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.

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.

Restart network

When the machine is rebooted with the modified /etc/inittab</ttd>, Sugar will not be started and 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

Download Opera

Download RPM 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 (as root):

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

Edit .xinitrc

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 should be:

opera &
twm

Start the X server

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%