OLPC Hacking: Editing the XO Icon Colors and Image

5 Mar 2008
   
   
   
   
   

At last month's OLPC Learning Club DC meeting, I talked with Luke (aka: ffm) about changing the name of my laptop and the color of my "XO guy" - the XO icon you see when you use the OLPC laptop.

He explained that to change both, its best just to erase the XO config file, and then restart your XO - it would prompt you at startup for new names and colors. Graciously, Luke agreed to make a How To video, so we can all experiment with XO laptop colors and names:

In case we spoke too quickly, you need to go to the terminal activity and erase the config file with this command:
  • rm .sugar/default/config
Then you restart your laptop and get to choose your laptop name and XO icon color afresh.

olpc loser
1970's style XO icon

But what if you want to get even more radical than that? Say replacing the XO figure with a whole other image? Over on the OLPC News Forums we have a HowTo just for you:

  1. you can make a SVG icon with the help of this tutorial
  2. once you've got your icon ready save it as 'computer-xo.svg', and put it on a USB drive/SD.
  3. open up terminal and type [on one line each]:
    • su -l
    • cp /usr/share/icons/sugar/scalable/device/computer-xo.svg /usr/share/icons/sugar/scalable/device/computer-xo.svg.bak
    • cp /media/[your usb or sd]/computer-xo.svg /usr/share/icons/sugar/scalable/device/computer-xo.svg
  4. then close terminal and press ctrl,alt,erase.
Now you'll have your SVG image staring back at you, instead of the standard XO icon. More interesting, this may be the image others see you on an XO Chat. Imagine the funky, fresh neighborhood view if we all modified our XO icons!

7 Comments

Posted by Wayan Vota on March 5, 2008 in Software: Operating System
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7 Comments

Wouldn't this mess with how the laptop is recognized by the server? Moodle, backups, filters might not recog the laptop anymore - which might be a good idea if a given machine is being given to another kid, but otherwise would create a brand new user.

All in all I support this flexibility - it gives more than any possible serious problems I can see, except maybe kids impersonating each other :-)

Yama Ploskonka | March 5, 2008 10:34 AM | Vote up Vote down (Score: 0)

BOB ROSS! HOORAY!

You need to post this SVG file.

Imagine the funky, fresh neighborhood view if it was full of different colored Bobs!

OLPCXO x Bob Ross x Warhol!

Ken S | March 5, 2008 11:42 AM | Vote up Vote down (Score: 0)

I am very much interested in hacking the xo graphics, but I don´t have a XO. It seems very straight forward to this with this tip. IS there a way to explore the XO filesystem other than using the terminal? Like accessing it externaly? Or from a disk image?

alexandre van de sande | March 5, 2008 12:14 PM | Vote up Vote down (Score: 0)

Ken,

You can ask the folks on OLPC News Forums to give you the SVG file or follow their tutorial on how to make your own: http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=2157.msg17600#msg17600

I think I'll be looking to add my favorite Wonder Twin activation...

Wayan | March 5, 2008 2:45 PM | Vote up Vote down (Score: 0)

@Yama - I am interested in your comment. Any experts out there have an answer? I was ready to do this until reading it might "mess" it up.

Dave Kaufman - Techlife | March 6, 2008 10:06 AM | Vote up Vote down (Score: 0)

Check out Auntie Mame's mesh neighbourhood - multi-color scooters everywhere. How cool! http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcmetroblogger/2321445930/

Wayan | March 9, 2008 11:48 AM | Vote up Vote down (Score: 0)

This is pretty neat. I've been thinking that it would be cool to have a little clock around the icon. Perhaps it would be possible to do that by having a script that modifies the svg every minute... It would be strange to have your network view image change every minute though.

Adina | March 9, 2008 1:21 PM | Vote up Vote down (Score: 0)
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