Puppy on "One Laptop Per Child" OLPC?

Using applications, configuring, problems
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BarryK
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#31 Post by BarryK »

rrolsbe,
Have you looked into whether the OLPC boots off an external USB drive? Maybe this has already been discussed, but I'm coming into this subject cold.
The Classmate was a pushover, as it is very conventional, an ordinary BIOS that I was able to configure to recognise external USB pen drive or CD drive.
[url]https://bkhome.org/news/[/url]

raffy
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OFW

#32 Post by raffy »

BlackAdder posted previously about the Open Firm Ware FAQ:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OFW_FAQ

rrolsbe
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Booting from external USB and SD Cards

#33 Post by rrolsbe »

Barry

You may have seen my post in this thread regarding running Debian on the XO. When I first scanned the instructions for doing so, I assumed Debian would be running from the USB stick; however, the USB stick is only being used to store the downloaded tar files that are ultimately transferred into the XO's internal NAND JFFS2 file system. Not sure why Ivan did not gzip the two tar files to reduce the file download time??

From what I have read online, I believe the XO is capable of booting from many external USB sources. The stickler is figuring out how to make it work with the non-standard OFW bios.

With X-Mas, the passing of my Step-Dad and work, I have not had much time to pursue booting other OSes on my XO.

Glad to hear you received your donated XO. I have only read about the new ASUS laptop, but from what I can deduce, the hardware on the XO has some unique features the ASUS doesn't have. The XO also makes a great bookreader for the same cash outlay as a Kindle.

Regards
Ron

PS.. I only use the XO keyboard and mouse pad when I am truly portable. An external keyboard and mouse work great. I have a very small external USB mouse and plan to buy a small folding keyboard. ALSO, load up the Opera Browser ported to the XO you will be glad you did!

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prehistoric
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hacking OLPC

#34 Post by prehistoric »

This article was just slashdoted. http://www.geek.com/feature-hacking-the-xo-laptop/

PlatonicPimp
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#35 Post by PlatonicPimp »

Ubuntu has already been hacked to work on the XO, perhaps reading these or contacting their authors will assist.

http://www.freelikegnu.org/?p=21

Admittedly, I can't follow it myself, so I have no idea if it's useful to you.

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1436.0

If I'm following what's going on there correctly, they've ported the special bits to the kernel, recompiled, and then shared the files so others can download their special modified kernel. Maybe that's all it takes?

And in those instances XO is decidedly booting from the USB. Some people have reported success booting from and SD card as well, but others have reported resounding, drive reformatting failure.
I am running Buddapup 4.00 on an Itronix gobook 1 with an intel 85 processer and 256 MB ram, and an old desktop who's stats I completely don't know. In both cases I boot from CD at all times. I'm desperately trying to get this to work on an OLPC.

Sage
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#36 Post by Sage »

The Hacao story on DWW:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20080121
is worth reading.

jonyo

#37 Post by jonyo »

Thx for the link.

rrolsbe
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I firmly believe Puppy will perform better that Ubuntu on XO

#38 Post by rrolsbe »

I posted this to the following web page discussing running Ubuntu from a USB stick.

http://www.olpcnews.com/software/operat ... aptop.html

Thanks for information on running Ubuntu from a USB/SD device. I have not tried Ubuntu on my XO yet but plan to do so. Since I have not tried it yet, some of my observations and questions might be obvious.

Observations and food for thought for this documented implementation.

After boot, does Ubuntu run entirely or partially from physical RAM? Or is it accessing executables from USB/SD flash? Are the files on the flash compressed? For example with 256MB of RAM, Puppy Linux can load and run entirely from a squash file system resident in physical RAM. Puppy also sets up SWAP in RAM. One of my main concerns using low end compute devices such as the XO is minimizing application launch time. Running entirely from a squash file system resident in RAM is fast but slows down on low end compute devices due to the horsepower required to decompress the executables. My guess is launching executables resident on a fairly fast flash device, whether compress or not, would not be any faster than launching the same executable from a squash file system resident in physical RAM. Looks like some XO application launch time testing might be in order.

Here are some but not all of the variables to consider:

The speed of the USB/SD flash being used.
The speed of the USB/SD interface.
The speed of the physical RAM.
The processor speed.
Whether compression is being use and what type of compression.
What other processes might be using processor resources.
Etc.

I am very excited at the prospect of running Ubuntu from a USB device but, at least from what I know, Puppy should perform better due to it being designed from the ground up to run on low end compute hardware and having the capability to run totally out of 256MB of RAM. I am also aware the the baseline install of Puppy doesn't offer everything Ubuntu offers; however, I am quite happy with what Puppy offers for lower end compute platforms such as the XO.

Here to running as many OSes as possible on the XO!

