OLPC dream dies
For those who don’t know, the One Laptop Per Child project’s goal was to get an open Linux laptop into the hands of every child in developing countries for $100 per child. It seems the alternative goal of getting a Windows laptop into the hands of some children in developing countries and some adults in rich countries for $200 each was more realistic. Having tried to develop for the Linux software stack for these machines, I’ll say that although I’m not too surprised, I’m still disappointed.
Mar 17 2008
10:54 am
Hahaha. The software on the OLPC was horrifyingly slow, even when you put the image on the board anyways.
Frankly they’re better off reloading a barebones version of Linux with X than sticking with the default distro.
Mar 17 2008
12:00 pm
The problem was that Red Hat was funding a lot of the development. If they’re paying for it, you can bet it’ll be based on Red Hat.
Mar 27 2008
4:24 pm
The software may not be top of the line and the XO now has competition on the cheap hardware front, but that doesn’t mean it’s out of the race yet. The true test will come when the hardware is tested for robustness and usability.
I personally don’t believe the current competitors will stand up to the real world abuse of children who are too poor to deal with easily broken items as well as the XO.