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What software will be used with the $100 laptop?

The one-laptop-per-child computer (OLPC) is delivered with some general purpose software: web browser; word processer; basic tools for personal expression; etc. There are also high-quality educational examples of OLPC use. A more complete list is found here.

OLPC is working with Red Hat on a Linux kernel for the machine, but we are opening up the design; it is inevitable that there will be several variants of Linux to choose from, as well as some version of Windows, and perhaps an OS X offering.

We made a decision to base the OLPC laptop on open-source software in order to provide countries (as well as the teachers and the children) with the freedom to decide for themselves what to place on the machines, and to share and localize examples of best practice generated domestically and taken from abroad.

Open-source software gives children the opportunity to “own” the machine in every sense. While we don't expect every child to become a programmer, we don't want any ceiling imposed on those children who choose to reach towards complexity. We are using open document formats for much the same reason: transparency is empowering. The children—and their teachers—will have the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content.

Preventing Porn/Adult Content?

At launch time will the laptop include any software for content controls (to prevent porn, etc). I realize that one's definition of "acceptable content" varies over regions, but isn't most content filtering software for the client Win-based?

This will, as far as I know, be left up to countries. Because the hardware and software OLPC will provide is as open as possible, there is no real way to implement such filtering on the laptops themselves; the kids could just change the software to get around such restrictions. --18.85.46.22 19:16, 17 February 2007 (EST)

Since most computers will be used with no Internet access whatsoever, this is a minor problem. In areas where there will be Internet access it will be provided by a school gateway. The filtering will either be implemented on the school gateway or at a central regional gateway.

Sorry, but lack of the Internet won't matter. OLPC is all about locally-produced content. This laptop has a camera. Having an Internet connection is only required for worldwide sales and distribution.

The laptops will have Internet access. Children will be both exploring and producing content. --Walter 11:40, 2 April 2007 (EDT)

This question has not yet been answered with sufficient care Please click here for a comment (on another talk page within this wiki) about the machines being used to create pornography. The OLPC team will be making a grave error if they expect developing world governments to address this issue without guidance.

My guess is that considering that the XOs will basically access the Internet through the mesh (connecting to the School server—acting as the gateway) a simple filter or proxy can be configured... it is (imho) a worthy preocupation, but must not be taken as the issue; most kids will not care about such things, and when they do, they'll manage to get their hands on it regardless of how adults feel about it... --Xavi 00:39, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

Are you talking about a particular already existing sort of image filter? Please elaborate. What sort of proxy? The reason that I am stressing this issue is because the reactionary element within a developing country will see this as "the" issue when it hits the press and they can keep these computers out of the hands of their children. Even if computer literate people can look past this sort of issue, large traditional populations are not likely to. Again, I'm not concerned about people looking at pornography. Every single internet cafe that I visited in 24 African countries last year had at least two young men looking at porn and nobody cared. I am concerned about the video camera being used to exploit poor young women and children. Whoever is putting this project together doesn't seem to know enough about the resourcefulness of the people who they will equip with these machines. Why isn't someone from the actual OLPC project bothering to respond. Have any of those guys actually lived in the marginal areas of the developing world? --[User:Onlinementor] 24 March 2007.

The School server can be used for content filtering; the extent to which it will be is based upon a country-by-country decision. In regard to the children being exploited in the creation of pornographic content, it is certainly a concern, one we are trying to address through a number of mechanism, some technological, but most of a societal nature. The camera and microphone are hardwired to LEDs and are protected against remote access (See BitFrost for details). The Journal logs all activities, including picture-taking. But neither of these measures is adequate if the family and community turn their backs on their children. We are striving to engage all community members in the program, which includes guidance about the exploitation of children. --Walter 11:40, 2 April 2007 (EDT)

Thanks for the feedback, Walter. Is there somewhere on this site where I could track the conversation about how to create a suitably vigilant societal mechanism to protect against the creation of exploitative content? It's a huge challenge and while it is particularly relevant to the OLPC initiative, it is an OLD, often-confronted, unbested challenge. To paint it as a question of family and communal back-turning is somewhat misleading, as it suggests that any shortcoming on behalf of the responsible community will be committed with purposeful disregard. It is much more likely that they will be ignorant of the situation, powerless to do anything about it or coerced into accepting it.

I'm sure you are familiar with the fact that it is not uncommon for teachers in the developing world (especially in Sub-Saharan Africa) to use their students sexually--indeed the notion of what constitutes "exploitation" is rather variable. If you cannot have a meaningful allegiance with educators, I don't know how you hope to engender this new breed of social responsibility. I don't mean to sound glib. I would just love to hear, in reassuring detail, what sort of local and regional expertise is being applied to the question.

On the other page, I suggested a possibility that is less trusting of the local community; but productive of jobs and, perhaps more reliable.

A possible suggestion: Whenever someone is uploading pictures or video (via the mesh) to the internet, it must be approved by human eyes. Those eyes should belong to women in another part of the world. For instance, Uruguayan women, approve every image and video that Nigerian computer users upload. Libyan women approve every image and video that Uruguyans upload etc. It will be harder to corrupt the filter if it exists further away, speaks another language and is built of women.

