Tuesday, November 15th, 2005, 4:43 am
100 Dollar Open Source Laptop
Filed under:
RedHat Linux
previously mentioned the $100 laptop initiative and repeatedly referred to cheap computers in general. An article in the Wall Street Journal now claims that the $100 laptop is nearing reality. It will supposedly run Red Hat Linux on AMD processors.
A novel plan to develop a $100 laptop computer for distribution to millions of schoolchildren in developing countries has caught the interest of governments and the attention of computer-industry heavyweights.
Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.’s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company’s operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative’s founders. “We declined because it’s not open source,” says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Older items on inexpensive hardware:
