Installing XSCE on an XO1

Overview

The XO-1 a relatively older, and slower machine. It is not as capable of supporting many classroom client XO's as the later machines. But it is often freely available, and might be able to service a small class of 15-20 student machines. As you can see from the chart, the XO-1 only has 1GB of flash memory, and about 700MB are required for the basic XO operating system, before any additional XSCE code is added. And the XSCE code itself take about 1.3GB. So the install process for XSCE, if it is going to work at all needs a lot of help.

The first part of the install process disables the Graphical User Interface (GUI) because it takes RAM away from the install process (and there is only 256MB available).

Also, the install will refuse to proceed if there is no SD card present in the optional slot at the lower right corner of the screen. This SD card should be fast, (class 10 is currently available), and at least 4 GB. Larger SD cards will be able to store student backups, and content, activities, and other services to the student's XO's.

Comparison chart

XO	Processor/Speed	Memory	Hard Disk	Idle Power	Install Time
1.0	Geode/433MHz	256MB	1GB	7W	100Minutes
1.5	Via/400-1000MHz	1000MB	4GB	5W	70Min
1.75	ARM/800mHz	512MB	4-8GB*	2W	60Min
4	dual core ARM/1000mHz	1-2GB*	4-8GB*	2W	40min

• optional memory and flash disk--usually lower value