(via zdnet)

Its development environment nearly demands performance. Its development language is Objective-C or C and only one app can be run at a time. Contrast that with Sugar on X11 on Python on C and an environment that exhausts available memory with very little effort.

Its touch screen encourages interaction. The XOs flakey keyboard and touchpad discourage it.

I still love the XO and OLPC’s mission. The only thing that they seem to have accomplished, though, is the proliferation of Netbooks across the commercial landscape.

Laptops make a good school better, but they don’t make a bad school good.

There is an entire book about it here.

(via OLPC News)

1. Imaged the XO with operating system release 703. I would have preferred to use 656 as that was extensively “field tested” while I was in Vietnam, but, that build is not able to “see” my new D-Link wifi router.
2. Left the firmware alone at Q2E18. I didn’t see a need to mess with this.
3. Be sure to include the G1G1 activity pack as you need Terminal. Here are the directions on how to install the activity pack. Basically you need to extract it to the root of the flash drive you are using. The directions for installing the OS used to indicate that the pack would be installed after you reimage your XO, but you can install the pack at any time. I have tested this since I did not install the pack when I imaged the XO.

Setup VIM to make this easier

1. In a newly created .vimrc add
2. set background=dark
3. set tabstop=4
4. set number

Enable SSH for olpc but not root

1. In order to configure SSH you need to set a password for root.
2. 703 comes without the default activies; so you need to go to the console to set the password. You can use terminal for this; or go directly to the console via the approach described below.
3. Become root and set a password both for root and for olpc
4. In the sshd config (/etc/ssh/sshd_config); uncomment and set to no both PermitRootLogin and PermitEmptyPasswords.
5. Restart sshd with: service sshd restart
6. From another machine SSH into it as root; verify that this fails.
7. SSH into it as olpc, su to root; verify that this works.

XO F Keys

1. Ctrl+Alt+F1 will take you to one console.
2. Ctrl+Alt+F2 will take you to the other console.
3. Ctrl+Alt+F3 will take you back to X/Sugar.
4. The F1 key is the same as the Neighborhood view key: 8 dots arranged in a circle
5. The F2 key is the same as the Group view key: 3 dots arranged in a triangle
6. The F3 key is the same as the Home view key: 1 dot in the center

Disallow su(do) to work without a password

1. By default olpc can sudo into root without specifying a password.
2. Open /etc/pam.d/su
3. Comment out the line “auth sufficient pam_wheel.so trust use_uid” which allows anyone in the wheel group to become root without a password
4. Logout as root, try su’ing again, you should be prompted for root’s password

Tweak the bash prompt

1. Add export PS1=”\u@\h:\w>”
2. To olpc’s .bashrc which you need to create
3. To root’s .bashrc which you need to create

Disable hot-corners

1. Comment out lines 56-57 in /usr/share/sugar/shell/view/frame/eventarea.py
2. Here are the lines:

   #invisible.connect('enter-notify-event', self._enter_notify_cb)
   #invisible.connect('leave-notify-event', self._leave_notify_cb)

3. Restart Sugar: Ctrl+Alt+Backspace (Erase)
4. Use the Home key to activate and deactivate the border menu (the Home key is the key with a rectangle on it)

Software

1. Flash
2. JRE
3. Opera
4. mplayer
5. yum: xpdf
6. yum: gcc (for building bzr)
7. Pyrex (for bzr)
8. yum: python-devel.i386 (Python header files)
9. yum: Python 2.5 (python.i386) (comes already installed)
10. bzr 1.14.1 (from source). I wasn’t sure how to add an up to date yum repo so I just used the source. Here was the command to specify pure Python build:

    python setup.py install build_ext --allow-python-fallback

    . This was necessary for the build to succeed.

11. yum: vim-X11.i386
12. yum: traceroute
13. yum: nmap.i386
14. yum: nmap-frontend.i386

Disable the Journal while alt-tabbing

1. Open /usr/share/sugar/shell/model/homemodel.py::_get_activities_with_window
2. Here is the change on line 76:

   root@xo-0D-1A-82:/usr/share/sugar/shell/model>diff homemodel.py homemodel.py.org
   76c76
   <             if i.get_window() is not None and i.get_type() != 'org.laptop.JournalActivity':
   ---
   >             if i.get_window() is not None:

3. Via this great post

Comments

1. Quake Term doesn’t seem to work.
2. You can not disable the Journal completely in 703.

(via engadget)

Maybe this is not surprising. It will be interesting to see what impact the project will have made in the long run.

