$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
Other details about progress on the systems appeared on the OLPC site over the weekend. For instance, a team from Linux vendor Red Hat has trimmed the software distribution from 400MB to about 250MB, uncompressed. 'There is still low-hanging fruit left to pull out of the image, including bitmap fonts we don't use (7MB), the X font server (1MB) and Perl (30MB),' the site says."
Posted May 24, 2006 22:01 UTC (Wed)
by tekNico (subscriber, #22)
[Link] (3 responses)
WON'T ANYBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!? B-P
Posted May 24, 2006 22:20 UTC (Wed)
by niner (subscriber, #26151)
[Link]
Posted May 24, 2006 22:26 UTC (Wed)
by chloe_zen (guest, #8258)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted May 25, 2006 12:53 UTC (Thu)
by arcticwolf (guest, #8341)
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Posted May 25, 2006 0:03 UTC (Thu)
by csawtell (guest, #986)
[Link] (7 responses)
Take care with the plugs and sockets. Don't scrimp.
Posted May 25, 2006 4:13 UTC (Thu)
by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted May 25, 2006 4:29 UTC (Thu)
by csawtell (guest, #986)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted May 25, 2006 12:12 UTC (Thu)
by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted May 25, 2006 12:29 UTC (Thu)
by niner (subscriber, #26151)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted May 25, 2006 21:28 UTC (Thu)
by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051)
[Link]
Posted May 25, 2006 4:21 UTC (Thu)
by beoba (guest, #16942)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted May 25, 2006 4:35 UTC (Thu)
by csawtell (guest, #986)
[Link]
Posted May 25, 2006 5:54 UTC (Thu)
by dberkholz (guest, #23346)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted May 25, 2006 6:49 UTC (Thu)
by irios (guest, #19838)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted May 25, 2006 12:10 UTC (Thu)
by lysse (guest, #3190)
[Link]
Posted May 30, 2006 7:00 UTC (Tue)
by Cato (guest, #7643)
[Link]
BTW I really prefer Perl ;)
Posted May 25, 2006 8:04 UTC (Thu)
by eduperez (guest, #11232)
[Link] (4 responses)
A cheap portable computer like those seems very attractive to me. Quite frequently I need to perform on-site network and server mainteinance; a small portable would be of much use on those occasions. I do not need a several-gigahertz computer, with lots of ram and a big hard drive; just somethig big enought to boot Linux, open a couple of consoles and several network utilities would meet the task.
Besides, with mass-scale production, costs could be reduced even further. Or they could raise the price on developed countries, and use the difference to reduce the price (like 'build it for $100, sell it for $150 to those who can afford it and for $50 to those who cannot').
Just my two cents.
Posted May 25, 2006 12:37 UTC (Thu)
by fredrik (subscriber, #232)
[Link]
Posted May 25, 2006 14:15 UTC (Thu)
by dwheeler (guest, #1216)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted May 26, 2006 22:52 UTC (Fri)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
[Link]
Posted May 25, 2006 21:03 UTC (Thu)
by aliguori (subscriber, #30636)
[Link]
The idea is to sell these to governments and have the governments distribute them. By not offering these same laptops to "developed" countries, there is no secondary (legitimate) market and therefore it makes it a bit harder to abuse the system (by selling the laptops on a black market and pocketing the cash).
That's not to say there won't be a black market, but at least people will know that they should never see these things in a "developed" country.
Posted May 26, 2006 2:02 UTC (Fri)
by N001 (guest, #37993)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted May 26, 2006 12:25 UTC (Fri)
by cpm (guest, #3554)
[Link]
Somehow I don't think this was entered by hand.
Posted May 26, 2006 13:33 UTC (Fri)
by k8to (guest, #15413)
[Link]
Posted May 26, 2006 20:59 UTC (Fri)
by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051)
[Link]
Take the Perl beast outta there, right away! Please!OMG, PERL! NO!
Those children are so poor, they can not even afford perl. Now if that's no reason to donate...the new digital divide
"What have you done to my program?!"OMG, PERL! NO!
-- Larry Wall, viewing a graph of Perl distribution size over time
"[W]e believe grep is the most useful small program ever invented. (It logically follows that we don't believe Perl is a small program.)"
— Programming Perl (3rd ed.), p. 192
OMG, PERL! NO!
They should use Gentoo. They could then build up exactly what is needed $100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
and have the dependencies taken care of, instead of having to strip down
an existing load and fall head long into dependency hell.
