The 100$ laptop is awesome and I know why!

[Gargamella]

here is the link from BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6224183.stm

from the article:"The computer runs on a cut-down version of the open source Linux operating system and has been designed to work differently to a Microsoft Windows or Apple machine from a usability perspective".

[Daveski]

"In fact, one of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary school computer labs (when they exist in the developing world), is the children are being trained to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint," Mr Negroponte said.

Absolutely. Microsoft have made a huge impression on business machines and it is sad that this has leeched into the home. Home computers should be for learning, and with internet connectivity become the worlds largest library in your own home. Home computers should be for entertainment (at least in the developed world where we have time for 'leasure'). Look at how our world has changed with TiVo, MP3 players and of course games consoles - all of which spawed from the home PC.

I am glad that the computer as a personal information manager has started to move to a more specialist device like the hand-held PDA or even integrated into the 'oh-so-necessary' mobile phone. Office applications should be limited to being used in an office.

I like the idea of this computer being a more specialist device which is geared towards use by children in general, and specifically those of the developing world. With the mesh wireless system proposed, connectivity can reach much further without the monolithic communications infrastructers that the western world initially developed (at great expense) which was almost certainly driven by our Wars.

Oh, and has anyone yet tried out the system being developed mentioned at the end of the article?

[Johnsie]

I just read this report and someone beat me to post about it lol. It's good that this is Linux based... I certainly will be supporting the project. While the other specs of this system might look slightly poor you need to remember that most computers don't use their specs efficiently and that good programming can make less powerful hardware good (just look at dsl or puppy). Hopefully everything will be open source and it will be able to run Linux software.

BTW the site for ythe project is at: http://www.laptop.org/

[K.Mandla]

Oh, and has anyone yet tried out the system being developed mentioned at the end of the article?
I'm compiling Sugar as we speak. :D

I'm not the first, though.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=247354

[Johnsie]

I read this... It's to do with Suar and Ubuntu:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_on_Ubuntu_Linux

[K.Mandla]

Those are the instructions I was following. So far I've needed all the packages listed there, plus zip, which makes the list. ...


sudo aptitude install -y build-essential cvs docbook-utils subversion libgtk2.0-dev libidl-dev gnome-common gtk-doc-tools libxt-dev automake1.7 automake1.8 automake1.9 python-gtk2-dev python-avahi git-core cogito python-dev avahi-utils libgconf2-dev xserver-xephyr libgnome2-dev mozilla-dev libmatchbox-dev python-cairo-dev libtiff4-dev python-gnome2-dev libxdamage-dev libxdamage1 libxcomposite-dev libgnomeui-dev libtool libfribidi-dev libgsf-1-dev libbz2-dev libwmf-dev libgnomeui-dev libgnomeuimm-2.6-1c2a libgnomeuimm-2.6-dev zip libgsf-1-dev
That's on a server install, plus xorg (and fvwm-crystal ;) ). So far it has taken about three hours on a 750Mhz machine. ... And there's no end in sight. :rolleyes:

[Johnsie]

hehehe... I'm not surprised.... I think I'll wait to see what happens at your end before I try something similar. I would like to try this.

[K.Mandla]

You might have to come back tomorrow, Johnsie. It's running at full bore, both fans cranking and no light at the end of the tunnel. :mrgreen:

[Johnsie]

I think so... I upgraded dapper to edgy on a slowish machine and it took all day. I look forward to reading your story though :-)

[K.Mandla]

Add this one to the list of dependencies: libgsf-1-dev. I'm building this on an Edgy machine, if I haven't mentioned that already. :D

(P.S.: I'll add it to my code box above.)

[K.Mandla]

Hmmm. No luck. I ran into some big problems with a mysterious libabiword package, then some crazy python demands that I couldn't trace. I skipped through as many errors as I could, and then when it was over, it killed my existing X setup and left me high and dry.

Oh well. That's why I have this little lappy, so I can break things without really breaking anything. :D

I'll try it again sometime. It might work better on a full Gnome install. I ended up downloaded a mess of Gnome dependencies just to get going, and even then, I had to keep a spare terminal window open just to add the things that were missed.

Maybe someone else can give it a shot, on a faster machine. Oh for the days of my dual 2.8Ghz Xeon machine. :D

[rolando2424]

Well, I believe that schools should encourage Open Source software. It can even help them (since they don't have to pay licenses and stuff).

I'm going to see if I can convince my teacher to teach us Gimp (she didn't knew what program she could use to teach us about image manipulation :D)

[Patrick-Ruff]

guess what?

my elementry school taught me on a mac :)

I suppose I was closer to *nix then I thought :)

I do find it quite funny though, the fact that my high school has this contract with dell makes it possible for me to make some good money fixing all the stupid windows errors :)