The countries where you are going to pilot this program are full of women who would happily take an image filtering job for $50/month or thereabouts (and that, in many cases, would be a generous salary). Invest an extra $60,000 in each country towards the power of external, female filtering and you might be able to save yourselves considerable embarassment. In the context of this project, $60,000 sounds like a very modest investment; but it could create scores of jobs in each country and help to protect young people from the world's thirsty perversion. --[[User:Onlinementor] 2:20, 9 April 2007 (EST)

The laptop is a tool, and can be used "for good or evil". Personally I think that censorship is evil and that kids should be free to see what humans look like without their clothes. The kids I've known who grew up that way didn't turn out badly. So please stop trying to push your own cultural prejudices onto every kid in the world. If you made colored pencils for kids, would you set up a system of censorship to make sure they didn't draw anything sexy?

I think it's not about Onlinementor's, yours, or my prejudices. What counts is what the parents of the children want, that we are trying to influence here. They have the right to decide, if pornography/violence is accepted in their community. They should be empowered to limit the influence of the internet on their children.

Society change is always a violent process. The faster the change, the more violent it is. The best chance for success of OLPC in a community will be, if it does not change too much.I think it it very important to fit the filtering to the local community and their values. Internet-Access is a Social Change Tool. If the social change it creates is not wanted, the programm will fail. Every community might need a different level of porn/violence/political filters, so the change doesn´t get too much. But developing the restriction mechanisms should be a high priority for OLPC. Parents/community/nation want to stay in control of the minds of their children. If you refuse to let them have some control of the new influence on their children, they might refuse the whole offer.

In the end OLPC has to listen to the parents of the children, and take on all their key concerns. There is no way of saying: "we from the big wide world know what´s best for your child!" -[User:Bones, 1st post] 14.09.2007

What do you do for process virtualization in bitfrost?

I had read that in the Bitfrost security system you do true virtualization of processes with almost no overhead. I was wondering what kernel module you use for that and where I can get it.

Laptop Security

I think it is pretty obvious these laptops will be quite possibly the most valuable thing in villages. What security features will these laptops have to make sure they don't get stolen? I have heard that they will be unusable if not used by the owner for 24 hours. Is this true?

There are several ideas aiming to avoid the problem, amongst them is saturation (why steal something that everybody has access to?) If you are interested in the more technical aspects, please see the Bitfrost security platform, and the specifics on anti-theft protection. --Xavi 10:29, 21 May 2007 (EDT)

Usability and User Testing

There is very little public information about requirements gathering, usability and user testing. In other words, how do you know whether the OLPC (i) will meet your users' needs and (ii) is easy enough for them to use? Have the target user groups been characterized? What ongoing plans do you have for this? I`d Like test the OLPC in Argentina, Please contct with me to know how. Thanks.

As far as I know, there are two local groups in Argentina with test boards (don't know if anybody has the 2B1/XO prototypes though). They are Ututo and Tuquito. I know Ututo had some explicit arrangements to let other people use/test the boards. If anybody knows about other groups (or about any local XOs) please let me know (or post in the OLPC Argentina pages. --Xavi 07:23, 6 December 2006 (EST)

There is more to life and education than requirements gathering. Usability and testing are of course important, and on-going. Research is often just trial, error, and adjustment. If you want, you can participate by setting up an emulator and seeing how the software works now. The research is going on now, and you can participate. Exciting, don't you think? -Jeff 21:47, 9 March 2007 (EST)

What about usability testing for children? A recent article quoted the OLPC chairman as saying: "Granted, I'm not a child. I don't know if it's going to be intuitive to children." Was there research?

feedback

What mechanisms are in place to get feedback and bug reports from the participants in the third world?

Wouldn't having a choice of operating systems mess with the idea of having mesh networking, educational software and external mass data storage?

We anticipate that the choice of operating systems will be made at either a very coarse level of granularity, e.g., regionally, or by individuals. In the former case, it would have to be done in concert with some sort of "school-server" strategy. In the latter case, presumably the child making the choice has a reason for it.

Which Unix-like Operating System?

I can find no link among section sub-headings to give me any clue as to where I find information about all the Operating Systems under consideration for this OLPC machine. It will be a Unix-like Operating System I am sure but that could be a Linux Distro, a version of FreeBSD or some other OS such as Minix. Or will this machine be a platform capable of running a wide range of Unix-like OS's?

The OLPC group is developing an open-source laptop OS using Redhat Fedora Linux as the base from which to start. This software will be freely made available to the countries deploying the laptops. However, since the CPU is a standard AMD Geode and the entire design is open-source, a country is free to develop their own OS or to choose some other OS for their laptops. The OLPC group will provide support for the OS and software that we develop.

Other linux?...

Can I install other linux OS?... in particular can I install Debian etch? And if so will all hardware work?

OS languages that OLPC will release

What are the languages that OLPC will be released with? What are the first Priority ones?

The first priority languages are the languages of countries where the ministry of education has signed an agreement to deploy OLPC laptops to their children. In some of these countries there is more than one official language such as Nigeria with Edo, Efik, Adamawa Fulfulde, Hausa, Idoma, Igbo, Central Kanuri, and Yoruba.

If there is a language that you would like to see higher priority then you need to convince the ministry of education in a country where it is the official language, to sign an agreement with OLPC.

Will the mesh networking be an effective replacement for Internet access?

We don't anticipate the mesh network will replace the Internet, but rather it will complement the Internet. The mesh is for local communication. An uplink at the school will be the gateway out. Providing local telecommunications is in and of itself of benefit to the children and their communities. There may be local regulatory issues that need to be addressed.

Will the display be able to rotate orientation?

The OLPC laptop runs the X Window System, which has resize and rotate extensions.

How much is reserved for Content?

