Release notes/7.1.0
The typical XO user might want to start with the General Release Notes.
This page provides more technical details on the current stable software image. Important changes are noted below.
This image is "ship" software; there is much you can now do with the laptop out of the box (See 542 Demo Notes and 608 Demo Notes). General – somewhat outdated – instructions on how to use the Sugar interface can be found here. Also of note are the Ship.1 Release Notes. The Library Release Notes page has information about the early stages of our sample content library. Finally, the OLPC Human Interface Guidelines describe our vision of where we are heading, only partially reflected in our current software.
The software is just maturing to the point where we can embark upon later-stage trials for feedback and polish. Please review the #Notes below and please report any new bugs to our trac system (See http://dev.laptop.org).
Overview
New in this release, Ship.2:
- Network upgrades via 'olpc-update' (see below for details)
- More robust wireless networking
Overall, most of the first-generation vision for our system is now present and working:
- Sugar UI
- The Journal and datastore
- Presence service
- Easy real-time collaboration in many of our activities including:
- Read, Write, Chat, Browse, Record, EToys, TamTam Jam, Memorize, Connect, Calculate, and Measure
- Mesh networking
- Automatic configuration of ad-hoc meshes, allowing collaboration without any infrastructure or Internet access
- Automatic configuration of school server mesh
- Infrastructure Access Point connections
- Anti-theft activation on installation
Coming in future releases:
- Improvements on document and image transfer
- Improvements on jabber server for collaborating outside of the peer-to-peer mesh
- Better security for activities
- Integrated collaboration within activities (??)
Important notes
At this time, we do not recommend installing latest software on B2 systems due to some driver incompatibilities and excessive RAM and CPU usage.
Upgrades / Stable Builds
The release notes on this page apply to the stable software release, already installed on MP(mass-produced) systems for G!G!: Build 650 (2007-12-05). We recommend that you follow the instructions found on the Stable Upgrade page.
Base-system notes
The system is now based on Fedora Core 7, and OLPC's kernel is based on Linux 2.6.22.
Network Connectivity
Connecting to a Wireless Access Point
- To connect to a non-secured AP (Access Point)
- Go to the neighborhood mesh view (3rd key from the left on the top row)
- Hover over the circles to see the names of the APs
- Click on the one you want to connect to
Connecting to a WEP enabled Access Point
- To connect to most WEP enabled APs, you click on the AP in the neighborhood view (as above); then add the WEP key either as a password, a pass-phrase, or as a hexadecimal value.
- Some APs (such as the Apple Extreme) will only work with a hexadecimal value. If you have a password or passphrase, go to Hex Converter to get the hex key. Also, with the Apple Extreme you need to set 'shared key'. Most other APs prefer the 'open key' setting when using WEP.
Connecting to a WPA enabled AP
We continue to work on improving support for WPA encryption, and hope to have a better solution in our Update.1 release. In the meanwhile, WPA AP documents procedures for manual use of WPA encrypted access points.
Sugar Control Panel
You can now set some configuration parameters on the laptop by using the 'Terminal' activity. The following parameters are settable:
- XO color
- jabber server
- language
- nickname
- radio on/off
- timezone
See Sugar Control Panel for details.
Backward Compatibility
Upgrading to 650
From 623 (ship.1)
- Using olpc-update to get to 650 will not work. It fails due to some unicode character problems, which were fixed in 650.
- If your laptop is secure, you should do a secure upgrade via USB to get to 650. This will overwrite the entire file system, so you should back up any files you want to save before doing this. You can follow the instructions: Upgrade_B*
- If your laptop is insecure, you can do an upgrade, following the procedure outlined on Autoreinstallation image
From 542 (trial 3)
- olpc-update is not available at all
- You can use the secure upgrade via USB (this will overwrite your file system, so backup files you want to save), though your machine is insecure.
- You can follow the instructions here to do so: Upgrade_B*
- To do an upgrade with backup and restore, use the process outlined on Autoreinstallation image
Activity files that won't work on 650
From 623 (ship.1)
- Record
- Old journal entries of record will not resume properly
- Both video and audio files cannot be viewed with the browser. (don't just throw them out, as this bug may have been fixed, and they may work with update.1)
- Measure
- Old journal entries will not resume properly. This means that any logs that were previously made will be lost.
From 542 (trial 3)
- Block Party
- It is not included in 650.
- If you'd like to save Block Party, move it from /usr/share/activities to /home/olpc/Activities before upgrading. Otherwise, you'll have to re-install it.
- Etoys
- you may lose your etoys projects.
- Watch and Listen
- It is not included in 650
- You can download the latest version from the Activities page.
- All TamTam activities
- These activities have changed greatly
- Unfortunately, any compositions will be lost
- Turtle Art
- Resuming the old activity entries will just start a new instance.
- Record
- Resuming the old activity entries will just start a new instance.
- The only way to save pictures is to copy them to the clipboard and then to the journal before upgrading.
- Video files will be lost.
Other
Previous Release Notes
Features:
Notes:
Note that for long term storage, removing the battery pack after a full charge is best practice; this is true for all battery powered devices.
- RestrictedFormats
- In some jurisdictions, patents on algorithms apply, and royalty payments may be required. Examples include MP3, and MPEG-4. This is a particular nuisance for media players, for which many of the common codecs algorithms are patented. In other jurisdictions, software patents do not apply and there are usually freely available implementations for these algorithms available. Sometimes, as in Adobe Flash, or the Real Helix player there are free (as in beer) implementations available, where those corporations have paid these patent royalties and made usually (binary) versions of codecs available. This has direct consequences as OLPC does not want to burden all machines with what may be unnecessary duplicate patent royalties: OLPC must therefore leave the customization of the distribution for these formats for "in country". For jurisdictions in which such patent laws apply, there are now solutions such as those sold by Fluendo to these issues. The Flash format (whether Adobe's Flash 9 or Gnash) illustrates this problem well; even though we can include gnash, as built it does not have support for MP3 or MPEG-4, which should work correctly if Gnash is rebuilt.
- fontconfig cache is invalidated too easily on mtime check
- Applications can take a very long time to start, due to a fontconfig caching bug provoked by the time being set incorrectly (which can happen easily if the battery is replaced or the time is set badly). To work around this problem, use the "date" command from a console to set the current time and date.
Where to find source
Many of the OLPC activities, kernel, and other software are in our git repository.
Internationalization/Localization (see Category:Language support & Category:Languages (international))
Other Multimedia Software
Other software that has been tested on the OLPC systems includes Adobe Flash, and Real's Helix® and Sun's Java.
Finding the Latest Test Builds
Development and stable builds can be downloaded. Boot firmware is kept in this wiki. The latest stable firmware and system image combined into an easy to use package with a script to automate installation of the firmware and base image makes upgrades to the latest stable software extremely easy.