Building the £50 laptop
,----[ Quote ]
| One of the most important choices was to use Linux as the OS
| (operating system), but this was not simply a question of
| cost-cutting. Microsoft and Apple offered versions of their
| OSes, but OLPC developers believed Linux would provide children
| with a better experience. The decision to use open-source software
| was down to OLPC's desire to give children a greater opportunity
| to explore and create on their own, while the ability to produce
| a purpose-built interface ? now known as 'Sugar' -- enabled the
| initiative to build the platform from the ground up.
|
| [...]
|
| What has a Linux platform allowed you to offer that closed
| proprietary systems can't?
|
| Computing is a large part of today's world: interested children
| should be able to see how computers work from the first
| instruction they execute at power-on. They can do so on this
| system. The Bios (LinuxBios), boot loader (Open Firmware),
| Linux, applications and environment can all be studied and
| understood by the children.
|
| [...]
|
| There is a significant amount of what I'd call conventional
| educational software for Linux already available. There are
| major projects such as LinEX in the Extremadura region of
| Spain. Adapting much of this work to Sugar is usually easy.
`----
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=676&blogid=4
People who spread the clouds of doubt are sometimes shills for Intel and/or
Microsoft, who got excluded for a reason.
Related:
At Davos: citizenship, apostasy and $100 laptops
,----[ Quote ]
| Nicholas Negroponte, longtime director of MIT's Media Lab, was toting
| around a working version of his so-called "$100 laptop" (which will
| initially cost about $150). Everyone from Michael Dell to Google's
| Vint Cerf was seen playing with it. The little green-and-white computer
| is so sexy that many pronounced it "cooler than the iPhone."
|
| [...]
|
| The featured speaker at the digital divide session was Intel
| Chairman Craig Barrett, who has been outspokenly critical of
| Negroponte's laptop, in part because it is based on a processor
| chip from arch-rival AMD. Intel at Davos was trying to
| strike back by showing its own green-and-white "Classmate PC,"
| which is considerably more expensive and whose clunkiness prompted
| no iPhone comparisons.
|
| Barrett and Negroponte traded barbs in which each accused the other
| of caring more about marketing than children. Then AMD President
| Andre Richard made a proposal - despite their rivalry on other
| matters, the two chipmakers should cooperate on special software
| for inexpensive educational computers.
`----
http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/01/technology/fastforward_davos.fortune/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote
Debate widens over over deploying computers in the developing world
,----[ Quote ]
| The controversy boiled over on Saturday at a meeting where Craig
| Barrett, chairman of Intel, squared off with Nicholas Negroponte,
| the former director of the MIT Media Laboratory and head of the
| nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child, which is focusing
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| on the 1.2 billion children in the developing world.
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
`----
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/28/business/cheap.php
|
|
