that given the history of "Wintel" that MSFT isn't going to do everything it can to give an advantage to its old buddy Intel?

In conclusion,I thought the OLPC was a great idea,not only for third world children,but for ALL the worlds children. Having a low cost laptop that every family could afford loaded with educational software and running an OS that was secure and could be easily added to and encouraged tinkering would have been a truly great thing. But it seems more and more likely that the OLPC will simply flounder for awhile before finally dropping off the radar and quietly dying. But with the price of netbooks steadily climbing it could have taken a large chunk of the market and made itself affordable for the masses. I only hope that when it does go under that someone will buy the plans and the back stock and turn them into a true "laptop for all the worlds kids". And as always this is my 02c,YMMV

XP on XO conspiracy theory timeline..

[Bazman]

MS announce XP on XO.

Slashdot goes "Pics or it never happened!"

MS provide screen shots.

Slashdot goes "screenshots can be faked - video or it never happened!"

MS provide video.

Slashdot goes "Whatever, it never happened!"

Re:XP on XO conspiracy theory timeline..

[dhasenan]

It may be that the videos are not faked. Still, if they were not, I would like to replace my workstation (Core 2 Duo with 3GB RAM) with an OLPC laptop, since it seems to run so much faster.

Re:XP on XO conspiracy theory timeline..

[MenThal]

We're still all waiting to see the BSOD in action before we're convinced it is Windows alright. :)

OWPC

[jahwag]

As if the world didn't have enough windows users already, now they are giving out One Windows Per Child. Who said charity can't be profitable. I hope Negroponte wakes up soon and gives MS the finger they deserve. Not very likely to happen though.

Re:OWPC

[gzipped_tar]

I guess One Windows Per Child must be very confusing to the kids who are learning English.

So WHY are there death squads?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have any causality.

Show us what the causality is, the "why" of "why does Negroponte have death squads wherever he goes?"

MS showed a video in court

[Anonymous Coward]

as evidence of how Windows wouldn't work without IE.

It was faked.

If they are willing to do that IN COURT, what makes you think they haven't done that here?

PS: note two things:

a) nobody said "show us pictures or it never happened"

b) we know MS got it to install on XO. Whether it's any use is still debatable.

Re:eat my shorts slashdot !!

[tristian_was_here]

Bill you should at least keep your employees on a leash.

Either you're a troll or you've bought the MSBS

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

Get on the lists to find out what the real story is.

I shouldn't spoil the plot, but other people might read this.

Sugar on XP is not scheduled to replace either Sugar or Linux. The only people trying (desperately, per the friendly A) to show how XP runs on the thing (and using a lot of slight-of-hand to do so) are with/from Microsoft.

Re:Either you're a troll or you've bought the MSBS

[hairyfeet]

I was going with what Negroponte himself said about XP going to be the main OS of the OLPC. For an example read this article. IMHO Negroponte seems to just be burning way too many bridges between the OLPC and the OSS camps. And here is an article quoting Negroponte saying "The OLPC needs to be run more like Microsoft". Because nothing tells the FLOSS guys that you support them than by saying you want your company run like a convicted monopolist.

I shall show off my "incredible psychic powers" and make a prediction. In five years Negroponte will be sitting at MIT,the OLPC will be deader than dixie, and netbooks will end up not being any cheaper than your average Dell or Acer laptop,just smaller. Which is kinda sad as the OLPC could have been a great tool for ALL the worlds children to learn with,instead I predict it will just do a slow death march to the grave. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Re:they still think Microsoft is doing this to hel

[mx.2000]

"I only hope that Sugar lives on. It really looks like a great entry level desktop for educational use."

Does it?

Kids in the third world may have less education, but they're not retarded. There's a difference between a nice, streamlined UI that doesn't get in your way with technicalities (Mac OSX comes to mind) and a dumbed-down "for Kids!" toy UI.

It claims to be a real (eg general purpose) "laptop", but Sugar is designed like a (badly coded) UI for an embedded device like the Amazon Kindle or the iPhone.

