Status of the OLPC

[James Cameron]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2007 at 01:18:33PM +0300, Chad Z. Hower aka Kudzu wrote:
> I ran into something simple - ie if no sound is present it goes into an
> infinite half-reboot cycle. Now all devices might have audio and it was
> because I was using Bochs, but it seems that it should handle that better.

I thought this had been logged but I haven't found it in ten minutes of
searching.

Please log it in trac, see http://dev.laptop.org/ ... or describe it to
me in detail and I'll log it for you.  I'll need the build number, the
image you're running, and the emulation environment.

A fix might be for the failing program to gracefully degrade and not use
sound.  I guess it is Sugar, but I've not tested yet.  Sound is not
modular in the build I have here, and so I don't know a way to convince
the kernel not to instantiate the sound interface on real hardware.

> That's why I'm inquiring, just trying to get a feel for what is left.

Lots, look through trac.  On the other hand, a stable release does
exist, which seems quite adequate.  I would imagine that what is there
now makes for a great collection that can be cherry-picked by a
deployment team.

> If one wants to develop - what are the options for getting hardware
> outside of North America?

The developers program.  Works great.  I'm in Australia, and hardware
got to me fine.

> Will the emulation "Builds" be improved?

If we stop giving away hardware, yes.  ;-)
And if problems are reported and bubble to the top.

> Id like to see an option where we have ready to go Bochs/VMWare/VPC
> whatever images for people to see. I think this would go a long
> way.... I'll even volunteer to help.

Please do.  Test the builds as they appear, detect problems, search for
them in trac, add new ticket if not found.

What seems to have happened is we get someone energetic about emulation
build problem reporting, they become useful to the project, we send them
hardware, they stop mentioning emulation ... now I wonder why?  ;-)

Emulation is potentially very useful for a deployment team doing
in-country work.

-- 
James Cameron    mailto:quozl at us.netrek.org     http://quozl.netrek.org/