They are the downfall of all electronics.
You expect all these really weak boxes with really limited disk space to build all their changes from source?
$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
Of course not. Don't be silly. You build the file set on a fast disk based $100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
machine, make the flash memory image, and install that. You don't _have_
to change the file set once it's been installed, or include any
development tools.
Yes, using Gentoo + Catalyst/GNAP (http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/embedded/gnap.xml) to create the *build* would seem to work out very well. Then, they could still propagate updates, but they'd jut be binary updates. All that time and effort wasted on slimming down those "kitchen sink" distros could be better spent deciding just what should be inluded, not what should *not* be included. But, is there a flaw in this?$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
I'd guess, that the people at Redhat already have some means to build a distribution for their needs. And if they could have had an easier job using Gentoo as base, they would have done so. You know, companies normally cannot afford to waste too much development time.$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
I doubt that Red Hat would reccomend anything but a Red Hat solution, no matter the technical merits of other solutions... ;) It is a small shame, as well, that Negroponte blames "Linux" for "getting fat". It's not "Linux" that's getting fat, it is the distros with large user bases that seem to be getting lazy (or desperate?) in their package dependency linkages., even as part of the distro's "minimal" install. I mean, we do have Damn Small Linux which is fine primary evidence that a pretty functional Linux desktop install can just be around 50 MB... ;)$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
Picture yourself in the sahara. How is emerge going to download source code?$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
It isn't going to. You only need the build tools to build the system. Note $100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
how MS have dominated the market with just a pre-installed run-time
system. I'm suggesting the same.
I thought they were trying to encourage self-modification and learning how to develop on these things, since they won't have hardly any Net access. Pulling Perl certainly won't help in that regard.$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
They will surely have Squeak and Python, which is kinder to those gentle minds. And those 30M might be better employed in Mono and C++.$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
Indeed, Squeak can run without an underlying OS at all (http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/59.html), so if it were ported to the OLPC project would neatly fulfil Alan Kay's Dynabook vision too...$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
Lua is also an interesting scripting language - very small indeed (language and implementation), easily embedded and rather useful. http://www.lua.org/$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
There is something about this project that annoys me: why are they marketing it as "ONLY for children in poor countries"?$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
I sympathise with the idea to sponsor a inexpensive laptop for someone else when I buy myself an inexpensive notepad. On the other hand, you have to ask yourself: why not just donate directly to the cause instead? Meanwhile, currently you can get yourself a brand new laptop for as little as 500 USD, and used laptops go well below that. I have a hard time seing that any organisation would be able to market and sell a "sponsor laptop" while keeping the price low enough and features good enough to compete with the ordinary entry level laptops.Entry level laptops are pretty inexpensive already...
Negropointe explained that his focus was specifically on kids, and to make it cheap enough, he needed a different approach. In most companies, marketing is 50% of the budget, so the cost of the system would double if he tried to market it to the general public. Removing Windows also saved a big pile of cash (reducing cost by 1/4, if I recall correctly). The radical change for the computer is the display, which is specially designed to be low cost. The rest is fairly commodity. Once they start cranking these laptops out, I expect that other companies will buy the displays and make cheap laptops too, so you'll be able to get them then. Anyway, that's my understanding.
$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
Marketing budget
In most companies, marketing is 50% of the budget,
I can't believe that, not in computers. White box systems built out of components (and ~zero marketing budget) are not that much cheaper than complete branded systems; they are certainly not half the price. Factoring in assembly, support and replacement costs, the margin is even less. So, 50% in marketing seems rather too much in this business. Now, maybe for some niche or novelty markets...
> There is something about this project that annoys me: why are they marketing it as "ONLY for children in poor countries"?$100 laptop gets working prototype (ZDNet)
[This off-topic, painful-to-read message has been removed by the LWN editors]
100-Dollar Laptop: UN Secretary General’s Office shouldn’t be used for exploiting the poor
Ya know, 100-Dollar Laptop: UN Secretary General’s Office shouldn’t be used for exploiting the poor
Please remove, if only for the formatting. 100-Dollar Laptop: UN Secretary General’s Office shouldn’t be used for exploiting the poor
Ugh. The Spammers have found LWN. Perhaps another reason to turn off non-subscriber posts? 100-Dollar Laptop: UN Secretary General’s Office shouldn’t be used for exploiting the poor