The operating system and “mandatory applications” occupy 200MB. This provides 800MB for the user.

Is the OLPC laptop a PC?

Yes.

Is the OLPC laptop a PC in the sense of being an IBM-compatible PC rather than just a “personal computer”?

The OLPC is clearly NOT an IBM compatible (or MS-DOS compatible, for that matter) PC even though it does currently use an x86 CPU. The OLPC laptop has many features that take it beyond a basic PC. And the designers reserve the right to change to a non-x86 CPU in the future if it makes sense. As one of the team said recently, AMD will have to earn our business. The goal is not to make another IBM compatible but to make a portable personal computer that a child can use as a core tool for their elementary education.

No other PC has a screen that can switch to a low-power, high-res monochrome mode. No other PC has such a low-power, extended-range wifi with its own CPU that can keep sending while the main CPU sleeps. No other PC is intended to be, first and foremost, a tool for educating children.

Does Allowing Windows Violate A "Core" Principle?

Negroponte has said this is a "learning" project, not a laptop project.

One of the "core principles" you outline in this Wiki is the use of open source.

You state that the child should not be a "passive consumer" -- which means that he should have access to the source.

Now the news is reporting the XO will run Windows?

This seems like a contradiction.

Allowing closed source to ride on top of the OLPC makes it no more than a Trojan Horse...right?

___

John A. Bailo The Texeme Construct

The Microsoft announcement has resulted in some confusion in the press. It is being suggested that because of the Microsoft announcement, OLPC will be switching from Linux to Windows. On the contrary, OLPC remains steadfast in its dedication to FOSS and has no plans to distribute Windows. However, we have consistant and public with our position that the spirit of openness and freedom; everyone, including software engineers at Microsoft, are welcome to develop for the machine. The fact that Microsoft has been making efforts to bring the price of Windows within reach of children in the developing world gives those children more choices. --Walter 04:11, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

http://www.mobilised.com.au/content/view/947/1/ --Steve (on second look that author may not be very knowledgeable. He understands the 3M minimum units as 3M minimum dollars) --Steve

I wish that we could build a $1 laptop, but that is out of reach for the time being. --Walter 16:42, 29 April 2007 (EDT)

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=379 --Steve

I am unaware of any government asking for Windows. There is more to the difference between Windows and Linux than just $3. --Walter 16:44, 29 April 2007 (EDT)

But http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/04/negroponte_olpc.html --Steve

It's only a contradiction if you have more then education in mind. Like future consumers. Children are just like many computer systems; always changing and growing.Their Tojan Horse could be a brighter future inside! I think it was hard for the OLPC program to keep giants like Microsoft out of the program for as long as they did. But as we can all see by the news as of late every one wants in. Well when you have created something great every one wants one. Don't you think? Bakersdz

Contribution towards Programming

Hello,

I am really interested in contributing towards the programming efforts in linux kernel and python. Please let me know how shall I proceed and start contributing towards it?

Suresh, Bangalore, India.

Suresh, check this page "Getting involved in OLPC" and this page"OLPC Python Environment" -Jeff

How can I help translating contents?

I am japanese. I would like to help translating contents of this web site. Though I looked at help,FAQ,I can't understand. Someone help me how to translate,please.

A (too) short answer: see Translating & Translators. If you have any questions or doubts, you can drop me a note. Cheers, --Xavi 22:28, 22 May 2007 (EDT)

Science curriculum

I do not see any content related sections for the sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) and math. Can you please point me to that section or include this in your curriculum?

Every page has a search section in the column on the left. If you don't see something in the table of contents then use the search capabilities to find it. If you still can't find something which you think should be on the wiki, then start a new page and write an outline of what you think we should have. Others will fill in that outline for you. If you return in a week or two, you will have your answer. --Memracom 05:23, 13 January 2007 (EST)

Spreadsheet Program

Shouldn´t a calculation program - some clone of EXCEL - be part of the standard software delivered with every computer ? Remember, most of the kids are living in families that are peasants, and they might like to make accounts of what their "business" is producing, what resources are needed to produce it, and so on.

RealPlayer in OPLC and applications download

We are developing some applications that can be used to education purpose and we have some doubts: - Is it possible to make applications download using the OLPC ? - Is it possible to run the RealPlayer in OLPC ? Thanks in advance Vivian (vivianlona@hotmail.com)

The OLPC is based on downloadable activities, not applications. It will not have any RealPlayer support so you will need to encode in an open-source format. Ogg/Vorbis is good for music while Ogg/Speex is better for pure voice recordings. Read the Activity bundles page to see how to program a downloadable activity in Python.

What format do you require? RealPlayer can play many different formats. Quicktime can be played with GStreamer through OpenQuicktime and Gnash is mostly SWF v7 compliant (this makes Flash an open-source format). Gnash can play Flash movies from local files. If you would like to see either GStreamer or Gnash included you could add them to Category:Feedback. Thin client explains about use of the OLPC as a web client or thin client. --Fasten 11:40, 31 January 2007 (EST)

See also: Flash Player

"Activities" is just OLPC jargon for application programs. Don't be put off by people "correcting" you on that.

Real has been working to produce an OLPC version of their Helix Player, which is a free software player. The big problem is codecs -- most of the ones in common use (e.g. MP3) are patented and require the payment of commercial royalties. If you want to produce multimedia for children and make them useful to kids with OLPCs, then you will need to take care to encode your multimedia into freely licensed formats (Ogg Vorbis for music; Ogg Speex for speech; Ogg Theora for video). These can, of course, also be played on proprietary systems like Macs and PCs, though to encourage the use of their own locked-down formats, neither Apple nor Microsoft ships these free codecs with their OS; your application will have to install them.

