Opera without Sugar

If you want to use your XO for surfing only, you can run the Opera browser without having to run Sugar. This page describes the steps involved. Note that you will lose the function keys and not be able to run the other OLPC activities. You will, however, be able to run other X applications in additions to Opera.

Remove Sugar

To prevent Sugar from starting up, edit /etc/inittab (as root) and comment out this line by adding '#' at the beginning:

x:5:respawn:/usr/sbin/olpc-dm

The line should therefore be:

#x:5:respawn:/usr/sbin/olpc-dm

The machine must be rebooted for the change to take effect. To revert the machine back to normal, remove the '#' and reboot.

Restart network

When the machine is rebooted with the modified /etc/inittab, Sugar will not be started. You will need to login through the tty interface. To get a login prompt, you may need to press ctrl-alt-f1. Login as root, no password is required.

The network must be restarted manually.

For example, these commands will open a connection through an access point with SSID foo:

/sbin/service NetworkManager stop
/sbin/service network stop
/sbin/iwconfig eth0 essid foo
/sbin/dhclient -1 eth0

After having restarted the network, you may want to login to the XO unit through SSH. To do so, first set a password for root:

$ passwd

Then you can login from another machine with a command like:

$ ssh root@10.0.0.101

The IP number to use is reported by the /sbin/dhclient command above.

Download Opera

Now you should download an RPM file with Opera. For example:

$ wget http://get.opera.com/pub/opera/linux/950/final/en/i386/static/opera-9.50.gcc4-static-qt3.i386.rpm

and install it:

$ rpm -i opera-9.50.gcc4-static-qt3.i386.rpm

Edit .xinitrc

At this stage you may want to switch from being root to the olpc user:

$ su - olpc

To start Opera automatically when the X server is started, edit .xinitrc in the home directory. The file should contain only one line, e.g.:

opera -geometry 1200x900+0+0

Alternatively, if you would like a simple window manager, the .xinitrc file could be:

opera &
twm

Start the X server

This command will start the X server and the applications listed in the .xinitrc file:

$ startx

Configure Opera

To increase performance, Opera should be configured to run without disk caching. To turn it off, select

Tools->Preferences->Advanced->History and set Disk Cache to off.

Due to the high pixel density of the XO, you may want to set the zoom level to 150%.

View->zoom->150%

Setting backlight

It is possible to control the backlight. For example, to turn backlighting off, run this command (as root):

$ echo "0" > /sys/class/backlight/dcon-bl/brightness