Ruby on OLPC??

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

I'm curious. What Lisp music software are you refering to?

Common Music and David Cope's algorithmic composition software. Some of
the latter is generic, but some of it requires a Macintosh.

 

[Charles Oliver Nutter]

I also would like to have more information about discouraging other
languages, that seems a bold and stupid move IMHO, not at all in the
spirit of education on an open platform.
If this were true I would be rather shocked.

IIRC, the restriction was on what could be used for a core component of
the platform (to keep the base size down), but that additional devel
environments could be added. I did find this reference:
Java virtual machine can be added via Yum or RPM install
but [is] not part of the standard distribution [1]

I will certainly be installing Ruby on mine.

If it can run Java, it oughta be able to run JRuby just fine.

- Charlie

 

[Stephen Bannasch]

I also would like to have more information about discouraging other
languages, that seems a bold and stupid move IMHO, not at all in the
spirit of education on an open platform.
If this were true I would be rather shocked.

IIRC, the restriction was on what could be used for a core component of
the platform (to keep the base size down), but that additional devel
environments could be added. I did find this reference:
Java virtual machine can be added via Yum or RPM install
but [is] not part of the standard distribution [1]

I will certainly be installing Ruby on mine.

If it can run Java, it oughta be able to run JRuby just fine.

It can run Java but it is not part of the core install. The storage is limited and the current Java licensing doesn't allow distribution of a truncated version.

See this page for an update on our work in this area:

http://confluence.concord.org/display/TMS/Java+on+the+OLPC

 

[yermej]

That's the part that bothers me. Exporting technology resulting from a
US research group to another country exclusively, meaning the schools
here have to continue to fight for funding to do anything more than old
whiteboards.

-JC

Or maybe they will show up in the US:
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2007/12/birmingham_city_schools_will_b.html

And for $200/each, same as everywhere else.

 

[Steven Lumos]

Or maybe they will show up in the US:
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2007/12/birmingham_city_schools_will_b.html

And for $200/each, same as everywhere else.

Good news. I see that they have given up the silly policy of only
selling them to countries who agree to give them to all children.

I still object to the idea that if I want my kids to have them, I
should have to lobby some large organization, even now that it has
been lowered to the level of school district instead of US Department
of Education (can you imagine?).

After looking some more, it seems my information was very outdated.
They are now even talking about a retail version sometime in 2008.

Steve

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

exactly, big thumbs down Ed,
but seriously now, what's wrong with Squeak (unless that it is not Forth.

Well ... both the full-sized Squeak and the eToys version packaged in
the XO laptop are visually jarring to me, for openers. The mouse
bindings are unlike anything I'm used to using. The fact that the whole
environment is a "living document" -- I haven't been able to find an
"undo" button -- is annoying.

I also would like to have more information about discouraging other
languages, that seems a bold and stupid move IMHO, not at all in the
spirit of education on an open platform.
If this were true I would be rather shocked.

From the wiki
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Getting_started_programming#Operating_Environment):

Development Languages:

* Technically any language is usable
* Python is strongly encouraged, to have a single language "under
the hood" when the curious child looks inside
* C/C++ should be used where Python performance is unacceptable,
but try to keep it to a minimum, preferably as standard
well-encapsulated and documented components
* Smalltalk-speaking developers may wish to work within the eToys
environment
* Javascript can be used in web-based applications (Gecko or Opera
engine Javascript implementation)

GUI Environments:

* PyGTK or the PyGTK-derived Sugar system should be used for most
"Window, Icon, Mouse, Pointer" type GUIs. Note, however, as of
2007-04-21 that the Sugar "graphics" package is in Flux.
* Pygame SDL-based 2D game environment can be used for "Canvas"
graphics using "Sprites".
* (Mozilla) XULRunner can be used to develop Gecko-based activities
* EToys

The latest images I've downloaded have about 150 MB of free space out of
927 MB. I have been building my VMware virtual machines with 2 GB of
space so I can try things out. If you're sneaky about repositories, you
can load Fedora testing or unstable packages with a simple command. You
can, for example, say, "yum install erlang". But there isn't much
room either on the base flash disk or in RAM.

I think a lot of people are looking at this as something other than what
it really is and getting all excited. Back when I was much younger, the
standing joke was that a child would get an electric train set for
Christmas and Dad would end up taking it over. I can see something like
that happening with the US-bound OLPC laptops.

