Yet another reason to get angry with Bill...

[Alan McKinnon]

On Saturday 18 March 2006 21:43, Duncan Anderson wrote:

> According to the laptop.org website, the machine will have 128MB
> RAM and have a 500MHz processor. That is more than adequate to run
> a standard Linux kernel. It would be better if the GUI was icewm or
> xfce or fluxbox or wmaker based rather than GNome or KDE, though.

The specs are interesting. 

Hardware: 
http://wiki.laptop.org/wiki/Hardware_specification#First_Generation_System

Software:
http://wiki.laptop.org/wiki/OLPC_software_task_list#OLPC_Fantasy_Software_Teams

The screen is 1110x830 monochrome or 640x480 colour. size 7" diagonal. 
Doesn't sound like much but remember that's standard VGA resolution. 
I think even IceWM is too high-spec'd for this, the best interface 
model is windows-always-maximised (like a PDA), so you lose all the 
excesses of a WM and programming becomes *much* easier - you know you 
have 630 x 470 pixels to work in and it will never change.

> The storage is only half a GB, as well, so the amount of software
> is severely limited.

500M is actually a lot, lately we are used to environments that take 
up 3G just to be compiled. 500M is slightly smaller than a typical 
drive from '98 and look at what we put on them then.

> I don't see why it can't use sysv init, though.

Because sysvinit is way too complex. It was designed for servers where 
services could be switched on and off in any combination, with 
pre-configured runlevels. On this machine, you don't need to switch X 
off, it's always on. Same with sound, same with wireless networking. 
Same with pretty much everything else. All you need is

run-parts /etc/startupdir

The nicest bits On their Wiki, the project specifically mentions that 
engaging the Linux community is crucial to success, and LinuxBIOS is 
the intended bios

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five