OLPC:News: Difference between revisions
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=LAPTOP NEWS= |
=LAPTOP NEWS= |
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1. OLPC's Mary Lou Jepsen was married to John Ryan today at a sea-side |
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1. Thailand: Prime Minister Taksin Shinawatra used an extraordinarily long |
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ceremony in New London, Conn. |
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segment of his Saturday morning, weekly, one-hour broadcast to describe |
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OLPC, its purpose and its timing. |
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2. We are close to converting over to LinuxBIOS/Linux as bootloader, a new |
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2. Taipei: Taiwan's President Chen publicly shared his pride that his |
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X graphics driver, a new display kernel driver, easy installation path onto |
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country is assisting One Laptop per Child: “I am glad that Taiwan is |
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internal flash and disk, and the ability to run off of internal flash; some |
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contributing to this project to build a digital bridge for the kids around |
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last minute bugs have delayed this conversion until sometime next week. |
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the world.” |
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3. Mitch Bradley has learned his way around LinuxBIOS, and has brought up a |
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3. Ivan Krstić had another discussion with Project Gutenberg founder |
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Forth implementation on it. Forth is a very productive environment for test |
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Michael Hart and CTO Greg Newby about bringing their eBook content to the |
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and debugging of hardware, and will come in very handy for easier debug, |
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laptop. |
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testing, and exercise of the CAFE chip. A Forth environment allows for |
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immediate turn around of tests on hardware without a compile, link, reboot |
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step that a conventional device driver requires. |
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4. Zephaniah Hull has been working on the X Input Extension support for the |
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4. Mark Foster and David Woodhouse worked with the core LinuxBIOS |
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new dual-mode touchpad, along with work on the X configuration extension |
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developers to move LinuxBIOS onto the DCON debugging platforms. With this |
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needed for better calibration support for the device. It looks likely we |
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transition, the A-Test motherboards are capable of self-booting from the |
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will base our first release on the upcoming X.org 7.2 release, due to its |
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internal serial-boot Flash device, as well as utilizing the internal NAND |
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support for hotplug of input devices, being implemented by Daniel Stone of |
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Flash device for mass storage. Until now, most developers have been using |
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Nokia. |
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external USB devices, but these setups are reliably supporting fully |
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stand-alone operation. Practically speaking, this not only simplifies |
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debugging, it also will greatly simplify future distribution and bring-up |
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efforts for OLPC software developers. Special kudos to David, whose |
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exceptional efforts were appreciated by the entire team! |
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5. Jonathan Corbet is contracting with OLPC to develop the camera driver |
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5. Software: Many additional key software pieces fell into place this week. |
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for CAFE. Jonathan is well known in the Linux community, operates the |
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David Zeuthen (Red Hat) reports that the udev-based initial ram file system |
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“Linux Weekly News” web site that is a vital communications point of the |
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now works and waits for USB devices to be ready, so full integration of |
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developer community and literally wrote “the book” on Linux device drivers, |
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OLPC installation into the Red Hat Fedora distribution is now feasible. |
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now in its third edition. |
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Zephaniah Hull and Ron Minnich (LANL) report that the PS/2 ports are |
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working on LinuxBIOS, allowing testing of the dual-mode touchpad on the |
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OLPC hardware. Ron, along with on Richard Smith and Jordan Crouse (AMD) |
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report that the programming of LinuxBIOS is in place on PLCC flash chips on |
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A-Test boards. Jordan also reports that the X Window System graphics and |
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console driver no longer depend on VESA graphics or conventional INT 10 |
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initialization. This EXA X driver has early support for alpha blending on |
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the Geode processor. The fbdev driver for the Geode has beginnings of |
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support for the DCON and the X Window System has been run on the OLPC |
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display. |
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6. Jim Gettys met with Adam Jackson of Red Hat to discuss how to best |
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6. Marcelo Tosatti appeared on IRC on Friday. He's come home from the hospital, but he will be in a wheel chair for quite some time. |
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modify the X Window System in support of our power-saving schemes. These |
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include: (1) dropping the refresh rate when updates slow; and (2) driving |
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the display from the display controller, allowing us to disable the Geode's |
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video drivers. |
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Laptop News is archived at [http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptopnews.nsf/latest/news Laptop News]. |
Laptop News is archived at [http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptopnews.nsf/latest/news Laptop News]. |
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Revision as of 00:31, 20 August 2006
LAPTOP NEWS
1. OLPC's Mary Lou Jepsen was married to John Ryan today at a sea-side ceremony in New London, Conn.
2. We are close to converting over to LinuxBIOS/Linux as bootloader, a new X graphics driver, a new display kernel driver, easy installation path onto internal flash and disk, and the ability to run off of internal flash; some last minute bugs have delayed this conversion until sometime next week.
3. Mitch Bradley has learned his way around LinuxBIOS, and has brought up a Forth implementation on it. Forth is a very productive environment for test and debugging of hardware, and will come in very handy for easier debug, testing, and exercise of the CAFE chip. A Forth environment allows for immediate turn around of tests on hardware without a compile, link, reboot step that a conventional device driver requires.
4. Zephaniah Hull has been working on the X Input Extension support for the new dual-mode touchpad, along with work on the X configuration extension needed for better calibration support for the device. It looks likely we will base our first release on the upcoming X.org 7.2 release, due to its support for hotplug of input devices, being implemented by Daniel Stone of Nokia.
5. Jonathan Corbet is contracting with OLPC to develop the camera driver for CAFE. Jonathan is well known in the Linux community, operates the “Linux Weekly News” web site that is a vital communications point of the developer community and literally wrote “the book” on Linux device drivers, now in its third edition.
6. Jim Gettys met with Adam Jackson of Red Hat to discuss how to best modify the X Window System in support of our power-saving schemes. These include: (1) dropping the refresh rate when updates slow; and (2) driving the display from the display controller, allowing us to disable the Geode's video drivers.
Laptop News is archived at Laptop News.
You can subscribe to the OLPC community-news mailing list by visiting the laptop.org mailman site.
Press requests: please send email to press at laptop dot org.
MILESTONES
| Aug. 2006 | Working prototype of the dual-mode display |
| 06 Jun. 2006 | First video with working prototype [1] |
| 28 Jan. 2006 | World Economic Forum, Switzerland UNDP and OLPC Sign Partnership Agreement news release |
| 13 Dec. 2005 | Quanta Computer Inc. to Manufacture Laptop (html)(pdf) |
| 16 Nov. 2005 | WSIS, Tunisia Prototype Unveiled by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Photos: (Image 1)
(Image 2) (Image 3) |
| Jan. 2005 | Laptop Intiative Officially Announced at World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland |
PRESS
Video
(Misc. videos of the laptop can be found here.)