Life after 8.2.1 (was Re: Please update etoys in 8.2.1)

[Bert Freudenberg]

(changing subject ...)

On 06.02.2009, at 11:13, david at lang.hm wrote:

> On Fri, 6 Feb 2009, Michael Stone wrote:
>
>>> so after the 8.2.1 release the plan is to just switch to standard  
>>> Linux
>>> distros?
>>
>> Speaking entirely as a volunteer: the answer depends on who you ask.
>
> sorry if I seem like a pest, and I definantly do appriciate the  
> volunteers
> here, but what I am trying to understand here are the plans of the  
> olpc
> orginiztion itself. it's one thing to transition the maintinance of  
> the
> Sugar UI to an outside orginization, it's something very different to
> switch from Sugar the distro (or whatever you want to call it if not
> Sugar) to Fedora with the Sugar UI running in it.
>
> among other things, this would signal the end of the rainbow security
> approach in favor of standard linux (or possibly SElinux) security.
>
> It would end the dual image 'hit a button to boot the last image'  
> approach
> as standard distros don't do that. and probably several other things.
>
> I'm not even saying it's the wrong thing to do. I'm just trying to
> understand what the plan is.
>
> In many ways, switching the XO laptop from using one special distro to
> being able to select which of several different distros you want
> pre-loaded on the machine would be a very good thing. but it is a very
> significant step.


It would seem to me that deployments will get to choose which software  
to install. Competition for that is starting, with various contenders,  
like OLPC's 8.2.x series, Debian's DebXO, Fedora's v. 12, SugarLabs'  
Sugar-on-a-Stick, olpcfriends' community distro (championed by  
mstone), some Redmond company is working on an OS, Luke's XOOS (http://lukego.livejournal.com/tag/xoos 
) is immature but cool, etc.

The various Linux-based approaches seem to be the most promising, in  
particular since they can share improvements easily. OTOH those who do  
not want to get dragged into distro politics might join Michael, and  
produce the best-adapted OS for the XO hardware? I personally like  
that, but we'll see I guess.

And in the end, maybe not being officially endorsed by OLPC is even a  
virtue?

- Bert -