These machines were designed to help children learn. I think if you
download an image and see what's there, you'll understand a little
better why Python is "strongly encouraged." It's the glue language that
holds the whole platform together. Unlike most Linux distros, they
haven't even installed Perl!

 

[Robert Dober]

Maybe it was an error to develop all together, the OLPC should be a
hardware platform, then various different Linux/*BSD based platforms
could be implemented ...

just a thought.

R.

 

[Michal Suchanek]

Maybe it was an error to develop all together, the OLPC should be a
hardware platform, then various different Linux/*BSD based platforms
could be implemented ...

It is generally developed that way - you have a piece of hardware, and
you can put different stuff on it.
However, they needed a complete solution so they also modified a Linux
distribution to work well on their hardware.

Since the piece of hardware is very limited in resources they cut down
the pieces that are installed by default, and there is not much space
left for additional stuff.

You can install a different distribution but you will probably get
even inferior solution - it reminds me of the option to install a
different firmware into certain wireless routers. Unless you put a lot
of time into tuning the firmware you get much less functionality in
the limited environment. But you may get a function that was not
present in the original firmware at all.

Generally I wish there was something similar but with a decent disk
size. Or something more like normal laptop/palmtop with the screen
they used for OLPC.

If you really wanted something on OLPC and it did not fit on the disk
you could probably put it on an usb keychain. I guess it's what they
were also thinking when making the disk so small.

Thanks

Michal

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

It is generally developed that way - you have a piece of hardware, and
you can put different stuff on it.
However, they needed a complete solution so they also modified a Linux
distribution to work well on their hardware.

Since it's an open project, nearly all of the development history,
status, design decisions, philosophy, debate, etc. is captured in
"readily available" documentation on the Internet. The hardware platform
is what it is for the moment, and no announcements have been made of any
"growth path" or "upgrade path" for the hardware. Given that the
customer base is young children in developing countries and the
projected life span of one of these devices is five years, I can see
where children will outgrow these, hand them down to younger children,
and need something with a little more horsepower and industrial strength
languages like Ruby.

The software is another story -- Microsoft has an active project to run
Windows XP on the device, although I think when the smoke clears, that's
going to turn out to be impractical. Among the Linux distros, Fedora was
chosen because Red Hat and the Fedora project contributed resources to
OLPC and Debian/Ubuntu, Novell/SuSE, Mandriva and Gentoo didn't.

I've spent enough time playing with virtual machines running the OLPC
software that I think I can say that there would be no advantage at all
to switching to another Linux distro. In particular, anyone who wants to
tell me that Ubuntu is in any way superior to Fedora relative to OLPC is
going into my kill file. (For that matter, that isn't just relative to
OLPC).

Now *BSD may be another thing entirely. I don't have enough knowledge of
*BSD to know whether it would be superior to Fedora in the context of
OLPC. An awful lot of low-level hardware/driver work would need to be
done, and I don't think the BSD community has any strong financial
backers that could make that happen. But there *is*, I think, a small
window of opportunity here for Solaris, now that it, too, is open source.

Generally I wish there was something similar but with a decent disk
size. Or something more like normal laptop/palmtop with the screen
they used for OLPC.

Well, there are such things, and as far as I can tell, they're big
sellers (and sellouts) for this holiday season. I do know of real
working adults who have joined the Get One Give One program to obtain
one for work use, feeling it is superior to these other alternatives.

If you really wanted something on OLPC and it did not fit on the disk
you could probably put it on an usb keychain. I guess it's what they
were also thinking when making the disk so small.

There are three USB ports and a Secure Digital slot, so offboard storage
is not going to be a problem. What I don't know is how, without going in
and hacking partitions at the Linux filesystem level, whether one can
make the space available for resident software larger this way. As far
as I know these are simply data/media storage capabilities, not an
increase in resident software space.

But I do know how to do the partition hacking, and I believe the devices
will boot off of a USB disk, so you could in fact run anything that will
fit in 256 MB of RAM. I'm not planning to do that, though. Right now, my
plan is to install only three other languages, R, Steel Bank Common Lisp
and some version of Forth. Anything else I put on the machine will need
to be cross-developed.