How Can We Get a Laptop?

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, 2006-09-19 at 16:59 -0500, theosof at theosoftware.com wrote:
> Hello,
> I have some very basic questions to ask.
> 
> How can I purchase or get a copy of the finished laptop?

The laptop is certainly not finished yet and isn't expected to be until
next year.  There were a certain number of "developer boards", which are
the bare circuit boards of electronics that are quite similar to the
final machine, but not completely.  These are being allocated via the
process described here, although there aren't that many left:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developers_program

If you would like to apply for a board, please follow the directions
there.  HOWEVER, if you're just developing user-level applications for
the OLPC, you don't really need a board.  You can run the software
environment (and develop against it) on your normal Linux laptop, as
described here:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar

> I own a Christian software company and would like to write Bible-based
> software/games for children specifically to run on this laptop. We (Zahn
> Software) do outreaches to Mexico with the help of other ministries to
> assist communities with food, water, clothes, and health all which have
> schools nearby. It would be great if we (Zahn Software) would be allowed
> to distribute software for this laptop so that children could get a
> Bible-based education through interactive software run on these laptops.

OLPC will be shipping a standard set of software on the laptops, but
countries and/or schools may put whatever software they like on the
laptop themselves.  I'd recommend talking to your target markets to see
if you can provide your software to children through them.

> So, is there a way for religious based private organizations to
> participate in the latop giveaway?

Of course, using the same criteria as any other organization and/or
individual who would like to participate.

> My second question is what kind of Linux OS are you using and where can I
> get a copy of it so that we can start programming in this env.?

See the link above about Sugar.  The shipped OS will be a subset of
Fedora Core tailored to the laptop's hardware and constraints.  At the
moment I wouldn't recommend using the OS builds to develop with since
you'd be limited to 512MB (unless you enlarge the default partition and
have a larger drive lying around to put the image on).

Note that the software environment is in high flux right now and will be
for a while longer.  This may make some of the development process
obscure and a bit hard, but there are communication channels (and
mailing lists) you can use for help until the process becomes much more
documented.

Dan

> Thanks for your input.
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