So what happened with NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Gentoo, and Knoppix were there, Ubuntu, and Debian? I'd love to put FreeBSD on my OLPC.

I'd be all for FreeBSD, but it's definitely much less user-friendly for desktop systems. Don't get me wrong, I dual boot XP and freebsd on my laptop, but I feel the XO should keep focus with one community (being linux). Distributions just add different package management and configuration styles so they're relatively transparent compared to getting something wildly different like OS X, XP, or *BSD.

so why when there's a chance of replacing sugar with Windows it's the end of the OLPC idea, but it's ok if it's Ubuntu?

Don't get me wrong, I am all for open source distros, but most linux OSs are built using exactly the same paradigms as Windows, just as windows was to teh original Macintosh in 1984. Ubuntu specially is rather cut to be an easy experience to people that are used to windows, just step down from Linspire.

There is no implicit sharing on all activities, no collaborative features built-in the OS, no embeded IM on all instances. From the point of view of the end user it is exactly like windows with e-toys installed.

@alexandre van de sande:
"There is no implicit sharing on all activities, no collaborative features built-in the OS, no embeded IM on all instances."

Indeed. I agree that a run-of-the-mill installation of Ubuntu or Knoppix has the same downsides as XP.

But if any of these porters want, they can import these features quite easily. In theory, every user can rebuild their distribution to include Sugar and all these special features.

This is definitely NOT possible with XP. The user gets a (likely crippled) version of XP and has to take it or leave it. And if past performance is a guide to the future, the choice will be take XP or leave computers.

Winter

@winter: That's why I support coders exporting many of sugar features (specially the frame and mesh networking) to every distro. But until they do (the coders, not the end users, they are different people no matter what is theoretically people) I do not really think it´s agood idea to put it in a mass distribution of XO.

Of course I support anyone doing whatever he pelases with his own computer. So it´s not a criticism of the article..

@alexandre van de sande

"so why when there's a chance of replacing sugar with Windows it's the end of the OLPC idea, but it's ok if it's Ubuntu?"

I said nothing about replacing Fedora Rawhide with some other Linux distribution. I wrote about alternative dual-boots.

But do you perhaps have me confused with someone else? I laugh at Windows. I don't think it is any real threat to OLPC. Note that Microsoft has said that XP is running on the XO, requiring only an extra 2 GB of flash, but has not said a word about Office. By the time they have a product, which I predict will not be earlier than mid-2009, Mary Lou Jepson's Pixel Qi $75 laptop should be in early production.

"Don't get me wrong, I am all for open source distros, but most linux OSs are built using exactly the same paradigms as Windows, just as windows was to teh original Macintosh in 1984. Ubuntu specially is rather cut to be an easy experience to people that are used to windows, just step down from Linspire."

Here you seem to be confusing Ubuntu with the Gnome Desktop. What about Ubuntu running Sugar?

"There is no implicit sharing on all activities, no collaborative features built-in the OS, no embeded IM on all instances. From the point of view of the end user it is exactly like windows with e-toys installed."

One of the ideas about the XO is to provide access to all Free Software, including source code. So we definitely want students to be able to install various Linux and BSD distributions to see for themselves what works for them, and what doesn't, and to decide for themselves what source code to study.

Personally, I feel that the second greatest offense against children is to presume to know what they want and need, without asking their opinion. (The first is not to care.) We know that children need safety, food, health care, and education in general, because people have asked them, but we do not know what software they need most. Please don't fall into that error, alexandre. Everybody is welcome to offer what they have, including Alan Kay, Seymour Papert, and all the OLPC designers and implementers. The children are then free to choose, or to write something different.

Edward wrote:

"Personally, I feel that the second greatest offense against children is to presume to know what they want and need, without asking their opinion.(The first is not to care.)"

Blatantly false.

If that were the case, you wouldn' support OLPC, given that nobody has ever bothered to determine if kids actually need the XO.

@Irvin:
"If that were the case, you wouldn' support OLPC, given that nobody has ever bothered to determine if kids actually need the XO."

And it shows, doesn't it. The children are all weeping in frustration when they get their XOs.

Winter

I saw this in "Linux Today"

In Brazil, A Local Alternative to the OLPC
Mar 15, 2008, 16 :00 UTC

"The citizens of Serrana, Brazil, are not waiting around for Intel or Nicholas Negroponte to deliver low-cost PCs to their school children. Instead, they're taking the matter into their own hands.

"Starting at the end of this month, the Serrana Digital Desk project will get underway when 200 surface PCs that transform into desktop PCs will be placed in classrooms in the city of 45,000. It's a trial run of a new, very local program that is intended to give kids computers in the classroom while involving as many community members as possible in the implementation of the project. See a video of one of the desks here..."

I saw this in "Linux Today"

In Brazil, A Local Alternative to the OLPC
Mar 15, 2008, 16 :00 UTC

"The citizens of Serrana, Brazil, are not waiting around for Intel or Nicholas Negroponte to deliver low-cost PCs to their school children. Instead, they're taking the matter into their own hands.

"Starting at the end of this month, the Serrana Digital Desk project will get underway when 200 surface PCs that transform into desktop PCs will be placed in classrooms in the city of 45,000. It's a trial run of a new, very local program that is intended to give kids computers in the classroom while involving as many community members as possible in the implementation of the project. See a video of one of the desks here..."

@ Robert Lane.

'Starting at the end of this month, the Serrana Digital Desk project will get underway when 200 surface PCs that transform into desktop PCs will be placed in classrooms in the city of 45,000'

We had these 20 years ago. But not in schools.
It was called 'Pong' and taught beer drinkers how to play tennis.

I have to say you just are not the target market and neither am I but I just got my laptop through G1G1 delivered 3/15 right before heading to Miami for spring break. So here I sit poolside after reading a couple New York Times articles and after checking my mail on comcast, sending a few, and stopping every once in a while to explain what this green and white thing is. I can navigate to an article, flip the screen around to read the article in tablet modein full tropical sun. Yeah a little sand hits it now and then but it looks pretty well sealed.

You should see then number of networks that show up on Miami Beach. Good thing its searchable.

If I was a third world kid I would be on this thing all the time.

Too bad you have to sell your laptop but maybe that's the point. Let someone who is the target market who can appreciate the device more use it.