Support FAQ/General Activity and Interface Questions

General Activity/Interface Questions

How do I close an Activity (program)?

Most activities have an "Activity" tab with a close button () found at the top right of the display; select the close tab and press to close the activity.

For most activities, the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl-q or Ctrl-Esc can also close the activity (Esc is the key).

Alternatively, return to the Home view by pressing the "Home" key (). Hover the cursor over the activity icon to bring up a menu; press "Stop" to end the activity.

How do I download and run Activities (programs)?

There are many Activities the community has developed for download. From the Browser activity on the XO laptop, go to Activities and click on the .xo file within to download and install the activity to your laptop. When it is finished installing, click OK. Press the Home key () (fifth key from the upper left) to see the taskbar.

Scroll the taskbar to the right (by clicking on the arrow ) until you see the icon for the activity; click on it to start.

All activities on the laptop have been developed in the open-source community by volunteers. OLPC encourages all laptop owners to contribute to this effort.

Is Internet required, or are Activities included?

The XO laptop does not require Internet access to be used. The XO laptop comes with more than 20 Activities (programs) and many more are freely downloadable. See this page for a quick introduction to introduction to pre-loaded Activities on the XO laptop. Start any of these Activities from the Activity taskbar at the bottom of the Home View.

After working properly for a while, activities won't load

There is a known bug in build 650 (the software build shipped in early Give1Get1 laptops late in 2007, and very early in 2008) which can result in activities working fine the first few times they are loaded; but on subsequent boots, the activities may not load.

There is a fix in build 653 and later versions. If you have this problem, please try upgrading to 653 or 656, which is the latest release, following the Upgrade Instructions. (Please note that upgrading to build 656 may disassociate the external applications installed in the previous build. See Trac #6317).

How do I use the Camera?

The Camera can be used with the Record Activity.

How do I take a screenshot?

Press Alt-1 at the same time. Go to the Journal. The screenshot should be the first item in the Journal. You can then copy the screenshot to the clipboard and open it with the Browse, Paint, or Etoys activity, or drag it onto an inserted USB flash drive for transporting it to another computer.

This quick screenshot hack also makes it easier to capture and upload multiple screenshots to a web server.