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Test Drive the OLPC with a LiveCD

olpc.download.redhat.com — Behold! A live CD that boots Sugar, the system that will be included in the One Laptop Per Child project. It's in the beginning stages, but shows off some cool stuff. Works great on my MacBook, just wish they could get wifi working.

Who dugg this? Made popular Apr 9, 2007

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  • steven401, on 10/12/2007, -5/+251) Download ISO file and burn to CD
    2) ???
    3) Profit!!
  • Cytranic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18This is sweet!!

    /pun

  • pijalu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15use latest: http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/sdk/latest/livecd/
  • digitalhippie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7To use this, you need to right click on one of the ISO image links and select "Save Link As..." within FireFox or "Save Target As..." with IE. Wait for it to finish downloading. Then burn it as an ISO image. (Make sure you are burning it as an ISO, or it won't work). If you don't know how to burn an ISO, you can Google it; there are tons of resources out there. Then just take the burned disk and reboot your computer and it should run off the disk. You may have to change your BIOS settings if it is not set to boot from disk on reboot. Hope this helps.

    But to those who have burned it successfully, are you getting any of the buttons to work? I am just getting the OLPC screen and four buttons on the top that don't seem to do anything. I am wondering if this is just to show off its interface and is not really the OLPC OS; more like a mini version to show off. Any comments would be helpful.
  • dlsspy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8That's because whoever put this server up can't figure out how to set up the mime types properly in their web server. It's really annoying. It takes so little effort to get that right, and will save a lot of people from having their web browsers trying to render 200MB ``text'' documents.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Awesome! Downloading now. The servers are fast too.
  • cactus476, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Some people were having trouble downloading the ISO, so...

    http://rapidshare.com/files/25111531/olpc-redhat-stream-sdk-livecd.part1.rar
    http://rapidshare.com/files/25107792/olpc-redhat-stream-sdk-livecd.part2.rar
    http://rapidshare.com/files/25114412/olpc-redhat-stream-sdk-livecd.part3.rar

    OR

    http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GMX6LASK
    http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FEIUC7YH
    http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0VX60ERL
  • Roger, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7How about a screenshot walkthrough?
  • cootetom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@roger
    You can get more info here http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar
  • MattCruikshank, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Why would there be a walkthrough? It's so simple a *child* could do it! </joke>

    I *know* it's for children, and I know it's alpha, but frankly I wish it were better. I don't like the Frames interface they devised. The Paint program I started looks a lot like MSPaint. They're still going with the "start an application (they call it an activity), and then load your files" kind of metaphor, rather than a collection of pictures and documents, etc...

    Plus, they're really, really trying to make these things hackable. Part of me admires that, and part of me thinks that's really, really stupid.
  • bendedavis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Get the other ISO, the one lower down on the page.
  • Greg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You can run it through a virtual environment too.
    http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Virtualized_Sugar
  • fulldecent, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3torrent?
  • SeBBBe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Am I the only one impressed by this interface? They really tried hard to make it simple and I think it's both dead simple and very easy to use. Doesn't take long to get used to. Even Apple could take a page from their book.
  • n3tfury, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3if Damn Small Linux won't work on that PC, then just burn it.

    http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

  • digitalhippie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I assume you are taking about when you put the disk in the computer and the text you are seeing on the screen. If that is what you mean by the "terminal-type" screen. If so, then just let it do its thing and execute. If it works, you will see a black page asking you for a name and a color of theme that you would like to use for you OLPC environment. Hope this helps.
  • schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -8/+10There is also a VMware image, IIRC. You can run Sugar in a box for testing of "sugarised" software that's being ported to the OLPC units. There are other Sugar utilities that encourage development and testing. Here's one that I came across a few days ago (similar to the above, but with introductory text):

    Experimental Sugar SDK LiveCD

    ,----[ Quote ]
    | Right now the iso weighs in at 291Megs which means we have some
    | room to work with in terms of adding applications which would
    | make it easier to develop for the OLPC and the Sugar environment.
    | I would like to know what people think those applications are.
    `----

    http://www.j5live.com/?p=349
  • tropican8, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4no, he's right. When I tried to download it, Firefox attempted to display the .iso as text for me. Only site this seems to happen with -- other .isos download fine.

