DebXO 0.6 released!

(adapted from this recent mailing list thread.  this is a sweet build; try it out.)

After waaaaaaaaaaaaaay to long of a delay, I just tagged and built DebXO 0.6 (installation guide).  In some ways, it’s very polished (I’ve actually tested all of the desktops myself), in other ways it has a number of regressions (due to Debian updates breaking things, switching to an almost-stock Linus kernel, etc).  Either way, I wanted to get it out because people keep asking about it, and dropping JFFS2 leads to such a massive improvement.

DebXO is a version of Debian (testing) that is customized for the XO-1 hardware.  The 0.6 release adds initial support for the XO-1.5 hardware; however, XO-1.5 is not officially supported [yet].  I’ll update the official wiki page with instructions for XO-1.5, for the early adopters.

MAJOR CHANGES:

  • Update distribution to Debian Squeeze.  All packages and desktops have been upgraded.  This is pretty major; for example, Sugar is now at 0.88, and Gnome at 2.30(ish).
  • Kernel update.  Switch from the olpc-2.6 tree to Linus’s linux-2.6 tree (based upon 2.6.37-rc4+).  A few pending patches from -next and -mm have been included, but other than that… it’s stock.  The config closely matches the Debian stock kernel config; at a future date, we’ll just switch to a standard Debian 686 kernel.
  • Switch the nand images from using JFFS2 to UBIFS.  This makes an amazing difference in terms of usability.  Over time, JFFS2 filesystems get slower as they fragment, while UBIFS doesn’t appear to.
  • Initial XO-1.5 support. It’s still rough around the edges, but it’s functional (currently xorg.conf and /boot/olpc.fth must be edited).  …
  • Continue reading

Designing a new look for laptop.org

Our new site design, first mentioned earlier this year, is close to fruition. You can now see our alpha site online.

We are working on ways to better link the site, wiki, and blog together, and to aggregate and point to every site in the OLPC community. For now, you can add information about your own projects and websites, and links to them. We will be working on other visualizations of this data, and connecting our map of major deployments with the growing olpcmap network, over the coming month. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

An overview of stories

Caribbean travels

UPDATE: Both made it back, after spending one of their weekends helping clean up after a fall storm. They managed to visit a number of schools and some of the groups that Waveplace and Haiti Partners are working with.

Mr. Holt and Tim Falconer are currently in Haiti, where they will be for the next ten days. Tim has been writing about their eventful travels, with more to come – see the waveplace blog for the illustrated story.

OLPC-SF roundup and thanks!

Last weekend ran on into Monday for many attendees, due to late flights and the enormous hospitality of the Kleiders – June, Alex, Tanya, Isabella and Mike Gehl. Tremendous thanks are due to them and to everyone who made this such a joyous event!

Thanks also to the tireless design work and organization of Mike Lee and Elizabeth Barndollar, program coordination of Sameer Verma, Adam Holt and Hilary Naylor, social media and web support/registration fronts by Elizabeth Krumbach and Grant Bowman, and the local networking and support of Carol Ruth Silver and the SFSU student volunteer team of Alexander Mock, Abhi Pendyal, Brittany Dea, Charles Fang, Christian Pascual, Dan Sanchez, Gerard Enriquez, Hue La, Jay Cai, Lana Seto, Navi Thach , Neeraj Chand, Nina Makalinaw, Paul Mak, Russell Lee, and Simon Pan.

Live documentation of the event was possible thanks to tireless video work, moderation and transcription of Ben Sheldon, Nina Stawski, and others; and gifts and travel were supported by dozens of individuals, attendees (through their registration fees — thank you!) and by OLPC.

And finally, behind the scenes thank you to Yuliana Diestel and Richard Ho at the SFSU Downtown Center for managing logistics and Dean Nancy Hayes of the College of Business at SFSU for hosting us, and to Peter Brantley at the Internet Archive for allowing ten of us to join the excellent Books in Browsers event.

Nicholas on the Colbert Report

Nicholas was on the set of the Colbert Report yesterday taping an interview with Stephen Colbert, which is now online. He reports the interview was tremendous fun, and it shows — this is one of the best interviews about OLPC in months. In the process he and Matt met the Colbert Crew of 80 and a supportive audience. (They had to cut a minute of the interview for time, but robots make a surprise appearance.)

Some Colbert Nation and reddit citizens have already gotten in touch with us to see how they can help raise awareness and engagement. Stephen, thank you for the interest, and the excellent vibe.

Community Summit, Day 2

We have had an incredible 1.5 days thus far at the OLPC San Francisco Community Summit 2010. Mayor Gavin Newsom declared October 23, 2010 as One Laptop per Child Day in San Francisco!

There are some lovely photos online from the events and sessions, thanks to Mike Lee and
TuxWingsGroup.

You can join us online today at 11:30AM and 13:45pm Pacific online with our live ustream video stream, and the notes from all sessions are now online on the wiki schedule.