The Gnash flash player doesn't come with any codecs; it relies on GStreamer to decode any media embedded in the flash movie. OLPC can distribute gnash, since it's GPL software, but can't distribute the codecs needed to play "FLV" (Flash Video) files, because they are proprietary to Adobe.

Adaptation of Musical Editor for local music systems

Hello, While browsing through the software that will be put on the B2 release, I remarked the screenshot of the Musical Editor, and I saw that it was based on the western notes system (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do). These notes have more or less fixed frequencies ('la' has 440 Hz, and going from one note to another happens by stepping of halve tones where the frequencies need to be multiplicated or divided by 1.059, the twelfth root of 2).

The OLPC project is ment for children in third world countries, like for instance India and China and other countries, where different music systems are used. Therefore I propose to foresee these adaptations within the Musical Editor (after all, it can't be the intention of forcing children to abandon their own musical culture :-?).

In case OLPC people are interested, I am willing to do some investigation in order to figure out which are the mostly used music systems with corresponding frequencies in order to facilitate the work. I can be reached via my e-mail address under my OLPC subscription account 'scampsd'.

The OLPC includes csound software which can be adapted to work with any type of musical system. If you want to document these systems and any csound software that works with them, feel free to start a new page on this wiki. --Memracom 05:30, 13 January 2007 (EST)

Best regards and good luck with the project Dominique

Hey "scampsd" i couldnt work out how to contact you about this, I am interested in alternative scales, mail me, simon att simon chadwick dt net

---from another contributor---

yes - i can see nepal, peru, thailand and india on the pilot project map that will be using different scalings 'naturally' without the fixing of the western scale to their use of the software. from the wikipedia.org page on microtonal music: "By this definition, the following systems are not microtonal: a diatonic scale in any meantone tuning; much Indonesian gamelan music; and Thai, Burmese, and African music which use 7 approximately equally spaced tones in each (approximate) octave." - there should be a module in csound for microtonal music: the most sensible option would be to have a special settings page to configure a preset choice of tunings for different regions to fit with preferred choice of tuning for the region. to eliminate locally tuned music would be an ethical crime, and is a big risk with a music program dictating that users have a 'western scale' for their music. i would not like OLPC to be responsible for the destruction of some of the most musically interesting and unique styles of music simply because there was no option for local tunings in the easily available and (relatively) powerful sequencing capabilities of freely available computers. it looks like Csound’s value converters for microtonal programming are functions "ampdb" and "cpspch". documentation on csound available at www.csounds.com/chapter1/index.html

Photo use suggestion

Apologies if this is the wrong place; I couldn't find a better spot on the wiki to suggest this. I hope someone can route it for me.

As I understand it, the OLPC system takes a photo of the laptop's owner at an early stage, and uses that in various UI elements to identify the child (e.g. the "neighbourhood" view).

Suggestion: this photo should also be displayed during startup, so that a teacher can work out who owns a laptop left behind in the classroom immediately, instead of needing to wait for the entire boot sequence.

It should also be displayed when/if the laptop is locked out due to a failure to contact the authentication server inside 21 days, or because it's been explicitly disabled due to theft.) This would allow a stray laptop to be reunited with its owner far easier, and/or make it simple for the police to ascertain that the person holding the laptop is not the owner.

That may well be the case.--216.194.7.250 11:39, 24 March 2007 (EDT)

Data security regarding the camera, microphone and mesh network

Data on a laptop, that is in the hands of a child can never be called secure against malicious intruders, but that is not a great concern as long as the data consists basically of the childs homework. But the OLPC XO has a microphone a camera and a mesh function (through the latter other people can observe its movements through the house). A malicious intruder might manage to remotely turn those devices on and gather a lot of private data on the family, including high risk data, like political opinions. This is a problem in the first world already, but in the third world, with its dictatorships or unstable democracies and often powerful criminal organizations the damage can be huge. So to my question: Does the XO have off switches for the aforementioned three critical devices and, if yes, are they physical (really cutting power off)? If they are not physical, how does the system prevent malicious software from turning them on? Is there an accompanying paper, that explains the security precautions necessary for such a device to the child? --Steve

Please refer to the Bitfrost specification, which goes into detail about our plans to address this potential threat. Also note that there will be LEDs that indicate that the camera and microphone are on physically attached to the power lines of those devices. --Walter 09:01, 21 April 2007 (EDT)

I was imprecise. Certainly there are features, to make an attack difficult in the xo as well as in any other system. But ways around will be found, and my question is, what if (and it WILL happen) the software layer of security is already broken and the computer "owned". What safely prevents the aforementioned devices from gathering data, when they are not explicitly used? --Steve

I'll also try to be more precise: Please refer to OLPC_Bitfrost#P_MIC_CAM:_microphone_and_camera_protection. "The use of the camera and microphone require a special permission, requested at install-time as described in its chapter, for each program wishing to do so. This permission does not, however, allow a program to instantly turn on the camera and microphone. Instead, it merely lets the program ask the user to allow the camera or microphone (or both) to be turned on. This means that any benign programs which are taken over but haven't declared themselves as needing the camera or microphone cannot be used neither to turn on either, NOR to ask the user to do so!" --Walter 09:53, 21 April 2007 (EDT)

Thank you for your reply. The LEDs are certainly a real gain of security. If permissions are a protection depends on the severity of the attack. If the attacker achieved kernel privileges, all protection measures, that come from the operating system are off. Since in unstable countries governments and their agents must be counted among the potential attackers, the signature exception is furthermore a major hole in the (by its software nature already imperfect) protection.

