Updates

Your XO laptop is a very flexible and interesting full-fledged computer. Its power is largely hidden behind a very young graphical interface (Sugar), but behind the scenes it runs the Fedora GNU/Linux operating system. Thousands of programs written for GNU and Linux systems will run on it, and many of them can be installed by pretty simple commands.

Updating installed software

You can use olpc-update to install the latest system software with bug fixes and improvements direct from the developers at One Laptop Per Child. Upgrading the XO describes other means to upgrade the system software.

If you are updating 8.2.0, you can update individual activities from the Sugar Control Panel.

Installing other activities

Activities lists software written specifically for the XO. You can install these from Browse.

Installing more content

Collections lists additional content that you can install into your XO's Content Library.

Installing developer builds and other operating systems

The first thing to do if you're interested in testing the absolute latest releases is request a developer key. The key will let you install versions of the system software in development, and different operating systems altogether, including ones created by the community of XO developers and owners.

Installing Linux software

All kinds of Linux software written for Fedora GNU/Linux can be installed by using the yum command line tool. When you run it, you must log in as root. And because it is memory hungry, we suggest that you run it when nothing else is running on your XO.

Fedora software comes in packages called RPM's. If you find an RPM package of some program you want to try, you can use the sudo rpm --install 'thepackage.rpm' command. Many RPM packages can be found on the Internet at locations like http://www.gnu.org/software, http://rpmfind.net or http://sourceforge.net. Not every RPM will be for an XO (many other computers also use RPM), but the rpm command will immediately reject most that don't work here.

Notes

Please add to this page (or its talk page) as you learn more about updating your XO. To edit pages like this, you will need to "register' in this web site by clicking the "Log in" link at the top of the page. Each XO owner can help each other XO owner by writing clear news and information in this wiki, where others can read it.

Note: this page is linked to from library content on the XO. In Ship.1 and Update.1 releases, the "Activity and Library Bundles" page on the XO at /usr/share/activities/bundle-archive/index.en.html, in "To update your system, see ... _the OLPC wiki."