Olpc manual

OLPC ships user-level software primarily produced by external communities. We do also contribute to their development, but our contributions go "upstream" through their community rather than our own. If you're looking to get involved in development of anything that the user sees, you should consult the developer documentation for the upstream project in question.

For example, if you want to develop Sugar or a Sugar activity, see the Sugar developer resources. How will you know if you've succeeded? Of course my secret desire is to have members of the gerbil liberation front teach the kids how to use the laptop, but I suppose that is too insane:.

Contact information, why you'd be good for the job, any specific plans, variants, or details you would personally like to implement and why. Eduardo Silva hoboprimate haatt gmail doot com. I'd be interested in a particular subset of such a How to Manual. It would be an howto oriented to kids, to the final XO owners, giving an overview of the inner software workings of Sugar.

The target audience would be those kids which, by clicking and handling their XOs, have explored as far as they could on their own, and now need some hand-handling for further explorations. This would be the assumption of the book, to begin to peel off the Sugar mask: first through the Developer Console, then through a general overview of the OS, all the way up to developing an activity of their own luckily with Develop which is still in development.

With some preparation, dynamic web services e. An important consideration is the learning curve of the software and how students, teachers and technical supporters will be expected to interact with this system. The XS software provides: reliable collaboration over 30 laptops, web caching, extra content on the server-side, XO backups.

It is very important to plan and budget properly to provide power to each XO-1 laptop. Costs for metered grid, generator and solar power vary greatly by region, and can significantly affect per-laptop total cost of ownership. Since in most schools many laptops will be charging at once, power strips are a necessity. XO-1 power adapters are designed to be used with power strips that have sockets oriented parallel to the length of the strip, e.

Power strips with a perpendicular orientation e. It's also important to know what type of outlets are available in your deployment region and the types of power adapters you are getting with your XO-1 laptops. Converters should be budgeted for. This table shows an estimate of the total wattage required for running laptops, a school server and a Vsat modem. Number of units avg. The total energy required to operate laptops, a school server and Vsat modem over an eight-hour period is Watts for 8 hours, or Watt-hours.

The Deployment Workbook is a spreadsheet that can be used to plan for deployment costs, including the long term costs associated with power. Important considerations: Where will power come from? When and where will students charge their XO-1 laptops?

During their time off from school? Wireless access points should be tested with the XO-1 before large scale purchasing. The XO-1 will only connect to wireless access point channels 1, 6, and Access points should be laid out to maximize classroom coverage and minimize interference between one another.

The school server requires control of that functionality. Important things to consider when planning for school server deployment include: how many school server machines will be needed? What specifications will the machines meet? Where will content for the server come from or how will it be developed? Who will perform server installation and maintenance? Many different computers can act as school servers, it has been tested on desktops, laptops, and commercial servers. Since the XS software is based on Fedora, the server's components must be Fedora supported.

An important consideration is that Internetconnected school servers require two network cards, one for connection to the Internet and another for connecting to the wireless access point or a switch, for multiple access points.

Recommended minimum specifications for the school server's processor, RAM and storage are as follows:. Before installing and configuring the school server, be sure your machine is set up properly.

It should have two network cards and meet the minimum specifications to support the number of laptops it will be hosting. There is a link to the school server on the Browse home page, as well.

The current home page is a broken Moodle login page -- you'll have to create your own index. A customization stick is a USB sticks with a special set of files that prompt the XO-1 to install activity and library bundles during laptop bootup. This method of installation is often used for 1 installing activities and content during a laptop reflash, 2 adding extra bundles before XO-1 distributions and 3 distributing packs of required activities before lessons.

To create a customization stick, you will need customization The contents of customization To use a customization stick, place it in a laptop that is off and turn it on.

The normal boot sequence will be interrupted and display which bundles are being installed. When the laptop turns off, remove the stick from the laptop. To include the signed release on our example stick, for example, we would place the files os