Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New OLPC Laptop 1.5 Dual-Boots Sugar, Gnome Desktop

Posted by timothy on from the but-gnome-is-for-children dept.

griffjon writes "The new hardware release (you can read about the upgrade here) also comes with a dual-boot option. Start rejoicing now; it's not XP or Sugar (the native, education-centric OS) — it's Sugar or Gnome. And of course there are other homebrew distributions like Xtra Ordinary, built off of Debian."

1 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Alternative Viewpoint by Ephemeriis · · Score: 5, Informative

    I believe the Negroponte's goal is to get computers into the hands of students in developing countries. Not to promote open source software.

    One of the original goals/specifications was to have the entire platform be open source. This wasn't to save money. This was to allow those students to use the entire platform as a learning tool. They would be able to tinker with the guts if they wanted to. And they wouldn't be beholden to any particular company to roll out a new update/patch/localization/whatever.

    --
    "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde