Emulating the XO: Difference between revisions

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<< [[Developers/Setup]]


In the past, OLPC produced alternative software images which could be run in emulators such as QEMU and VMware. This meant that development and testing could happen to a limited extent without requiring an XO laptop.
[[Image:AP1_39.jpg|thumb|laptop-in-laptop]]


'''In 2013, please see Tom Gilliard's many [http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Creation_Kit virtual machine images ready-to-go].'''
Emulators allow you to run a "virtual machine" on a (reasonably powerful) host machine. There are a number of emulator systems available which can be used to run a simulated OLPC-XO.


Note, XOs are readily available to genuine volunteer contributors through the [[Contributors program]].
See the [[Developers/Setup#Emulation Packages/Products|Developer's Manual]] for a discussion of the general merits of the various packages and the ways you might want to use emulation in the development process.


[http://sugarlabs.org Sugar], the unique user interface of the XO laptops, is also distributed as a generic software project and can be developed and tested on "regular" computers as well as XOs. See [http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Downloads Sugar Labs Downloads] for the full range of options, such as [http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick Sugar on a Stick].
See [[#Comparison of alternatives|Comparison of alternatives]] below for a grid showing which environments have been tested and found to work on what host operating systems.

* [[Emulating the XO/Quick Start|Quick Start]]
** Get started ASAP using QEMU and an official image
* Platform Specific Notes
** [[Emulating the XO/Mac|Mac OS-X]]
** [[Emulating the XO/Linux|Linux]]
** [[Emulating the XO/Windows|Microsoft Windows]]
* Configuration and Usage
** [[How_to_set_up_for_development_on_linux_emulation|Configuration and Usage of Qemu]]
** [[VMWare]], [[VirtualBox]] -- include the system-specific operations required

* [[Emulating the XO/Help and tips|Help and tips]]
* [[Emulating the XO/Limitations of XO disk images|limitations with XO disk images]]
* [[:Category:Emulation]]
* [http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-sugar-olpc/index.html Tutorial] Written by IBM on how to get this working.
* [[Improving emulation]]


The emulators currently don't deal very gracefully with the XO's unusual 1200x900 screen size. So what you see is not quite what you would on a real XO, unless you are running a remote X server (as described elsewhere). Running emulation in 1280x1024 is pretty close, but most emulation defaults to 1024x780 to better fit on more people's monitors.

Emulating the XO is important not only to test software for the system, but also for people to be able to provide day-0 support on all the technical issues that will arise on the XO in countries having access to the device and system for the first time. To fulfill these needs, it will be important to make emulating the XO laptop easy, accessible, and available to many people all over the world.


== Comparison of alternatives ==

An OLPC laptop is custom hardware, running a stripped-down Red Hat linux, running [[Sugar]]. But what if you don't have a real olpc laptop? There are a several options, which can each be used in a couple of ways.

[[User Feedback on Images]]

{| border=1 cellspacing=0
|- style="background:lightgray; "
! platform !! purpose !! recommendation
|-
| Ubuntu || play &amp; development || xo disk images on qemu. See [[Emulating the XO/Quick Start]].
|-
| Ubuntu 32-bit || core development || [[Sugar with sugar-jhbuild]] and [[Sugar on Ubuntu Linux]]
|-
| Fedora || play &amp; development || xo disk images on qemu. See [[Emulating the XO/Quick Start]]. Perhaps also on [[VirtualBox]]?
|-
| Fedora 32-bit || core development || [[Sugar with sugar-jhbuild]] and [[:Category:Installing_Sugar]]
|-
| Gentoo 32-bit || core development || [[Sugar with sugar-jhbuild]] in F7 on qemu. Or [[Sugar on Gentoo Linux]] (more invasive, less stable).
|-
| Other linux &amp; FreeBSD || play &amp; development || xo disk images on qemu. See [[Emulating the XO/Quick Start]]. Perhaps also on [[VirtualBox]]?
|-
| Windows || play &amp; development || emulated xo disk image, on [[VirtualBox]], [[VMWare]], or [[Using QEMU on Windows XP|QEMU on Windows]].
|-
| Mac || play &amp; development || emulated xo disk image, on qemu or VMWare. See [[Emulating the XO/Quick Start/Mac]]. Perhaps also [[VirtualBox]]? See also [[/Mac]].
|-
| Mac with VMWare fusion || core development || Fedora 7 in VMWare and [[Sugar with sugar-jhbuild]], sound and networking work. See [[/Mac]]
|-
| Mac with Parallels || play || emulated xo disk image, networking works after manually "dhclient eth0", sound does not work (Build 593).
|-
| Mac with Parallels || core development || run Ubuntu 32-bit, and [[Sugar on Ubuntu Linux]]. See [[/Mac]]. ''F7 may be better - see below''
|}
Discussion:
*Is F7 better than Ubuntu for sugar-jhbuild? If so, should the Mac Parallels recommendation for core development be F7 rather than Ubuntu, despite the latter having a track record in [[/Mac]]? [[User:MitchellNCharity|MitchellNCharity]] 10:33, 20 September 2007 (EDT)
**Yes, you will have less problems with Fedora 7, once you get it working in Parallels (which is harder than Ubuntu I think). I am running F7 because I need to be able to build RPMs. [[User:Bert|Bert]] 08:33, 25 September 2007 (EDT)
*[[Talk:Emulating_the_XO#QEMU_or_VirtualBox_or_VMWare.3F|QEMU or VirtualBox or VMWare?]]

== Build recommendations ==

For running XO disk images on an emulator, some builds are better than others, and the most recent one will not always work. Here is a summary of current status. Please add your own experiences here, and in [[User Feedback on Images]].

Current [http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/ joyride] builds generally work (as of ~1400).
Presence service (mesh view and collaboration) wont work by default, because they are configured with a presence service providing jabber server of ship2.jabber.laptop.org, which doesn't yet exist. There is an overloaded and fragile jabber.laptop.org which may be used in the meantime. [[User:MitchellNCharity|MitchellNCharity]] 22:42, 14 December 2007 (EST)

{{ Latest Releases | livecd = inline | devel = inline | extra }}


For emulation of extremely old builds, you may be able to come across "ext3 images" on some corners of http://download.laptop.org and http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/ which can be loaded into emulators. You are unlikely to find support for them!


[[Category:OS]]
[[Category:OS]]

Latest revision as of 16:26, 30 July 2013

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In the past, OLPC produced alternative software images which could be run in emulators such as QEMU and VMware. This meant that development and testing could happen to a limited extent without requiring an XO laptop.

In 2013, please see Tom Gilliard's many virtual machine images ready-to-go.

Note, XOs are readily available to genuine volunteer contributors through the Contributors program.

Sugar, the unique user interface of the XO laptops, is also distributed as a generic software project and can be developed and tested on "regular" computers as well as XOs. See Sugar Labs Downloads for the full range of options, such as Sugar on a Stick.

For emulation of extremely old builds, you may be able to come across "ext3 images" on some corners of http://download.laptop.org and http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/ which can be loaded into emulators. You are unlikely to find support for them!