Sigh.
by T. Colin Dodd
Report: OLPC may eventually switch from Linux to Windows XP
April 23, 2008 (Computerworld) One day after the resignation of the One Laptop Per Child’s president was publicly revealed, the educational project’s founder and chairman said the group’s XO laptop may evolve to use only Windows XP as the operating system, with open-source educational apps such as its home-built Sugar running on top.
OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte also told The Associated Press on Tuesday that an insistence upon using only free, open-source software had hampered the XO’s usability and scared away potential adopters.
For instance, the Sugar graphical user interface aimed at children “grew amorphously” and “didn’t have a software architect who did it in a crisp way,” he said. Also, the laptops do not support the latest versions of Flash animation, which is widely used on children’s and educational Web sites.
“There are several examples like that, that we have to address without worrying about the fundamentalism in some of the open-source community,” he said. “One can be an open-source advocate without being an open-source fundamentalist.”
April 27th, 2008 at 11:20 am
I use flash just fine. Adobe supports linux with all of its updates.
May 1st, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Who has ever come up with the idea that the free software platform can be substituted by Windows? Who is the person behind this unexpected decision? I think it is a trickery of biblical proportions to bamboozle the inferior, undevelopable technology upon kid minds of the next generation.
Why RH digging its own grave?
Is MS expecting kids to have credit cards to upgrade those laptops?
Please don’t make a travesty out of this project after so many years of collective effort.
Are we blind?
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:55 am
Negroponte’s missing the entire point of OLPC — it’s the connectivity, stupid. Not the OS. The one device on the planet where the OS should be transparent to its function is OLPC, but instead, Microsoft had to stick its nose under the tent and now suddenly, XP has to win a trophy, too.
Jeebus.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
So users dislike the User Interface (aka Sugar, OLPC User Interface project used instead of the existing Open Source alternatives, KDE, GNOME, Englightenment, etc.)
To solve this, keep the disliked-by-users Sugar as the UI but make it run on XP instead of linux.
Is the reporting bad? Is Negroponte really this silly? Is this contemptuously transparent false reasoning to cover something? Is this something else?
There is another massive cost of moving to XP, not many will care to work for no money to advance the interests of a large, closed software company.
All very odd indeed, let’s hope for mis-reporting.
(By the way, why did I have to submit this 3 times because my “token timed out”?)
June 4th, 2008 at 11:18 am
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