Special Knoppix LiveCD For OLPC XO Laptops

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OLPC (One Laptops Per Child) had released XO laptops to general public using "Buy 2 Get 1" G1G1: One laptop will be sent to the buyer and one laptop will be sent to a child in a poor developing country.

Unfortunately this AMD Geode LX laptop can't run ordinary Knoppix LiveCD:

1. There is no standard BIOS.
2. There is no VGA/CGA/EGA video mode.
3. Non standard booting procedure.
4. Nobody knows if XO can be booted from external USB CD-ROM drive.
5. Ordinary/off-the-shelf Linux distro cannot run on the XO laptops. Linux run on XO laptops with modified / patched kernel.

Is it possible to create a special Knoppix LiveCD for XO laptops?
Who can do this project?
Thank you.

[Harry Kuhman]

Is it possible to create a special Knoppix LiveCD for XO laptops?
Who can do this project?.

Since no one else seems to want to respond, let me give my opinions:

Sure, it could be done. But I have to wonder if it shoud be done and is worth doing. Will not the OLPC computers already have Linux? Would there be much to be gained by building a Live Cd for a computer which has Linux installed?

And, in my ignorance of the OLPC, does it even have a CD drive? If it does I certainly wonder if that was the best thing to design into a supposedly low end notebook for third world environments. If you need to use an external usb cd drive, it would be a lot of work that could only help a very small percentage of olpc users. and if the system can't natively boot an external usb device (no shock there since many PCs can't either), it would require boot software installed on the olpc.

As to who would do it, that's a very good querstion. This thing has already inflated from a supposed $100 target price to near $200. And if someone in the USA wants one, they are being told it will cost them over twice the stated price of the system, with the difference being used to supposedly supply a second system to someone else. That puts the US price of a OLPC system actually higher than you can already buy a new low-end notebook for, even including the Microsoft tax. And if you factor out the Microsoft tax, the crippled OLC system may actually end up costing very close to where low end PC based laptops will drop to in price within the next year.

It strikes me as absurd to tell anyone in the developed world that if they want to be able to develope free software for the OLPC they first have to buy two and give the second one away. The group behind this thing should be doing as much as they can to get these things into the hands of developers, not telling them that if they want one they have to pay for two and trust the group to find a good home for the second one.

You may think that you detected a lot of disappointment and cynasism in my post about the direction the OLPC project has taken. If that's what you think then you would be correct.

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I hope someone can continue the development of Oralux LiveCD for blind and low vision users. This LiveCD is based on Knoppix.

http://oralux.org/livecd.php

I hope someday Oralux will be ported to OLPC XO laptops.

> Machine for Developers.

Developers may get an XO laptops hardware emulator or a free loan of the XO laptops:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developers_program