With 55MB more free memory, I expect this machine to play a lot nicer with its users!

I used

free -m

to get these measurements.

It is a radical departure from what we would call “typical” user interfaces in 2008; and it really took some “getting used to it”. With the release of 8.20, it looks like they have made some “user friendly” Sugar and a few other things, too:

• A nice looking User Manual
• Better Power Management
• Significant changes to the UI “to improve the user experience”.

It took guts to come up with Sugar, and perhaps even more to make these kinds of changes. As minimal as they seem, they are not insignificant.

Disclaimer: I have not yet tried out this build as my XO is currently out on loan.

(via OLPC News)

(via OLPC News)

Addendum: 18/2/9

I installed it and it worked flawlessly. Here are my notes on the installation:

000. Remove the SD card and start the XO.

001. Start Terminal in Sugar.

002. Connect the USB drive

003. Run mount | grep /dev/sd , repeat until it returns a line like this:

     > /dev/sda1 on /media/ORNGESLIDE2 type vfat rw

004. Become root and stop haldaemon:
     	    sudo -s
     	    /etc/init.d/haldaemon stop

005. Insert SD card into the slot (the card will be erased, so back up all data
     on it that you want to preserve).

006. Erase MBR and partition table:
     	   dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4096 count=1

007. Make the partition table:
     	  echo -e ',,L,*\n\n\n' | sfdisk /dev/mmcblk0
008. Create the root filesystem:
     	    mke2fs -jLOLPCRoot /dev/mmcblk0p1

009. Mount the filesystem and unpack the tarball onto it:
     	   mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt
	   cd /mnt
	   tar xvjf /media/ORNGESLIDE2/OLPCFiles-intrepid-20081130.tar.bz2

010. Copy the developer key:
     tar xvf /media/ORNGESLIDE2/security.tar.gz

011. Reboot:
	reboot

012. Got the "Card didn't power up after 1 second" error:

http://www.olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=4053.msg28224#msg28224

http://www.olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=4053.msg28084#msg28084

     > I waited at the ok prompt and typed boot and it worked.
     > Recommended advice is if that works, to upgrade the firmware.
     > I will hold off for now.

013. After booting into a new system,
     log in as user olpc with password olpcolpc, and perform final updates: 

014. Click on the Network Manager icon at the bottom panel,
     select the wireless network you want to use.
     If wireless network uses encryption,
     you will be prompted for the key/password.
     If it's a public access point that requires browser login
     (like T-Mobile hotspot), start Firefox and log in.

     Start Terminal and complete the configuration:
     	   passwd

		(enter olpcolpc as the current password,
		then twice the password you intend to use)

		sudo aptitude update
		sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
		sudo aptitude reinstall ssl-cert
		sudo aptitude clean
		sudo /etc/init.d/cups start

015. Configure mplayer
     	       mkdir .mplayer
	       echo -e 'vo=sdl\nframedrop=1\nlavdopts=skiploopfilter=all:fast=1' > .mplayer/config
exit

016. Install flash plugin
    	    sudo aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree
	    sudo ln -s /etc/alternatives/firefox-flashplugin /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/flashplugin-alternative.so

017. In Firefox, installed the plugins:
       flashblock
       adblock plus

018. Set the timezone:
       sudo dpkg-reconfigure  tzdata

019. Boot failed, instead it went into Sugar.
    Ran e2fsck -y /dev/mmcblk0p1
    	This fixed a bunch of errors. I killed e2fsck the first time,
	apparently with no ill effects.
    Rebooted, held the 'square' joystick button,
    hit escape 'x' on the keyboard to get the boot prompt 'ok'.
    Typed: boot sd:\boot\olpc.fth
    System worked, got keyring question
    	   Used the old default pw
	   Reset doing: rm .gnome2/keyrings/login.keyring
	   Logged out and in

020. Set up some swap space
     	 sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap.bin bs=1M count=256
	 sudo chmod 600 /swap.bin
	 sudo mkswap /swap.bin
	 In /etc/fstab add:
	    /swap.bin none swap defaults 0 0
	 In /etc/sysctl.confg add:
	    # Swap as little as possible
	    vm.swappiness=0