Release notes/8.2.0

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Before you update to this release

  • If you are in a school or other deployment, make sure you contact your technical support team before updating. Some deployments have special configurations which will need special steps taken before update. Your deployment may not yet support this release.

New features in 8.2.0

There is a new Help Activity in this release that includes a full manual on the laptop. Look for the icon of a Question Mark.

In addition to fixing bugs, we've added lots of new features to our 8.2 release, including

Upgrading from previous releases

These are basic instructions that should work for 95% of upgrades. If you are curious about the technical details, see Clean-install procedure and olpc-update.

If your XO is connected to the internet

Note that this process may make some of your Activities and the Journal items that depend on them not work - make sure you have backed up any files you want to save!

This process should take less than 30 minutes on a fast internet connection.

  1. Make sure your XO is plugged in, turned on, and connected to the Internet (you should be able to load http://laptop.org in the Browse Activity). If your XO is not connected to the internet, you will not be able to use this upgrade method.
  2. Open the Terminal Activity. Activity-terminal.svg
  3. In the Terminal Activity, if the block after the $ is not a solid black press the down arrow ↓ to make it solid black. Type su - (lowercase letter 's', lowercase letter 'u', a space, and a hyphen). Press Enter.
  4. At the "-bash-3.2#" prompt type olpc-update candidate-767. Press Enter.
  5. You should see text that looks something like this. (Sometimes, in addition to the text below, you might get a message about irsync_pristine failing, and that "irsync_dirty" is being tried. This is normal.)
 Downloading contents of build ''{{:Friends in testing/current image}}''
 Updating to version hash ''xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx''
 Making clean /versions/updates/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 Trying irsync_pristine update from rsync://updates.laptop.org/''build-{{:Friends in testing/current image}}''
 - Cleaning tree.
 - Fetching contents.
 - Performing incremental rsync.
 Verifying update.
 Installing update in /versions/{pristine,run}/''xxxx''
  1. At the end of the upgrade, you will either see the words "Installing update in...." or "Update Successful!" on the screen.
  2. Wait for the prompt "-bash-3.2#" and reboot your XO by entering 'reboot' and press Enter.
  3. After your XO reboots, the last step is to download the new versions of Activities. When the XO boots you will see a bar toward the top of the screen that says "Software Update" and the options being "Cancel", "Later" and "Check now". Before you choose "Check now" to update the activities go to the Neighborhood view, reconnect your XO to the internet and then click "Check now" (its ok to leave the home view because when you go back the options should still be there). First the XO will check for any updates and then it asks if you'd like to install them. Click "Install selected" to install your newest versions of your activities.
    • If you find that you no longer have the left-hand index on the browser page (the one with the google search bar) and you would like to have it back:
      • Go to your control panel and go into Software Update.
      • After it checks for updates, got to "Modify activity groups" and click on the triangle to allow you to put in text.
      • Beside "Group URL" type: http://wiki.laptop.org/Activities/G1G1 and click the "Add" button.
      • Click "Refresh" and allow the XO to upload the new updates.
      • Click on Install selected, then once installed reboot and you should be good to go!

Congratulations, you've upgraded!

If your XO is not connected to the internet

You can use another computer that is connected to the internet (a desktop at home, a computer lab, etc.) plus a USB storage device to upgrade your XO. Note that this process will COMPLETELY erase ALL files on your XO! Make sure you have backed up any files you want to save!

This process should take less than 15 minutes on a fast internet connection once you have downloaded the files.

  1. Download the following files to an otherwise empty USB storage device attached to your non-XO computer (do not open the files):
  2. Turn off your XO and connect your USB storage device to it.
  3. Hold down all four gamepad keys (on the right side of the screen, above the power button). While still holding the four gamepad keys, push the power button to turn the XO on. Keep holding down the four gamepad keys until the message "Release the game key to continue" appears on the screen.
  4. Release the gamepad keys. If you see a grid of colored boxes on your screen, congratulations! Your XO is reflashing. It will take about 10 minutes and your XO will automatically reboot when it is done. Once your XO reboots, you should be ready to go. Have fun!

Congratulations, you've upgraded!

Resolved bugs in this release

Many bugs were closed in this release. A few important ones include:
<trac>5156</trac> Browse can view Google calendar.

<trac>5613</trac> The XO name can now accept any characters. This is important for languages which do not use the ASCII characters.

<trac>6014</trac> Activities try to save their data when the XO is shut down while an activity is open. This is better but not complete. Users should close their activities before before shutting down the XO.

<trac>7480</trac> You can reset your network history in the Network control panel in case you need to remove old configurations. However, you will need to re-enter all AP passwords after doing this.

For a list of all closed bugs in this release click [1].

Notable open bugs in this release

For the best experience and maximum reliability with the XO we recommend the following best practices:

For all XOs

  • If you open too many activities (generally more than 3) at once you may experience slow response. To close activities, use the frame button (upper right), hover over the open activities, and click on close.
  • In general, you do not need to double click on anything in the XO interface. Its designed for a single click. For example, double clicking to launch an activity will cause the XO to launch two instances of the activity which may cause one to fail.
  • Drag and drop has limited support in this release. It may in work in some cases but it does not work consistently everywhere.
  • Power save mode is still in development. In this release it is turned off by default in the control panel. If you use it and experience problems, please turn it off.
  • If the XO stops collaborating or stops responding, you can reboot it from the home screen (hover over the XO in the center) or hold down the power button for more than 6 seconds.
  • Ensure that you have unmounted a USB stick before removing it. Go to the Journal, hover over the USB stick icon and click on click on 'unmount'. Another method to remove a USB stick and avoid corruption is to power down the laptop before removing the USB stick..

For XOs used in school with many XOs present

  • Reliable collaboration using the Write activity over mesh or access point networks may not exceed two hours. If there are a lot of XOs or a lot of wireless traffic (e.g. many XOs or many access points) then Write may shut down during collaboration. In this case you may be able to reconnect Write to the collaboration in the Neighborhood view.
  • When collaborating over a Mesh (i.e. XO to XO collaboration with no access point or school server) you should limit the number of XOs on any channel to 10. There are three Mesh channels available (1,6 and 10) and each should have a maximum of 10 XOs. More XOs in a channel may cause instability in the collaboration.


  • Please see the Deployment Support pages for information on collaboration and connectivity in schools or areas that are densely populated with XOs.

Click here for a more detailed list of open bugs

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