The simplest actually secure solution to the problem would be three good old-fashioned power switches, one before the camera, one before the microphone and one before the antennas. Steve

Typical scenario: A democratically elected president turns into a dictator and wants to spy on his people. Millions of microphones with communication gear are already in the households and, as a leftover from his old democratic days he has the cryptographic keys necessary to activate them. Steve

Now they said, that the XO will run 3$ Windows too. Not even Bitfrost is there when Windows is running and the project has no legal way to even see, where that OS has its weaknesses. This makes a physical solution to the microphone problem almost unavoidable. But since on-off switches are really dirt cheap when bought in masses, it should be easy to do. Steve

The LEDs in the B4 laptops turned out to be great for debugging all the times when the camera and mic were powered on when they shouldn't be by the software. They really work. Of course, that only tells you that the cam or the mic is in use; the LEDs don't provide a way to turn them off. A piece of tape, or a gooey bit of rice, will suffice to shut off the camera if it's turned on and you don't want it to be used. The microphone is a bit harder to shut off temporarily (if you've lost control of your software), since ambient sound penetrates the case. --gnu

Mesh Network Emulation

I'd like to try running a mesh network with emulation software; using say several laptops and a server (they could all be on one physical machine). I can't figure out how to create a mesh network using the qemu image, and don't see any images for the server. Thanks.

(I am a graduate student in Computer Science and Education, and would like to contribute to this project; but need to evaluate a working environment first)

Could this Virtualized Sugar page be what you're looking for? --Xavi 08:26, 6 February 2007 (EST)

Thanks... maybe. I fired up two instances of olpc on moka5, on separate machines in the same LAN, but couldn't them in the neighborhood. What more tinkering is required?

Looks like it didn't work, uh? I would suggest then that you raise the issue in one of the mailing lists probably networking. If you find an answer (solution or reason on why not) please post it here, so that we may then add it somewhere. Thanks and good luck! --Xavi 00:45, 7 February 2007 (EST)

Try turning on Bridge network for the virtual machines. There is an option to select that on top of the window.

By default, it is NAT.

All of the Mesh software is running inside the Marvell chip set on the OLPC, in currently-proprietary software; there is little or no support in the free Linux kernel or the Sugar UI. (Just configuration interfaces, and a way to gateway to the broader Internet.) So without the hardware, you can't run the mesh -- just an ordinary network. But since the mesh emulates an ordinary network, it's not usually a big deal. As the OLPC's higher level collaboration software starts working (soon, I hear) it should work over both ordinary networks (e.g. WiFi with an access point; WiFi in ad-hoc mode; or a USB Ethernet adapter) and over the mesh. --gnu

Where can software developers get laptops with which to work?

The vast majority of early software developers can work on ordinary Linux laptops or desktops. The machine will run Linux, X, and Gnome. Write your applications to use minimal RAM and minimal file system space, and to not depend on having a color screen. A release of the Fedora software for the OLPC is available (See Installing Fedora Core. If you want to simulate small memory, you can boot linux with the "mem=256m" parameter.) Some developers who need laptops, e.g. to work on device drivers, will receive prototype boards from OLPC. Here are Notes_on_using_the_OLPC_developer_boards.

I just want to try the software

I've read about the software and the UI online. I want to try the software. I want something like a "liveCD" that I can stick in my computer to try it out and show other people. a) Is it possible? b) If possible, is it explained anywhere on this eiki? c) if yes, why is it so hard to find? A nice big link on the homepage might be nice.

Don't know if there's a LiveCD, but you can try an emulator. On the left there's a navigation bar with a section titled "about the laptops", and under it you'll find the emulation link that'll take there... That wasn't so hard, was it? Enjoy!--Xavi 07:05, 5 January 2007 (EST)

A little question

The user install other programs on the pc, like on a normal pc using linux? If not, there is a way to run programs on the OLPC? The programs that I am referring are other programs, developed by users, etc...

The OLPC has a pretty small footprint. The OLPC Redhat distribution is very small, and has few program. There is an OLPC Redhat Development distribution which has a few more Linux programs, but it's still small. Sugar is the GUI interface, and has special activity programs. Activities are inherently networkable and sharable. -Jeff 21:45, 6 March 2007 (EST)

The answer to your question is yes. You can install other programs on the OLPC, like on a normal PC running Linux. The window system (Sugar) currently makes that hard, though someone is working on fixing that.

LiveCD OS Images

I downloaded a few of the recent LiveCD image builds (231), but for some reason the system does not load up and run. Obviously in this case you need a PC that has a CD/DVD reader etc. I may not be burning the CD correctly although Grub seems to start ok. Is there any particular hardware needed that a typical PC does not have, or something that I am not doing properly? Anyone out there that has this working and can share some ideas would be great. Thanks in advance.

This question might be bettered answered on one of the Tech pages.

Could you put a link to the "Tech Page". I'm having the same problem, what do I type at the grub prompt?

