First impressions of a B4 machine

[C. Scott Ananian]

Only a few replies to points not yet covered:

On 7/23/07, Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves <justivo at gmail.com> wrote:
> can't be helped.  What could be done, however, is hide the diagnostic
> dialogs with a simple splash screen stating POWERING ON, or LOADING,

You have to consider that these are primarily *development* builds
you're looking at now (and for a bit longer yet).  There is no
technical problem with hiding boot information, but all the developers
would rather see problems than hide them right now.

I hope soon to put "hold down O when booting to see a pretty boot"
support soon, so that we can write and test the "pretty boot" without
making life difficult for developers.

> it's PenguinTV according to the OLPC web site.  PenguinTV is a neat
> app, but it's locked in RSS and offers no support for XSPF, which is
> an Open Media format.  I contacted its author on this matter, but he
> says he has no plans to support XSPF in the near future.

RSS is not a proprietary format by any stretch of the imagination.  It
is a de facto standard, and at times a poorly-documented one, but I
really can't imagine your being outraged by it.  XSPF is a playlist
format: that's not related to RSS at all, and I completely understand
why the newsreader author wouldn't consider support.  "Atom" is a
slightly more modern RSS but it hasn't made it through IETF
standardization yet and RSS feeds are definitely more widespread on
the internet.

> Oh, and let me talk about the shell.  Is this really bash?  Why, oh
> why?  BusyBox is so much better suited here, especially considering
> the limitations of the XO, so why put bash here?

Because bash implements the POSIX standards, unlike busybox.  Busybox
is a mistake to use for anything other than very limited use in rescue
shells and initramfs'en; trying to port "real" programs to use the
crippled utilities in busybox is a big headache and a huge waste of
time.

> Next thing I know and someone's gonna tell me that the XO software is
> not compiled against uClibc or dietlibc. . .  It is, right?  Right?

Same thing here.  Glibc implements a POSIX standard and allows real
software to work on the XO.  dietlibc and uClibc achieve their space
savings by omitting things which the XO actually needs, like IPv6 and
internationalization support.

> Battery: Drains too fast, even while the CPU is idle and the display

Power management is mostly missing from the build you are running.
There is a lot of software work done to improve battery life, and more
that will be done.
-- 
                         ( http://cscott.net/ )