Heck, they probably would be better of if they adapted the mobile edition of OS X (the stuff that runs on the iPod Touch). Unfortunately Apple and Steve Jobs don't seem to have much interest in philantropic projects.

And that NEVER happens!

[toby]

like MS is talking out both sides of their mouth or something

I thought there was backwards compatibility...

[toby]

"educational" software available for XP that will soon be ported to Vista

Isn't the big lock-in idea that you don't have to *port* anything forward? What's the point of Vista if it won't run your existing apps?

Otherwise, port it to a real operating system :)

Re:I thought there was backwards compatibility...

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be a few apps that will not be compatible but the VAST majority will be just fine. This is Slashdot, if the story mentions Microsoft expect hyperbole at best, outright lies most of the time.

This is sad...

[RWerp]

"Sugar and other Linux versions on the XO do take longer to boot; but once the suspend and hibernation features are completely working (and the current Update.1 Release Candidate has most of it working)"

How many years will pass until Linux gets suspend and hibernate right?

Re:This is sad...

[griffjon]

How many years will pass until Linux gets suspend and hibernate right?

How many years will pass until Windows gets suspend and hibernate right?

Fixed that for you.

Actually suspend is 95% on Update.1, and I hear it's even better on the joyride builds.

Re:This is sad...

[RWerp]

Cool. My Windows laptop has 100% support.

Re:Linux Ignorance

[dhasenan]

It gives scary warnings if you yank out the drive without going to "safely remove hardware". Of course, in GNOME or on OS X it's a lot quicker and easier to unmount a drive, as I recall, so the scary warnings are far more reasonable.

667,000

[westlake]

XP on the XO is M$ attempt simply to pull some popularity out of the XO
.

Confirmed sales of the XO as of May 2008 were 667,000 units. Summary of laptop orders

The XO isn't meeting the reception the Geek thought it would. Not every education minister believes in constructivism.

Some are worried that what would be buying is an overpriced e-book reader -- because his teachers won't have the experience, training, or resources to use it any other way - and neither will his kids - no matter often the geek fantasies otherwise.

The PC outside the grade school classroom looks much like Windows. It may very well be Windows.

That matters to the minister who wants to see kids make a smooth transition into the higher grades, channel them into secondary education, job training and employment.

Re:667,000

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

That matters to the minister who wants to see kids make a smooth transition into the higher grades, channel them into secondary education, job training and un-employment.

Do those two letters help the interpretation?

Minesweeper?

[Easy2RememberNick]

Now all the kids in countries where they have had decades of war can play Minesweeper.

Hibernate/suspend -- ACPI -- Bad std drafted by MS

[zooblethorpe]

How many years will pass until Linux gets suspend and hibernate right?

If you are at all actually interested in the answer to this question, look into ACPI. The Wikipedia article notes that MS was one of the companies that helped draft the standard. The Criticism subsection is also informative about some of the problems with the standard. There are also numerous other examples of how Microsoft has been quite deliberately poisoning the ACPI well. Slasdot user leoxx posted a comment the other day in the Foxconn mobo thread that you might also find elucidating.

Cheers,

Re:Hibernate/suspend -- ACPI -- Bad std drafted by

[RWerp]

"The Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] notes that MS was one of the companies that helped draft the standard."

So what?

"The Criticism [wikipedia.org] subsection is also informative about some of the problems with the standard."

The criticism is childish. It boils down to two complains:

1. "ACPI is complex"
2. "hardware does not always completely support ACPI"

Both problems are things with which real software has to deal all the time. Especially the complain no. 2 is silly, because such problems may crop up *anywhere*. The operating system should, within reason, work around incomplete adherence to the standard. You may think that by saying "sorry, you're not 100% compliant, go away", Linux kernel developers are punishing the manufacturer and giving them the incentive to improve compliance, but it's not true. They're punishing the guy who thought Linux is going to run on his box and giving him the incentive (rather, more of it) to stick to OS that works. That's not how you do things when you write an OS which has marginal market share on desktops and notebooks.

