Microsoft Ports Windows to the OLPC

[davy]

this makes me sad.

up till a few seconds ago, olpc was one of the few things on this planet that made me believe that humanity in the human race actually existed. but to tell the truth: deep inside, i was expecting some company to act in preventing these machines from getting to thier intended users, i just didn't know who it would be.

this proves that microsoft is taking olpc seriously, which means they'll do everything in thier power to prevent people from using free software.

anti-monopoly laws in these countries are really outdated and software monopolies are completely un-heard-of. so, i would imagine that microsoft will re-use its old strategy of bullying new software makers from making thier software linux/unix compatible; thus seriously hindering anyone from considering using linux or unix.

 

[davy]

Here's something to cheer you up, davy!...

thank you

i'm actually kinda surprise that gnome can run on those things. my 700 MHz celeron server chokes a little when i try to use gnome (or kde). those laptops must be pretty processor-beefy little things.

 

[Corny]

guess why MS gives away student licenses for MS stuff for free?
you should get used to it. it should become your preferred software, without knowing the alternatives. later in your job, you don't know anything different and are ok to pay shitloads of money for MS licenses.
it's the same here. the kids learn to use computers in school? but they use LINUX? later if the country is developing good, they might continue using linux. so we better try to equip them with windows, right from start.

 

[mike_n_herrin]

i'm like davy this makes me sad. i wish MS would have kept their grubby little hands off OLPC.

i hope to GOD MIT tells MS no they can't have a OLPC or that no they wont use windows even if MS got it to work on one.

 

[blondish]

Yes I remember hearing about this in 2006....so this update is new for me though. I guess it's not going to be the default install though, is it?

 

[davy]

...You shouldn't be having performance problems with Linux on a 700 MHz Celeron. We may need to look into that. How much RAM you got in that thing?

actually, this machine was originally a 400MHz pentium II era celeron. i've overclocked it to 700 MHz and it's got 128 megs of ram. all the electronics stores around here are still charging almost $100 for ram for this thing.

not to mention it's my file/print/dhcp server and running seti@home in the background... so it's gonna choke a little with gnome, but runs awesome with a different window manager.

that was a really cute vid.

 

[davy]

well... if you really wanna get off topic

*Gasp!* That's some serious overclocking! Did you modify the speed of the front side bus?

actually, i've been able to get this machine all the way up to 800 MHz, but it was pretty unstable (got some really wierd numbers while testing it). 700 seemed fast enough and is completely stable... i just stuck on a bigger fan and, voila, it's alive. mwuahahahah!!

Older styles of RAM actually get more expensive when you buy the chips new, because they are less popular. What kind of RAM are you using?

good 'ole fashion pc100 sdram in two modules. several times, i've actually broken down and bought new modules, but every time i test them, i kept finding bad bits, so i just gave up on upgrading. now i just give it a gig of swap space and set hdparm to some mighty fast settings.

I wouldn't think seti uses that much overhead, but I really have no experience with it.

now that you have to use boinc, it sure does eat up resources... if it were up and running i'de show you a process table, but i'm in the process of moving, so it's under wraps right now.

What window manager do you use that does not choke? Xfce?

fluxbox.... for now. i've also used icewm, twm and enlightenment and they worked really nice too. xfce runs okay too, but i'm not really fond of it -- it feels a little clumsy to use.

What video card are you using? If you modified the bus speed, the video card may be having trouble keeping up.

onboard intel 810. i only changed the clock multiplier, so there are no issues there.

Also, what version of Linux are you using? (I've heard that Gentoo runs particularly fast on older hardware, but I haven't tried it yet.)

centos 4.4 running the 2.6.9 kernel.

so long as she doesn't run gnome or kde, she works awesomely.

WITH gnome or kde she only works okay.