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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."
OK, so I'm a Linux fanboy. I don't find tfa the least bit sad.
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.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
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
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
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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.
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.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
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.
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.
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.
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