About emulating the OLPC disk Image

I am not sure where to post this as it's a rather technical support like question. I am emulating the OLPC image (I am using olpc-182.zip) in a intel iMac using VMWare tools beta. The emulations runs well, but with a limited size (640 x 480) and I know the laptop goes way beyond this. I have read somewhere an email from the OLPC mailing list that this was a recurring issue and many of the blog posts with screenshots and reviews of the SUgar interface where getting it wrong because of this.

I wanted to investigate this further (and help correct those blog reviews) and posted this question to the VMWare foruns, but they believe it's a problem with the OS image.

Any insights on this?

thank you

Alexandre Van de Sande www.wanderingabout.com alexandrevandesande (at) the email provided by google

Please refer to the emulation section of this wiki, specifically OS images for emulation and User Feedback on Images. --Walter 08:43, 8 January 2007 (EST)

Emulation-screen size control

I emulated Qemu on Fedora 5 but all I get is a full size version of the top 50% of the screen losing all the bottom icons and it will not seem to scroll down. How can I control screen size so that I view full screen?. Also How do I access the Shell or Konsole?.

autoreinstalation image through usb is not working..help..

i have successfully update image from this site...(olpc/manuals%20notes/Auto re installation_image.htm)...but after giving response ok at the end of setup...machine didn't reboot or shutdown... after waiting long time i shutdown the machine and then turn on .. then message comes : trying startup script disk:\boot\olpc-boot.fth..........and then no response for 5 minutes...after 5 minutes again a 4 lines message comes....

boot-file = ro root=mtd0 rootfstype=jffs2 console=ttys0, console =tty0 fbcon=font:sun12*22 pci=nobios video=gxfb:1024*768-16 boot-device = nand ..... and machine held with this message....and no response ....

can any body help me in this issue ?? -- Salman Minhas System Administrator Electronic Government Directorate

We have seen a few cases of auto-installer failures apparently due to "botched" downloads onto USB disks. We plan to mitigate that by including a manifest in the installer image, with checksums/hashes. In the interim, please try downloadinga new build image. --Walter 20:21, 17 February 2007 (EST)

Thin Client Model and OLPC? Sugar

Hello, --Sam-c 04:57, 28 April 2007 (EDT) (Please Recategorise if needed, Thanks sam) 1) How do I Download Quickly Sugar On My Linux Machine that at Present Has Limited Resources, For Development and Evaluation Purposes. 2) What about the Thin Client Model? Which Many think is best for inexpensive Educational Purposes? Thanks, OLPC Newbie Sam --Sam-c 04:57, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

RE (1), please refer to the OS images for emulation page in this wiki; (2a) it is not clear that one could build a thin client for significantly less than you can build the XO; (2b) you can use the XO for thin client applications; and (2c) laptops are useful even when they are not connected to the network. --Walter 19:35, 29 April 2007 (EDT)

Local version of SUGAR (particularly, Korea for me)

I want to make a Korean Version of SUGAR UI. I know the fact that currently you are making local versions for participating countries and, unfortunately, Korea is not one yet.

However, I think there is no reason to block writing local versions of SUGAR. Having one's own local version will help people persuade their governments to participate in OLPC.

Thanks.

Yes that is a valid point, but whose blocking it? If the government is blocking this then there is really not a lot you can do. They may have a good reason and later they will stop. But that is if it's the Government. You have to figure that part out first.

Sugar is designed to be easy to localize. It's a true pain to work on Sugar, though, as a programmer. If you want to localize it to the Korean language, I suggest going on the #sugar IRC channel on freenode.net and seeing if anyone there can tell you how to get started. They'd probably be happy with well written localization for the Korean language; it would shake out bugs in their Asian language support.

Proxy configuration

Is there any way to configure a proxy in the OLPC Firefox?

The web activity is just a version of firefox. As such, you can get to the firefox configuration by typing "about:config" in the location bar. Once there, you can narrow the settings to "network.proxy". Now, edit the fields to configure things properly from behind your corporate firewall :) -Jeff 12:06, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

About internet access

I am very interested about the OLPC. I am a pc programmer too and I am interested on programming for other plataforms, like the Playstation2, cellphones, and now, to the OLPC, too. I know almost all about he OLPC, ecxept one thing: What are the plans about the Internet access on the OLPC particulary on Brazil?

You can find informations about this, in portuguese, at the DMU site

I think the platform is similar to all the other nations except the language is different. The subject matter is to reflect each nations individual lifestyle and customs. Brazil is also one of the first nations to receive the proto types.--216.194.7.250 11:54, 24 March 2007 (EDT)

Internet access

How is internet connectivity achieved?

OLPC laptops talk to each other in an ad-hoc mesh network. Each school has a server which connects laptops on the mesh to the internet. -Jeff 21:28, 9 March 2007 (EST)

What instruction set does the processor in the laptops have?

The Geode processor that is currently used in the laptops supports the full Athlon instruction set (including MMX and 3DNow!), plus Geode-specific instructions.