Thanks for your read time!
Regards
Ron

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BarryK
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#39 Post by BarryK »

None of the information I have read so far really properly describes how to boot any variety of Linux off an external USB stick.
[url]https://bkhome.org/news/[/url]

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BlackAdder
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USB Boot

#40 Post by BlackAdder »

Barry,
I presume you have read this page. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OFW_FAQ
I read it to say that boot from USB should work if you have /boot/vmlinuz and /boot/initrd.img on the USB device. Might initrd.gz need to be changed perhaps?

HTH

Sage
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#41 Post by Sage »

BIOS settings seem to be critical. That brings one huge and immediate problem - 90% of users have never seen a BIOS screen! If they did, it could bring disaster if they change the wrong setting. Worse, there are far too many brain-washed users still buying proprietary boxes instead of doing their own PC assembly. ipso facto, they are stuck with those dreadful truncated Phoenix BIOSes requiring to mount a (W98?!) hard disc to use a utility to open up the hidden settings. Activating those hidden settings can be a risk even for hardened fiddlers.......
Probably it can all be done in Linux? That reduces the field of those that can to a vanishingly small number.

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BarryK
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Re: USB Boot

#42 Post by BarryK »

BlackAdder wrote:Barry,
I presume you have read this page. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OFW_FAQ
I read it to say that boot from USB should work if you have /boot/vmlinuz and /boot/initrd.img on the USB device. Might initrd.gz need to be changed perhaps?

HTH
I tried changing its name to 'initrd.imz' as that was in one of the examples, also tried uncompressed 'initrd.img'. No go.
[url]https://bkhome.org/news/[/url]

PlatonicPimp
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#43 Post by PlatonicPimp »

Barry: Did you get a developer key? Also, I think to boot from the USB stick you have to turn the power on while holding down the "O" key on the game pad in order to initiate an "alternate boot".
I am running Buddapup 4.00 on an Itronix gobook 1 with an intel 85 processer and 256 MB ram, and an old desktop who's stats I completely don't know. In both cases I boot from CD at all times. I'm desperately trying to get this to work on an OLPC.

delphi
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Re: USB Boot

#44 Post by delphi »

Barry,

Maybe this will help:

Dual-boot Ubuntu/SD with Sugar - got it!
( http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?top ... 7#msg13017 )

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BarryK
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Re: USB Boot

#45 Post by BarryK »

delphi wrote:Barry,

Maybe this will help:

Dual-boot Ubuntu/SD with Sugar - got it!
( http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?top ... 7#msg13017 )
Ah ha! That might be it. I was getting that "Loading ramdisk" then it just froze. I'll try this fix.
[url]https://bkhome.org/news/[/url]

delphi
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Re: USB Boot

#46 Post by delphi »

BarryK wrote:I'll try this fix.
Barry,

Hope you can make Puppy work on the XO - that would be fantastic !

Best of luck - from a fellow Sandgroper ;)

Sage
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#47 Post by Sage »

Shame that there was no feedback to questions from BK or raffy on BK's blog. Ominous that AMD has now disbanded and dispersed its Geode design team. VIA has to step into the breach to prevent another walkover for Intel?

delphi
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#48 Post by delphi »

Sage wrote: to prevent another walkover for Intel?
I think Intel will have quite a way to catchup - the Classmate is so far behind the XO's design [1] that it's not even funny - just see the coolling vents (just to mention the most obvious thing) on the Classmate and think about the conditions these laptops are supposed to be designed for...

As it is, the XO's hardware is 'good enough' to run most of the software comfortably - checkout the video showing concurrent multimedia usage using Slackware(?) with FWM desktop[2]...


[1] bunnies:studio, OLPC XO-1
( http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=218 )

[2] olpc-usb-boot
( http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=80m5z49&s=1 )

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iottmco
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Progress...

#49 Post by iottmco »

delphi wrote:
I think Intel will have quite a way to catchup - the Classmate is so far behind the XO's design [1] that it's not even funny - just see the coolling vents (just to mention the most obvious thing) on the Classmate and think about the conditions these laptops are supposed to be designed for...

I think its probably worth noting that Intel started shipping the Classmate in March 2007. Thats almost a year ago. Since then they've deployed 30 proof of concepts worldwide. So I think you can be sure Intel's progressed and learned.

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storms

#50 Post by raffy »

Quote from the OLPC list:
We have painfully discovered the limitations of the mesh and current collaborative software in Mongolia, where the convolution of the number of laptops with bugs #5335 (more mDNS traffic than expected) and #5007 (mesh repeats multicast too much) make the perfect storm, which prevents anybody from using the network. We will continue to improve the mesh performance..

Batteries: .. the batteries are not lasting as long as expected. The extreme cold was the first suspect..
I think this is what happens with a "mass-produce-now-test-later" model. A conservative but more professional R&D model for OLPC should have helped it prepare for these post-launch "storms".

(Speaking of mesh, I work only with two teachers on cellphone "mesh" and I guess I am now short of time for it. Imagine a mesh of 500, such as in Mongolia. :shock: )
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

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