    "Save link as..." works.
  • alefox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2who still uses VirtualPC anymore?
  • bedouin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmm, unfortunately it didn't work in VirtualPC for Mac. Guess I'll try it on the MacBook later.
  • MattCruikshank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@dbr_onix: my experiences were similar to yours.

    It needs to feel as smooth as an iPod. You pick it up and run with it. The metaphors feel forced to me, in the current version. I really wish I had the time to sit down and try to design something that I think would be better. I'm not sure I could, but I wish I had the time to try.
  • starsky51, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The journal holds all of the files and arranges them by the date they are modified. This should make organising documents and pictures easier than most desktop oses currently do.
    What do you find stupid about making the system more accessible to amateur developers? I'm sure if more distros took this approach, there would be a lot more innovation in the development communities.
  • digitalhippie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I used the "olpc-redhat-stream-sdk-build-1-20070403_1732-livecd.iso" and it seems to work for me. Just try that one and see if it works. When using that one, I didn't see any grub command line. My advice is to try the first try that ISO and see if it works. You may want to try it on a different machine, because I had problems running it on my laptop, but it works just fine on my desktop.
  • TylerLavite, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2is there anyway to install this as the primary OS? i have a really ***** computer that cant run any other versions of linux i have and this would be perfect!
  • cactus476, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11 ISO, had to split it up into 100MB parts.
  • chill392, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1From this address?
    http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/sdk/build1/livecd/olpc-redhat-stream-sdk-build-1-20070403_1732-livecd.iso
  • chill392, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm getting the grub command line, should I download "olpc-redhat-stream-sdk-build-1-20070403_1732-livecd.iso" instead of "olpc-redhat-stream-sdk-livecd.iso"?
  • chill392, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Call me stupid, but I can't figure out what to do after the terminal-type screen comes up. Any suggestions?
  • bendedavis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well the first ISO just brought up a grub command line for me. The second one booted fine in VirtualBox.
  • dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"Why would there be a walkthrough? It's so simple a *child* could do it! "
    I tried the VMWare version of the OLPC OS not long ago - It's fecking difficult to use. I could barely work out how to close applications, and it took a while to work out how to switch between the applications. But, having used most of the "big" GUIs (Windows/OS X/Gnome/KDE/Fluxbox) a lot, I'm used to the general concept. It'd be interesting to see how someone who's rarely used a computer handles it.
    It doesn't seem intuitive at all, with a mouse even trying to click the icons becomes troublesome (Things keep appearing and disappearing as I try and click them). But, again, I tried it on a "normal" computer, not the specific hardware the OS was made for, so it might be easier to use on the real OLPC computer.

    I'd be interested to see a video of one of the intended OLPC-users using the OS, and see how quickly they pick it up.
  • TVarmy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Duggmirror.com for those looking for the links/page.
  • ordminute, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I hope http://shots.linuxquestions.org/?linux_distribution_sm=OLPC isn't a current example of the interface. Icons look partly from Gnome, partly from KDE, partly from somewhere else. The scroll bars look like something I'd expect from an ancient GTK app eek. Also, what's with those old highly aliased yellow text bubbles?

    The initial screen looks great but almost everything crumbles from there. I hope they can put a little more effort into consistency in the UI or else these kids might find themselves quite confused by the overall experience.

    I'll try the LiveCD just to be sure I know what I'm talking about. The above comments might be completely unjustified.
  • moocow1452, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6Am I the only one here, who clicked the link and has no idea what to do from there?
  • chill392, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I got the lowest file on that page with a .iso extension. The only other file lower is the md5 checksum.
  • n8k99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0so looking forward to running this on an ancient Toshiba!
  • StaplesGuy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Wait, are there 3 different .iso's?
  • EricJ2190, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Sweet! I am downloading it now. I can't wait to try it out.
  • TimRogers, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3Someone better call Kevin!
  • bahn92, on 10/12/2007, -12/+2Not sure what sort of walk through would be needed with a live cd.

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