Perfect fit for DSL?
Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Perfect fit for DSL?
started by: JohnJS
Posted by JohnJS on Sep. 25 2007,16:28
See article posted 9/24/07 in the Sacramento Bee by Brian Bergstein (AP) Cambridge Mass re Nicholas Negroponte of One Laptop Per Child Project running Nov 12 through Nov 26.[www.xogiving.org]
Wouldn't DSL be the ideal OS for this project?.
Hope this is the correct forum.
Posted by jpeters on Sep. 25 2007,18:39
Quote from < http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/6241 > on "OLPC's "$100" XO laptop to go"All the companies involved in this project are providing their best engineers: Marvell (who made the wireless chip) have their guys developing the firmware often directly according to the feedback they get from the kernel developers, Red Hat is providing plenty of sw engineers (including Marcelo Tosati, who was the 2.4 kernel maintainer!), AMD and Quanta are working on the hardware platform (recently they made efforts to track the power consumption of every single chip in the laptop), etc. This is just incredible how fast the teams are able to progress in such a cooperative environment. This is a sharp contrast with what happens too often in the ordinary Linux world where cooperation is sometimes difficult or inexistent (e.g. kernel developers unable to obtain hardware specs, or hardware vendors attempting to provide some crappy binary drivers without involving the kernel community, etc).
Posted by Juanito on Sep. 26 2007,03:56
I put my name down for the "2 for 1" deal - i.e. you buy two of these things, one is donated and you get to keep the other.
Posted by jpeters on Sep. 26 2007,04:46
...terrific for hooking up to your stationary bike; fitness centers should be looking into this (....reportedly, they can be powered by pedal generators).
Posted by roberts on Sep. 26 2007,05:43
FYI, while at Linux World, information on these machines were scarce even though their were plenty of machines. John and I were not able to see if these machines could even boot/run DSL. I suspect that they are using the JFFS2 which would be very different from DSL. So buyer beware. Could be challenges ahead.
Posted by jpeters on Sep. 26 2007,06:58
Any way to copy a DSL image onto an SD card (wrong format?)Edit: I tried mounting one with a card reader, and it's formated with fat16; no problem! I wonder if the XO boots from the card? Or perhaps DSL embedded?
Posted by io333 on Nov. 03 2007,03:39
so are you saying that dsl works on the olpc?
Posted by jpeters on Nov. 03 2007,03:54
| Quote (io333 @ Nov. 02 2007,22:39) |
| so are you saying that dsl works on the olpc? |
I think there was at least one person on the board who put in an order for one, so we'll find out.
Posted by Juanito on Nov. 14 2007,13:05
| Quote |
| I think there was at least one person on the board who put in an order for one, so we'll find out. |
- that would be me, but I just found out that I cannot order one because I'm not resident in the US and/or Canada.
..and the price for two laptops (one donated) is now $399.
Posted by jpeters on Nov. 14 2007,15:56
| Quote |
| - that would be me, but I just found out that I cannot order one because I'm not resident in the US and/or Canada. ..and the price for two laptops (one donated) is now $399. |
Too bad.... guess you'll just have to settle for a much more powerful, blazingly fast (with DSL) laptop like a Dell latititude for about $200. What a shame......
Posted by Juanito on Nov. 14 2007,17:34
I have a Dell Latitude - but I don't recall it only costing $200 :rock:
Posted by jpeters on Nov. 14 2007,17:59
| Quote (Juanito @ Nov. 14 2007,12:34) |
| I have a Dell Latitude - but I don't recall it only costing $200 :rock: |
ebay, Craigs List . I've got 3 of them. With Vista, I expect to see a lot of great laptops getting dumped.
Posted by jpeters on Nov. 24 2007,17:44
Looks like OLPC idea is history:1. $100 price is now $188 plus shipping
2. Poor countries want better (and latest) machines with Windows OS
"The Intel machine is a lot better than the OLPC," says Mohamed Bani, who chairs Libya's technical advisory committee but doesn't have the final say on buying laptops. "I don't want my country to be a junkyard for these machines."
3. Intel and Microsoft are competing, offering better machines with $3 software packages.
"The higher price also has made the laptop vulnerable to competition from sellers of more traditional, Windows-based machines. For many education ministries, "it's a no-brainer you go with Microsoft," says Mr. Davies."
4. OLPC offers little or no maintenance support
"Mr. Negroponte said some initial tech support would be provided by Brightstar Corp., a Miami-based wireless equipment distributor. Just who would provide support a few years from now, he said, was "a frightening question." The students, he said, will need "to do as much maintenance as possible." "
Article referenced in todays WSJ "A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions"
Looks like inexpensive computers with faster. more efficient Linux OS will remain in the hands of more wealthy, technically sophisticated folks.
Posted by kuky on Nov. 25 2007,19:10
these is the result of a big market operation (idea of AOL and Banco de Santander)...(is in spanish but you can see the price..)< http://www.cospa.es/Intel%20Dot%20Station%202300/Default.htm >
(cospa is a cooperative for school material that are sold the pcs,with others , of the faillure operation AOL Banco de Santander)
its supoused that about 150.000 pcs that were not sold, the idea was to make a sigle pc , intel core and linux, for people that begin in internet, the original cost was about 630 euros the same that a normal pc in 2002-2003 ...total faillure of busines , the persons that no have idea in pcs do no buy pcs..
I think that big ideas have to begin with small damn projects.. with the people of poor countries ...can be dsl.org to pass a dsl.ngo ? can the people of dsl help direct to advise in TICs to poor countries
the priorities of poor countries are the food , the water and the vaccines... 188 $ is the money to eat 188 days one person...
< http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Default.aspx >
Posted by jpeters on Nov. 25 2007,19:29
Thats about US $197. Here's Intel's answer to the OLPC:(note: and they're willing to take a loss)
< http://www.intel.com/intel/worldahead/classmatepc/ >
< http://www.classmatepc.com/ >
Posted by punchy on Jan. 18 2008,20:48
i have just recieved my xo and its not to bad, but no dsl. can anyone give me some hints as to how to install dsl or ever were to start to figure out if i can. so far this is fun but really but slow when you are used to dsl on new boxes..still a great project, and i can drag this thing everyware and not worry about trashing it.
Posted by roberts on Jan. 18 2008,21:46
My understanding is that it uses j2ffs and a heavily patched one at that. j2ffs is a journalizing ver2 flash file system. It was created so as to minimize wear (writes) on flash devices. DSL does not currently support that filesystem. When I last looked at it, it was too slow and too bugy. But with all the fine people working on the XO, I am sure that have been many improvements since then.
Posted by punchy on Jan. 19 2008,00:04
i was thinking about a dsl usb boot but unsure about using grub to boot. i also don't care about accessing the on board flash as usb sticks are cheap and have much more memory then the xo anyways. any thoughs?
Posted by roberts on Jan. 19 2008,00:20
I don't have one. Can you get into BIOS setup? Any boot options there?