[OLPC-SF] Fwd: [IAEP] Announce: OLPC software strategy.

[Carol Ruth Silver]

2010 July 10 Saturday

Dear Sameer and all:

Although I am a non-techie, I believe that I read in the forwarded 
release from OLPC that the existing XO 1.0 laptops will be able to be 
updated to the same software as will be on the XO 1.5.  If so, great, 
and thank you to the team of volunteers, (including the wonderful Bernie 
Innocenti, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the OLPC Realness 
Summit in Maho.)

Now my question:  Will the software be downloadable?  And for those of 
us veterans of G1G1 for whom that would still be a bit of a challenge, 
could OLPC-SF provide at its next meeting after the release an 
opportunity for bringing in one's XO and having it updated with a USB 
stick?

Best regards,

Carol Ruth Silver


On 07/10/10 11:15, Sameer Verma wrote:
> FYI.
> Sameer-- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.Associate Professor, Information SystemsDirector, Campus Business SolutionsSan Francisco State Universityhttp://verma.sfsu.edu/http://opensource.sfsu.edu/http://cbs.sfsu.edu/http://is.sfsu.edu/
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Chris Ball<cjb at laptop.org>Date: Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 3:01 PMSubject: [IAEP] Announce: OLPC software strategy.To: devel at lists.laptop.orgCc: olpc at lists.fedoraproject.org, iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org,sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>
> Hi,
> Now that the 10.1.1 release for XO-1.5 is out, it's a good time totalk about OLPC's software strategy for the future.  We've got a fewannouncements to make:
> XO-1:=====
> OLPC wasn't planning to make a Fedora 11 release of the XO-1 OS, buta group of volunteers including Steven Parrish, Bernie Innocenti,Paraguay Educa and Daniel Drake stepped up and produced Fedora 11 XO-1builds that follow the OLPC 10.1.1 work.  I'm happy to announce thatwe're planning on releasing an OLPC-signed version of that work, andthat this release will happen alongside the next XO-1.5 point releasein the coming weeks.  So, OLPC release 10.1.2 will be available forboth XO-1 and XO-1.5 at the same time, and will contain Sugar 0.84,GNOME 2.26 and Fedora 11.  We think that offering this fullyinteroperable software stack between XO-1 and XO-1.5 laptops willgreatly aid deployments, and we're very thankful to everyone who hasenabled us to be able to turn this XO-1 work into a supported release!
> To prepare for this XO-1 release, we've started working on fixingsome of the remaining bugs in the community F11/XO-1 builds.  Paul Foxrecently solved a problem with suspend/resume and wifi in the F11/XO-1kernel, which was the largest blocker for a supported release.  We'llcontinue to work on the remaining bugs, particularly the ones thatOLPC is uniquely positioned to help with.
> The first development builds for this release will be published laterthis week.
> XO-1.5:=======
> We'll be continuing to work on XO-1.5 improvements, incorporatingfixes to the "Known Problems" section of the 10.1.1 release notes¹into the 10.1.2 release.
> XO-1.75 and beyond:===================
> XO-1.75 software development is underway.  Today we're announcingthat we're planning on using Fedora as the base distribution for theXO-1.75.  This wasn't an obvious decision -- ARM is not a releasearchitecture in Fedora, and so we're committing to help out with thatport.  Our reasons for choosing Fedora even though ARM work is neededwere that we don't want to force our deployments to learn a newdistribution and re-write any customizations they've written, we wantto reuse the packaging work that's already been done in Fedora forOLPC and Sugar packages, and we want to continue our collaborationwith the Fedora community who we're getting to know and work withwell.
> We've started to help with Fedora ARM by adding five new buildmachines (lent to OLPC by Marvell; thanks!) to the Fedora ARM kojibuild farm, and we have Fedora 12 and Sugar 0.86 running on early 1.75development boards.  We'd prefer to use Fedora 13 for the XO-1.75, butit hasn't been built for ARM yet -- if anyone's interested in helpingout with this or other Fedora ARM work, please check out the FedoraARM page on the Fedora Wiki².  We're also interested in hiring ARM andFedora developers to help with this; if you're interested in learningmore, please send an e-mail to jobs-engineering at laptop.org.
> We'll also be continuing to use Open Firmware on the XO-1.75, andMitch Bradley has an ARM port of OFW running on our development boardsalready.
> EC-1.75 open source EC code:============================
> OLPC is proud to announce that the XO-1.75 embedded controller willhave an open codebase (with a small exception, see below).  After muchbehind-the-scenes effort, EnE has agreed to provide us with a publicversion of the KB3930 datasheet and is allowing our new code to bemade public.
> The code is not available yet due to a few chunks of proprietary codethat need to be purged and some other reformatting.  A much moredetailed announcement will be provided once the new code is pushed toa public repository.  The code will be licensed under the GPL with aspecial exception for OLPC use.
> The exception is because EnE has not released the low-level details onthe PS/2 interface in the KB3930, so there will be some code that isnot available -- relative to the codebase this is a very small amountof code.  The GPL licensing exception will allow for linking againstthis closed code.  We're going to investigate ways to move away fromthis code in the future.  (As far as we're aware, this will make theXO-1.75 the first laptop with open embedded controller code!)
> Multi-touch Sugar:==================
> We've begun working on modifications to Sugar to enable touchscreenand multitouch use (the XO-1.75 will have a touchscreen, as willfuture OLPC tablets based on its design), and we'll continue to do so.The first outcome from this work is Sayamindu Dasgupta's port of theMeego Virtual Keyboard³ to Sugar -- you can see a screencast of it inaction here⁴.
> It's an exciting time for software development at OLPC.  Many thanksfor all of your support and efforts!
> - Chris, on behalf of the OLPC Engineering team.
> Footnotes: ¹:  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/10.1.1 ²:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM ³:  http://gitorious.org/fvkbd ⁴:  http://dev.laptop.org/~sayamindu/sugar_vkbd_multi.ogv--Chris Ball<cjb at laptop.org>One Laptop Per Child_______________________________________________IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.orghttp://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep_______________________________________________OLPC-SF mailing listOLPC-SF at lists.laptop.orghttp://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sf
>
>
>    


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