"There are also numerous [mixx.com] other [wordpress.com] examples [google.com] of how Microsoft has been quite deliberately poisoning the ACPI well."

They are numerous references to the same case of some guy's clash with Foxconn.

"Slasdot user leoxx posted a comment [slashdot.org] the other day in the Foxconn mobo thread that you might also find elucidating."

I wonder why they haven't thrown in "And I would like to rape a few ten-year old girls, too" for good measure.

Age requirements?

[bucketoftruth]

From reading the XO wiki it looks like age 4 is about the minimum age that any kid would begin to get any use out of this laptop. does anyone know a link with age recommendations?

Hmm, troll much?

[zooblethorpe]

Wow, would you like some guacamole for that huge chip on your shoulder? :)

If you're not trolling, might I suggest that you tone down your sensitivity. My post was in no way intended to attack you, but instead to answer your question. Perhaps you misinterpreted the tone of my post?

Your initial question asked by implication why it is that Linux has problems with hibernation and suspend, two functions that rely on ACPI. Leoxx's comment contains a link to an email from Bill Gates, entered into the public court record, describing how Microsoft's upper management echelons were quite seriously working on rendering ACPI unusable for any but Microsoft. I wonder if you went so far as to read that email? It's quite short, I assure you. Given that Microsoft was precisely in a position to carry out such a strategem by influencing how the ACPI standard is defined on the one hand, and how such functionality is implemented by hardware manufacturers on the other by means of their overwhelming market share, we should not find it at all surprising if anyone but Microsoft has trouble working with ACPI.

This line of argument is very straightforward, and at least partially backed up by courtroom findings, which leads me to conclude that your mention of raping girls must be an attempt to distract and discredit, rather than actually dealing with the issues at hand.

Toodles,

Re:Hmm, troll much?

[RWerp]

http://mjg59.livejournal.com/94998.html

Sugar vs. XP

[stanjam]

Sugar was designed for this task, to go on low end laptops, and be used easily by people with minor or no computer knowledge, yet still be powerful. XP is designed for more powerful workstations, and is aimed at people who know how to use computers, which is why we teach people in college how to use it. Yet Microsoft felt threatened. If the project took off, this means countless numbers of people would be growing up using Linux. When they finally did grow up, what OS do YOU think they will choose? It was a threat to their dominance. So what did they do? Did they go to work designing an OS that will work on the new systems, and be easier to learn? Nope. Instead they stuffed and crammed until the existing product fit, despite the fact that it doesn't use all the key features of the machine, because that would require more work, and the thing barely fits anyways. An Operating system should not be noticed. It should just be there, and help you work or play. Sugar succeeds where XP fails in this regard on this machine. Yet, despite this, MS will push this OS all they can, even if it ends up ruining the project and denying all those kids a useful computer.

Article showed ignorance and bias

[George_Ou]

The article complains that Sugar wouldn't need fast boot speeds once they get suspend working. Umm, that's still not working!?!?!?!

The article criticizes Windows XP for bad Wi-Fi client, but it doesn't mention the fact that the original Sugar GUI didn't even support WPA when shipped and users had to manually configure WPA in command line. The Wi-Fi Supplicant in XP works quite well and it's fully configurable in Group Policy for full automation.

The article says that video for the whole classroom should be done via mesh to point out XP's lack of mesh support. The fact of the matter is, mesh doesn't work. See http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=777 and http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=981. If the author has actually tried to stream more than 2 6 Mbps videos on a regular infrastructure Wi-Fi network, he would know how badly it works. Mesh cuts the efficiency of an infrastructure network down by at least half if there's only one repeater station and a whole lot more in real life.

Broadcasting video to a whole classroom using wireless technology actually requires multicast. You only want/need to send (broadcast) the movie once over the airwaves preferably without any acknowledgements and let all the clients pick up whatever they can. Using Unicast is a non-starter and using mesh is ludicrous.

Re:Stop shilling your own posts.

[trimmer]

It should be noted that wiIIyhiII (1327445) is the same person as twitter (104583).

