User:Tdang

I hope for this page to be helpful to me and others. You're others, and I hope it will be helpful to you by answering some basic setup questions which it seems everyone has. I'm going to stick to my own setup, though, so it will be most helpful if you like things the way I do.

I'm me, so I hope this page will help me remember where I'm at in my messing around with my XO.

All advice given here is given with lots of caveats. The main one is that I'm working from my faulty memory about some of these things.

<bold>This is just a start, really not ready to be helpful yet.</bold>

Overall System

I'm sticking to the standard system, using the standard Fedora OS, and Sugar. I'm using the current stable build, which is 656 right now.

As much as it seems reasonable to me, I'm also sticking to Sugar activities rather than branching out to novel applications. I hope that by doing so I can be part of making the standard system successful. There are exceptions where I use other software, which I'll describe.

I'm a G1G1 guy, gave three and got three, two of which are still in my home, which is in Arizona. So, everything here will kinda inevitably be targeted at G1G1 folks in the United States.

Knowledge Level

I'm not a novice or proficient. My XO is the first Linux machine I've ever been intimate with. I have been a professional programmer, but I've always hated system administration.

I'm going to assume that if you're looking for advice from my page, you're somewhere nearish to my skill level. You need to be willing to modify code in a text editor, but I'll try not to throw anything crazy at you.

Community

You'll want to be in touch with other XO users. For me, the best online community seems to be the OLPCNews forum

Brand New XO

(or old one, starting from scratch)

OK, you've got an XO. It's smaller than you expected! Damn, it's cute! Argh, I'm supposed to type on this?!

Things to note:

1. There's no human-powered charger included. Drat! The argument is that we don't need them as much as kids in rural areas. I have an outlet within reach most of the time.
2. The stylus isn't enabled. That wasn't a disappointment for me since I didn't know it was part of the specification before I received it. It's suppposed to be implemented later. When it is, you won't need any special XO-stylus; anything properly pointy should work.
3. The trackpad should work fine. It doesn't allow for tap-click, which suits me fine because I've always hated that.
4. The Journal is weird. It's probably what takes the most getting-used-to for someone familiar with standard computers. I'll leave the warning at that for the moment. Read the Getting Started Guide for some help. I'll try to give more useful advice when I've figured it out.

Don't worry too much about the name and colors you select. If you change your mind later, you'll be able to change them.

Getting Connected

The XO has no built-in way to plug in to a network by wire. It assumes you can connect wirelessly.

If you have an open wifi network available, you're set. Use the advice in the Getting Started Guide to connect.

If you have a secure network at home, you might want to go somewhere (public library or T-Mobile hotspot, or whatever) with an open network so you can do the initial updating stuff first before going through the secure connection rigmarole.

Update the OS

Update the OS as soon as you reasonably can. This is because when you update the OS, you'll lose pretty much anything you've done with your XO.

If you're