One Laptop Per Child: XO Phase 2 Progress
[ Saturday, 3 February 2007, kocio ]
The One Laptop Per Child project is currently working on the “Build 2″ (B2) release of their “XO” laptop (the name comes from the symbol representing the user in the interface: a circle above a cross). The first examples of the B1 series were produced in November last year. The B2 prototypes are planned to be delivered to the interested countries for practical testing this month.
Recent architecture changes
Since then there have been some noticeable changes in the XO project. We are going to cover the essential ones here.
Wireless drivers
The wireless driver used for XO is planned to be to become part of the default Linux kernel. The kernel developers managed to decrease the number of interruptions from 200/s to 5-6/s. This optimization will help to lower the energy consumption of the card.
Fine-tuning for Cairo
The performance of the user interface has also been enhanced. Now it uses the multimedia extensions (MMX) in a more efficient manner in order to provide a better experience with Cairo-powered X applications.
Booting from SD-cards
The fixes also touched the driver’s infrastructure and the input handling devices in X. Thanks to the changes applied to the firmware, the OS can be now loaded directly from the SD cards, and the sound should work immediately after boot-up.
Open Firmware vs LinuxBIOS
The Open Firmware became free software last Autumn, thanks to Sun Microsystems.
The OLPC project immediately implemented it in XO. Previously LinuxBIOS was used both as the low level BIOS and as the firmware-level interface to the user. Open Firmware will replace LinuxBIOS in the latter.
The XO creators liked the Open Firmware (previously OpenBoot) for its flexibility, small size and better performance. It’s not that LinuxBIOS is so bad. It’s actually progressing fast as well, but in the case of XO, the resources are much more valuable than in regular laptops.
One of the neat features of Open Firmware that is to be used in B2 is that it is able to replace the firmware of the wireless card.
LCD display
Both solutions (Open Firmware and LinuxBIOS) have a chance to gain popularity in the “real” IT market. The same concerns the revolutionary LCD screens used in XO. Jim Gettys claims, that it is much clearer than the usual LCDs, especially in sunlight. Moreover it uses 7 times less energy than regular screens, can be used with a completely switched off processor and costs one third of their price!
The revolutionary screen will probably not be useful for full-featured laptops, mostly due to special construction of these screens, which have been designed especially for the XO. Still, with all the benefits of the new type of screens, despite the possible issues, there has to be some implementation in the real world sooner or later.
Commercial versions of XOs?
Despite the fact that the main production of the XO is for massive deliveries to governments of developing countries (counted in millions of items), the OLPC project management is wondering about selling the gadget in the free market as well. There has not been any agreement concerning the actual form of the XO selling program, but there are some suggestions. One of them is that (when the price of XO is finally set) the XOs should be sold for a doubled price for regular consumers, so that the purchase of one laptop would automatically finance another one for a child.
Yo-yo shaped power generator
The OLPC phenomenon has had an impact on the real market already. A company has been founded to supply the famous yo-yo shaped power generator. These generators can be used for manual charging of popular mobile devices like cell phones or laptops.
Fedora for XO
If the XO reaches the retail market, there are many possible operating system options for it. There is already a working prototype of Fedora Linux, presented at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2007) in Las Vegas by a company called Pepper Computer. XO B1 was doing pretty well playing DivX movies in 480×360 resolution as well as displaying e-Books. It was also possible to browse the Internet with Firefox Web Browser. A video from the presentation is available on the net, as well as three other videos presenting XO, recorded during the same event.
XO running Windows?
What’s even more interesting, Microsoft is also looking to run Windows on OLPC, which has been revealed by Nicholas Negroponte during the NetEvents conference in Hong Kong (December 2006).
More info on OLPC:
- OLPC home page
- OLPC official Wiki which has a lot of details about the project
- OLPC news — an independent news site about OLPC
- A very informative review of OLPC can be found in the Wikipedia.
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8 Comments
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I have truly enjoyed the articles about the OLPC and the progress being made. This article was no exception until the last paragraph about MS wanting to get involved, I almost puked it got me sick to just think of it.
What is his motivation for them trying to do this? Is it altruism or is it greed? He has never shown any true altruism when it comes to business. He could have funded this whole project very easily by opening his wallet a little. What’s a billion or two to him, the richest man in the world.
Keep him out.
Robert E. Lee
The buy 2, get 1 marketing concept is just great as far as I’m concerned.
However there will be many in the world, poor students not provided with one of these wonderful gizmos perhaps, who would barely even be able to afford 1. For these, buy 1 or 1.1 and get 1 might be a more reasonable sort of ratio.
How to tell the diff? An honour system would be the simplest solution.
Jack Williamson:
The buy 2, get 1 scheme is targetted at affluent sections of the world population. It is meant to provide an OLPC to exactly those poor students you mention.
The strategy of delivering the OLPC via governments is very good. In the end, it is the world governments who need to participate more to mitigate this problem.
The tax collected by all governments - believe it or not - is sufficient to achieve this. The sad truth is really the corruption in third world countries that will hinder this. Sadly, it is the third-world countries that would benefit the most - if only they can overcome their corruption.
Jack, if I read the statement properly. “Buy 2. get 1″ is exactly what you want. I buy one for $200 and I get 1 OLPC. The one that I’ve subsidized goes to a student.
I hope they decide not to run microsoft on them. It would be nice if a generation of children in developing economies could grow up without having the Microsoft monopoly enforced on them.
Does anyone know how this laptop is powered? I understand that it is human powered but I can’t find out any more information than that? I know early concepts used a hand crank but that that wasn’t considered practical… any thoughts would be appreciated.
It can be powered by electricity (almost any voltage) or by a yoyo-like toy.
An extract from the highlights:
Is it like the flashlights that you shake for power?