Re:Stop shilling your own posts.

[Anonymous Coward]

When your "advocacy" is reduced to harassment of those who point out your blatant manipulation of Slashdot, it's time to throw in the towel.

Re:they still think Microsoft is doing this to hel

[Locutus]

Sugar is a few things and simple is not one of them. It is a filesystem API( journal ), it's a collaboration API, and it is an application launcher. All these are designed to provide an easy to use platform for children and educators so that the details of what's going on underneath does not have to be taught to be used.

Do you want to be the one who has to teach the kids what a filesystem is, how a tree works, how 4 different ways to get to your files works, and then each day of class spend half an hour making sure everyone can find their homework somewhere in the filesystem?

The next thing people are going to say is that Tivo sucks because it is not using Windows and the UI they designed is for retarded people.

People need to open their eyes to the fact that what Microsoft dictates is not even close to how EVERYBODY should interface with computer systems.

LoB

Checking Negroponte's on words

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

I don't find it, but I remember after the blogstorm reading Negroponte's response, that OLPC was not using any of its resources to port MSxp to the XO. My memory was that he said that they were basically just answering Microsoft's porting group's questions, and that they weren't planning on actively attempting to prevent the port. Even with all the avalanche of interpretation, I don't find direct quotes from Negroponte, long enough, and in context, to show that he is doing anything more than being willing to talk with Microsoft.

I do see a lot of unsupported interpretation.

Unfortunately, part of the aftermath of the blogstorm is that the article that contained his response is now buried under the tons of trolls and shills who seem bent on making it look as if Microsoft has already won before the game has begun. Typical Microsoft.

Anyway, I'm in the wait and see mode.

Re:Checking Negroponte's on words

[hairyfeet]

Well,you just pointed out another big problem Negroponte has: perception. If I was a FLOSS developer and was looking to help out a project the OLPC would be something I'd avoid like the plague,because if I wasn't on the mailing lists I'd figure it was a soon to be MSFT laptop and leave it at that. And from what I've read a lot of the problems stems from Negroponte himself. His refusal to sell to the first world,and thus get the economies of scale on his side, and now with bending to the will of these countries who only seem to care about "Will it run Windows and Office?".

I'll make another "amazing psychic prediction",and it is this: If Negroponte delivers the OLPC to third world countries with Windows XP and Office on it he might as well get off his high horse and just start selling it as a netbook because the "kids" that he says he is so concerned about with never see them. Because by the time all the bureaucrats and administrators and government officials and managers and friends of same have gotten done helping themselves to the OLPCs there simply won't be enough left of them to worry about. The whole point of the OLPC was supposed to be an educational tool filled with educational software that promoted learning and interaction. With XP and MS Office running on it you turn it into a cheap office laptop that I'm sure every bureaucrat who can get their hands on them will be happy to hand out to their friends and families. The kids will be lucky if they see any at all,and even if they do it would be pretty pointless. What are they going to do with them,make powerpoints?

IMHO the best thing that could happen to the OLPC would be to get rid of Negroponte and get someone in there who knows how to run a charitable business. Someone who will sell the OLPC with the original Linux to the world so the price thanks to scale reaches the goal of $100. That way ALL of the children,be they first or third world,can benefit from having a wonderful educational tool. Because if Negroponte thinks the only place you find dirt poor kids getting a shitty education is in Africa he ought to come down to Southern Arkansas sometime and see the tar paper sharecroppers shacks. And by selling to all the worlds children wouldn't that be a win for us all? And someone who can point out to these governments the benefits of having the OLPC as a true educational tool instead of it being just another underpowered Windows Netbook.But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

ACPI issues and dead keyboards on resume

[zooblethorpe]

Very interesting, thank you for that link. I'll have to keep an eye on that thread as it develops. I'd run into unresponsive keyboard problems a while back on a Dell Dimension 5150, but wound up just booting into XP in the end due to required Windows-only business software (I had previously run XP in VMWare on top of Ubuntu). Methinks I may now have to open the case and find out the mobo vendor...

Cheers,