Coming up soon will be G1G1 2008, where we will have a whole new community of first-time XO laptop users. Many of these people will be brand new to the whole Linux experience, not to mention the unique Sugar user interface. And quite a few will be buying the XO for adult use, not for child-centric learning.
I say Sugar, every time
So what to do with these folks? These adult XO G1G1 buyers? Should we tell them to tough it out with Sugar, like many of us did? Or should we direct them to the other options for the XO?
Thanks to the tireless efforts of many, we have a whole range of options for these newest XO laptop owners:
And yes, there is also the Windows XO option for those special kids in Peru, but until a pirate hack appears that's not an option for G1G1'ers.So if you were asked for your choice, which would you recommend to an adult XO user?
The Ubunutu entry, is that the Netbook remix or Xubuntu?
Winter
I am using teapot's ubuntu (linked from Wayan's article) which is excellent. I have used on travels for email, web browsing and multimedia playing. I even have used it for scientific programming while away from home. Around the house, when my daughter and I are not playing the shared (networked) memorize activity with Sugar, I use it for casual web browsing. It always gets positive comments from people I meet and people who come over.
It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I just installed mrxvt (sudo yum install mrxvt), then created the following .xsession file:
mrxvt &
matchbox-window-manager
You have to start everything from the command-line, but it's not too bad once you realise that typing "opera &" starts Opera (or the respective commands for each program that you want to use). It's great once you realise how much faster such a setup is, and how you will rarely bump into memory limitations.
As an added bonus, you can rename or delete the .xsession file to get Sugar back in all its glory.
Oh, and remember that the XO is about learning. This type of setup is a great way to get a better understanding of how computers work.
As an 'adult user' since last December who has had periodic misgivings about the G1G1 investment I made it sure is nice to see this kind of consideration being given. I plan to keep my XO in hopes that help will soon be available to enable me to more fully utilize it.
There is also Debian (DebXO) the easiest to install yet.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/DebXO and
http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=3962
I found some screenshots of some of these:
XFCE http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=2538.msg21590#msg21590 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/22781504@N03/2191849792/in/set-72157603707137712/
Fedora Live 10: http://flickr.com/photos/mcbrihk/2927631557/in/set-72157603590770984/
Great initiative.My state is one of the poorest in India.What can I do to promote this initiative in Uttarakhand?
given the peoples overall disposition to windows...i seriously doubt there are many major programmers out there who would be willing to work their asses off to get a copy of the windows XO and then make a pirated version of it that any xo would be able to run.
i must admit though...it would be nice if the xo came with ubuntu preinstalled.
You asked what I'd do. Tell them to ask a child and keep our developers focused. Supporting mentors fits. Redoing a canned package to be sold to adults does not. There are plenty of others doing that. Anyone have scientific equipment ideas? ex we're exploring electromagnetism. Sound study built in. Light input ideas?
yum groupinstall LXDE