Random generator entropy

Hi, we came up with this issue at the 23c3 in a lecture about the /dev/(u)random generator in Linux. The algortihm gets most of its entropy from the harddisk. Because the OLPC lacks a hdd, this could be an issue, when you need a random number for cryptography at boot time. Of course the algorithm is still strong and sufficient enough for most applications (or at least i think so), but not as good as some people maybe think. (Other entropies: camera, microphone,...) (DustyDingo)

Your question is confusing, as I'm not versed in random number generators based on hard disk... Isn't the built in Flashdrive good enough? It acts like a conventional hard drive, but it's all memory. --Jeff

No, the flash is not good at all. Hard drives have unpredictable timing, and thus the kernel uses them to supply /dev/random data. The DCON chip really should be modified to include a random number generator that works based on electrical noise such as the thermal stuff in a semiconductor junction. (note: NOT a pseudorandom number generator) 24.110.145.57 19:40, 27 February 2007 (EST)

Hmm... Chaos Communication Congress... OK! So you are looking for a way to seed a random number generator from an on board OLPC component (mostly for cryptography a boot time). OLPC doesn't seem to prioritize encryption as a core value (it seems to go against the BitFrost mantra of transparency). That said, you've got a pair of WiFi like transmitters, a monitor, keyboard, touchpad, battery, etc. Does hard drive access time really provide an evenly distributed random number? I find that hard to believe. Also, is this topic really critical to the goals of OLPC as a project? --Jeff

The very first thing an OLPC XO does is generate a long-term public/private key pair. All the over-the-air stuff is at least cryptographically signed. If a kid publishes a Sugar XO bundle, it gets signed with his key. Hard drives are decent; the fast-moving air inside the drive provides randomness. The WiFi may be a tolerable choice; it's both public and subject to lack of input though. The monitor is no good. The keyboard and touchpad are OK, though very slow. The battery is unlikely to help. The digital camera may be the best choice. The microphone is tolerable. Use of many of these devices will require lots of power and/or background daemons. It's just way easier to do as Intel did with their motherboard chipsets. VIA put a random number generator right in the CPU. AlbertCahalan 22:14, 28 February 2007 (EST)

This is a serious issue. There's a paper on the quality of the linux kernel RNG, and how it has relied on obscurity. When people wanted to find out how it works, they got no help from the developers; after analyzing it, they found serious weaknesses, and published.

http://www.pinkas.net/PAPERS/gpr06.pdf

In a nutshell:

1. Linux RNG is overly complicated, and could be made much simpler at no loss of quality if a random source is available.
2. Linux RNG is predictable with no random source
3. A "must" for diskless systems is to save the RNG state across shutdown/bootup. At the very least, each laptop should ship with a 512 byte file fetched from random.org (or similar) so that they can initialize to an unknown state on first boot.
4. Instead of using the linux RNG, perhaps consider a better one. Apple claims that its RNG -- "Yarrow" -- is better than Linux's, however it warns that a lack of random input will degrade it without warning (versus linux's estimate of entropy remaining in the main pool).

I do **REALLY** hope that this is fixed before any "for end user" machines are shipped. --Keybounce 21:36, 31 March 2007 (EDT)

It is a serious issue, but that stuff about Yarrow being better is wrong. People get recognition by publishing alarmist "research" about supposed defects in important software. The Linux developers have little time to help clueless people who won't study the history behind the Linux /dev/random and /dev/urandom devices. Yarrow has one feature of dubious value: it recovers quickly from an attacker who somehow exposes the content of the pool. If an attacker can do that, you have bigger issues to worry about because the attacker is reading your kernel memory! Yarrow does have two weaknesses. First, it assumes that there will not be a successful attack against the cryptographic operations it uses. The Linux /dev/random and /dev/urandom instead assume that such attacks will be somewhat successful, and thus does not depend greatly on the cryptographic operations being unbreakable forever. Second, Yarrow fails to track entropy. Even if no data goes into the pool, you can pull infinite data out. This makes Yarrow a pseudo-random number generator. Linux makes a conservative estimate of the amount of true randomness available in the pool and will cause /dev/random to block (stall) if there is not enough available. 24.110.145.57 00:26, 1 April 2007 (EDT)

The AMD Geode LX processor includes a hardware random number generator. Linux's /dev/{u,}random uses it to seed the entropy pool. Also, keyboard and trackpad input are used to add to the entropy. There should be few issues with the quality of the random numbers.

Look at the Measure activity - it reads unbiased voltage data from the audio in port. I don't know how sensitive the a/d on that is, but if it's sensitive enough to get some random noise when there's no mic attached, this would be an excellent, constant source of random data (I saw an article once arguing that a noisy a/d is either brownian motion - which has quantum input from molecular vibration modes - or direct quantum tunelling of electrons in the chip. Quantum random = gold standard.). I don't know if there are Bitfrost/Raibow issues with accessing this port - I think that's only for the physical mic, not the port. --Homunq 11:06, 24 September 2007 (EDT)

School Gateways follow follow up

Thank you very much for the response on School Gateways -- I had a big misconception about the internet. I am still curious, however, about how the School Gateways for the mesh networks are intended to be powered, and how much energy they will require. I looked at the power page, and it mentioned microbial fuel cells, which is what I was going to ask about. Are the gateways going to require a lot more power than a microbial fuel cell could provide? Thank you!

---(JK, USA) There ought to be a sister project of the OLPC to bring internet connection to schools in the developing world. One internet connection per school wouldn't be a bad name for such project. Wireless Gateway/APs powered by environmentally friendly and renewable energy sources like solar or wind power, perhaps linked to a bidirectional satellite internet receiver, and then use [1]WifiPaypal so that donors in the developed world can donate mothly Satellite connection bill direct to the schools using Paypal.

• I think you should develop your idea and get about doing it. Gus, Chile

Yes, that would be great to get internet capabilities, I agree -- I hope you do start that up!

Does anybody know about the approximate power needs for the gateways? I know somebody working on microbial fuel cells and he asked me to find out what the power needs would be, and I just have no idea. I'm assuming that power is going to be a biggish issue for the gateways, as many of them will be in areas with no elecricity -- Am I wrong? Thank you!

This question might be bettered answered on one of the Tech pages.

RSS

Would it be possible to give LAPTOP NEWS RSS feed capability? I use a NewsGator RSS reader, and I like it very much. It saves me a lot of time, and the releases in each feed are always the most current when I log on. I try to check my feeds at least every 2 or 3 days. Thanks!

PenguinTV is one of the activities already running on the laptop; you can run an emulator and download the latest image of the OLPC environment to try it out for yourself. Sj talk

Assistive Technology Software on the OLPC Laptop

In regards to accessibility, I think the 3 USB prots are a great idea. But what kind of assistive technology will be avaliable on the computer itself? Will synthesized speech, for example, have to be provided by an external synthesizer? Or, will a separate Nraille display and Braille keyboard have to be connected for a blind user to use the machine? Will the system have the necessary drivers built into the kernel or provided by external programs (such as Brltty)? What about support for mouse alternatives such as switches and head mice? Will the laptop be capable of playing sounds on events? I appologize for all the questions, but these are questions we are still trying to answer in mainstream operating systems.

The OLPC system has it's own set of rules and computing factors as mentioned on the many pages devoted to that subject.USB is also answered on this page. The answer to main stream operating systems would be Yes they have servers that are cross coded to allow them to give a limted out put via these servers. Will you beable to directly recive taged pages? Not at first but because from what has been said and the feed back they seem to work well and have few glitchs that will end up in

the main stream if any at all.--216.194.7.136 23:04, 3 April 2007 (EDT)

Accessibility

What mechanism olpc is going to adopt to make it accessable for child with physical disabilities? Will there be seperate keyboards for blind with braile? Will there be alternate input methods for child with dysfunctioning hands?

--Ankur Sharma, olpc Nepal

As far as I know, OLPC keybords are standardized for each country's language/s, but not braille. The OLPC has 3 USB ports to which external (braille) keyboards may be connected (quick search and sample result or alternative method). In order to better gauge the dimension of the issue, the World Health Organization (WHO) has some statistics on the incidence of blindness.

I have posted some observations about Dasher as an alternative input method, not only for physical disabilities but general use too. --Xavi 09:45, 21 December 2006 (EST)

Further to the question above, does the OLPC initiative include distributing laptops to children who are currently going through patient care in a hospital setting? And if so do you have links to devices that can allow a child to utilize a laptop from a hospital bed (i.e., wall mounted mechanical laptop ARM)? This is a great initiative!!!

Regards CReid

Accessibility

I'm not sure if the information about accessibility on this WIKI answers the questions we have received about the laptop/program. So here goes: Someone asked me if the device would work for children with disabilities? And if you been designing this device with disability accessibility in mind from the outset? For instance, most persons with vision disability are not Braille readers so might need font enlarging capacity or some sort of audio outputs? Likewise for children with fine motor skills disabilities (e.g., one hand or less than the usual number of fingers or dexterity impacted by other neurological damage) would the keyboard design work for them? Likewise, for children with intellectual disabilities, is the interface usable for children who are not average? We've heard that 10% of the world's population, or more than 600 million people, live with life altering disabilities, and two thirds of those persons are in developing countries (UN statistics). We assume many of these are children. Would you give me a heads-up if you are designing, developing and fabricating this $100 laptop with disability accessibility needs in mind? Thanks! J. Simpson Senior Director, Telecommunications & Technology Policy, American Association of People With Disabilities (AAPD) 1629 K Street, N.W., Suite 503 Washington, DC 20006 Tel Ext 31 Website http://www.aapd.com

We are thinking about this; there are certainly significant disabled populations who will hopefully be using the laptop. You can sign up for our accessibility mailing list: accessibility at laptop. Thank you for your interest. Sj talk 16:51, 6 April 2007 (EDT)

Color Coded Maps and Color Blind People

Would you please consider a written list of country status for those of us that are colorblind and can't make heads nor tails of your map?

There's an OLPC Status by Country page with a table - but darn! It too is color coded! ...just checked :(

I'll update it to make it text AND color coded.

It covers Africa, the Americas and Asia, and it's NOT official (iow, the coding of some countries could be wrong).

And yes, there should be a link to that table in the Countries section above and in the Map page.--Xavi 18:30, 21 January 2007 (EST)

Bad netiquette, answering to self, but it's already done! See OLPC Status by Country.

This question and it's answer will soon be moved to the #Country section above.--Xavi 18:58, 21 January 2007 (EST)

Technically, it's the governments buying the laptop that will distribute them (not the OLPC), and while I see no difference between a child in a hospital bed or a cabin in the mountains (from a distribution PoV), my guess is that hospitals in these countries have other priorities to allocate their budgets instead of fancy trays (as cool as they might be ;) --Xavi 08:05, 23 January 2007 (EST)

As a representative of an NGO type organization I just recently commented to a UN officer about a similar subject. “Fancy Trays”' are not always at the request of the country or donor agency in general. Part of what makes these items or services that may not at first glance seem functional is the vision of the donor. Just like the water go round in Africa sponsored by Ex US president Bill Clinton and the water see saw in another nation that promotes the washing of your hands. It is not always up to the receiver in what it is they are to receive . There are also many sites that go in-depth about theses issues and the how and why's of the matters. If you are interested in finding out more you can direct searches about: third world programs, world aid and I am sure you can find more information as to why a fancy tray may have been purchased or donated as well as many other interesting things.