Skolelinux for the OLPC $100 children's machine?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Dear debian-edu/Skolelinux developers,
I would like to ask, if you know about the One Laptop per Child project
(http://www.laptop.org/) and whether you have already considered to
create a lightweighted SkoleLinux/Debian system for this $100 children's
machine?
I have been following this project for a long time and I think it is a
great project and a great piece of hardware. In addition to the
non-material value of the project, if it will be successful (which is
not too unlikely to be happen), it will open an extremly huge market:
they are planing to sell over 5 Million laptops in the first phase
(early 2007) of the project and even up to 100 Million devices to the
end of the project.
They are already equiping their devices with a fedora-based Linux
version
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_myths#The_proposed_.24100_machine_will_be_Linux-based),
so what should a special Debian/SkoleLinux version be good for?
Well, they do not use a conventional, already available lightweighted
desktop environment but instead created their own one called sugar
(http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=16556) --- which has to stand
a lot of criticism by many members of the FLOSS community
(http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=16582). Although I think this
sugar interface *has* some kind of concept, in my opinion it is not a
productively useful environment and I am sure, that many children
receiving such a laptop sooner or later want to exchange the sugar
system with a more conventional one.
So what can they do?
There will be a version of Microsoft Windows
(http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2170209/microsoft-looking-windows-olpc)
available which can run on that device. But, as I see it, this is not
the way development aid should work: making the "developing countries"
dependend of the "developed world" again --- which would be the case, if
they run a Microsoft OS, created and owned by a US company.
So what else can they do?
Since it is unlikely that a lot of children will be able to adept a
normal Linux distribution to their non-standard-PC-compatible hardware
device (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification), many of them
have to stick with something which was prepared for them. And that is
the point, where such a special OLPC small Debian-based SkoleLinux
version could join the game.
These were my two cents I had to put in.
Best regards,
Michael Voigt
PS: I am not subscribed to this list.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQFFfVSulEsAsBivPuYRAnAPAJwL6RPDDYaZpNZf406dHMKhAhrxgwCcDynl
YR0DAbUK6TUt4+5Q8x4zcnY=
=7+ff
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Reply to: