New page on Puppy and the OLPC project

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mcewanw
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One Laptop Per Child Revisited:

#16 Post by mcewanw »

From the One Laptop Per Child wiki:

"“One laptop per child

Phoenix
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Sugar and Kernel

#17 Post by Phoenix »

I own a XO-1 from the G1G1 project. I would like to share my opinions based on my personal experience.

As noble or not the instance on purity of code from proprietary sources and pedagogy of a new take on computing, the XO-1 in the real world is getting hung by these ideals stuck in vain pride. The journal is a lie. Under the sugar shell is a file system as on any other computer. When you upload files to the net, you need to know this file system. Keeping a sugar coating on the facts is not promoting self guided learning. It is the folly of a parental stance that the children should be distanced from real code. The turtle can not handle more than two variables and two procedures. The TamTam does not have a full scale. In the end the tutorials in English on Youtube have been placed beyond the capacity of the XO-1 as shipped. There should be language software and not a fake avoidance of language, with English still silently expected.

Developers of Puppy Linux, please to not heed the advice of mcewanw. Sugar makes the OX-1 slow, and for the end user unreliable. Sugar will delete a picture that you just took if you do not give enough time and wait for the picture to be considered permanent. Save and open are often missing features of it's implementation. This is not a benefit to any child. The slowness of python as the main programming language wastes energy, harming the environment. Euphoria should be the programming language. http://www.rapideuphoria.com/ Framebuffer UI should be the graphical user interface. http://home.comcast.net/~fbui/

There is much that is wonderful about the XO-1; the camera is readily available; the screen has a good quality image; the build is durable and capable of withstanding earths environment. Yes, the keyboard is small, but it is not a high price to pay at all. What is unacceptable is a result of pride. In order to use the computer for a person not surrounded by other XO-1 users upgrades to Opera, Firefox, a full Abiword are required. Once installed one recognizes the blight caused by the instance of python activities and sugar journalizing. If Puppy can be placed on the XO-1 it would be a savior. I know how pleased I was when I booted up old laptops with Puppy, the speed and sense of security. My files were now safe from the bloat of Microsoft. XO-1 files are not safe from Sugar's journalizing. Any file can be considered too large or not looked at for long enough and deleted by Sugar. XO-1 does not need a Puppy coated in Sugar, XO-1 needs puppy as he is.

Here is a link I found on rebuilding the OLPC kernel. I hope it helps.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Kernel
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Rebuilding_OLPC_kernel
Also some internal config files
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Olpc-utils

I tried to change the olpc.fth as presented here.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Custom_bootloader

Here is what I learned.
Case 1:
Setting
" u:\boot\initrd.gz" to ramdisk
boot u:\boot\vmlinuz root=sda1
having initrd.gz and vmlinuz from puppy linux in the usb drive, which seems to be all that is required by the instruction. Will freeze the XO-1.

Case 2:
Replacing the initrd.gz with the olpcrd.img found in XO-1, will start the boot but choke on a panic kernel not found.

Case 3:
If both the ramdisk and vmlinuz are replaced by the XO-1, version but the root is still set sda1, the boot gets hung when it tries to mount sda1.

Case 4:
\ space after slash
" n:\boot\olpcrd.img" to ramdisk
boot n:\boot\vmlinuz root=mtd0

is all that is needed for a boot from olpc.fth. But what you have is a reduced olpc.fth and not puppy on the xo. Also a little less secure without the back upfeatured in the orginal.

I prefer the smaller font, I can see more of the lines.

I wish you the best of luck. I do look forward to the day that there is a version of Puppy that works on the XO-1.

Here is another link that may be of help.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:XO_startup

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BarryK
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#18 Post by BarryK »

I am now experimenting with the 2.6.27.x kernel, which is "OLPC aware".

I do have a OLPC that has been sitting there for sometime, so I will probably get back to trying Puppy (or Woof) on it soon.
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cb88
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#19 Post by cb88 »

It knows!!!! O.o

run for your lives people! it has viral p2p networking skynet is coming!

it will beat you to death with it's flip up antennae!
Taking Puppy Linux to the limit of perfection. meanwhile try "puppy pfix=duct_tape" kernel parem eater.
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Mac: Platinum Plus, SE/30

quickboot
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OLPC XO-1 running Puppy Linux

#20 Post by quickboot »

Barry and community,

THANK YOU for Puppy! It is wonderful, rapid and practical!

Up until a few weeks ago, my G1G1 (Give one, Get one) XO laptop had been collecting dust. That's when my beloved, 400mHz IBM Thinkpad finally died. With Puppy, this baby would boot in about 40 seconds and it blew the pants off the newest computers (with 3 gHz processors!) with its quick boot time and noticibly faster application launch times.

Yes, I have personally witnessed Puppy being responsible for converting several Microsoft users to Linux.

In theory, Puppy should be even faster on my OLPC XO-1, since its hardware specifications are faster than my IBM Thinkpad's. However so far, I have failed miserably in all my attempts to get Puppy running on my XO-- Despite using the latest version and attempting many of the alternate boot scenarios that Phoenix described.

The last several weeks have been both frustrating and wonderful. The XO laptop gets the most insane amount of attention everywhere I take it, however its 2 minute boot time and slow Sugar interface is practically rather limiting. Even using Debian, or simply XFCE, it is still sluggish.

TODAY, Amazon has just launched the G1G1 program for OLPC (www.amazon.com/xo). With Puppy, I think we have a real opportunity to turn the XO into a truly functional laptop for G1G1 participants and thus help the OLPC program grow with positive visibility.

From my perspective, it is all about speed and practical functionality:
Rapid boot time, flexible wifi management (like wifi-radar), and a lean suite of programs that can: Surf rapid and leanly (like Opera?), AbiWord (or rapid equiv.), gNumeric (or lean spreadsheet equiv.), a lean PDF viewer and preferably a LEAN presentation program that is Office 97 compatible.

I have absolutely no doubt that you guys can make this happen. I'm still figuring out the basic Linux commands. We XO owners just have to provide encouragement and reassurance that we don't expect perfection. We're not expecting full power management or Python functionality. Simply quick boot and business basics will turn the XO into a mean machine!

Thank you!

bodo
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one more plea for olpc puppy

#21 Post by bodo »

Hello,
i would like to say "me too"!

I spent several(20-30) Hours trying to get the OLPC usable. I would love to use it as a document-reader with its excellent screen.
But I could not get Puppy running, and I dont know why, icewm and xfce are to slow.
So now my OLPC (G1G1) is gathering dust too, and now i am using a eee-pc clone with via hardware 4-5 hours runtime(good) and 800x480 screen(miserable).
I would like to beta-test if you have images for the OLPC.
I am a long time debian admin(part of my work), so I usually dont ask beginners Questions.


greetings and thanks for your work,
bodo

tristian
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#22 Post by tristian »

Hi, any news on puppy and olpc ??

raffy
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overtaken

#23 Post by raffy »

OLPC has been overtaken by the eeePC and now other ARM-based netbooks.

There are active discussions here about Asus' eeePC and Acer's Aspire One. Puppy is not yet ported to ARM-based machines.
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

Phoenix
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Re: overtaken

#24 Post by Phoenix »

[quote="raffy"]OLPC has been overtaken by the eeePC and now other ARM-based netbooks.[quote]

Overtaken?

My XO-1 has not changed into an eeePC that my parents own. The XO-1, as I stated has a better screen and is more durable. This thread is about Puppy on the OLPC and that is what I am looking forward to.

My IBM ThinkPad was long "overtaken" at the time I bought it used. Puppy works great on it. I believe the philosophy of puppy does not use the concept of overtaken.

raffy
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open arena

#25 Post by raffy »

I mean "overtaken" in the open arena (among users who want to use another OS for their machine).

No other than Negroponte admitted to this initial mistake in XO1 development (from engadget):
"The XO-1 was really designed as if we were Apple," Nicholas Negroponte says in the interview. "The XO-2 will be designed as if we were Google - we'll want people to copy it. We'll make the constituent parts available. We'll try and get it out there using the exact opposite approach that we did with the XO-1."
That explains why users of G1G1 are effectively prevented from using the machine with other Linux builds.

Hopefully, the XO2 will live up to the new annnouncements. :)
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

tristian
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hmm

#26 Post by tristian »

To bad nobody took the time to get puppy to run on olpc ..probably BarryK lost interest since red hot stole puppy's chanse with the xo . It would have been great to run a fast easy softwhare on my xo 1 (in stead it seats colecting dust ..sugar is unuseable)

Hardwhare olpc is a great mini laptop that offers much more then an eepc and cheaper, It has a better screen , better batery life , an ebook reader posibility , a good inovative wifi but it is ruined by the slow hard to use softwhare . It's a shame, y would of payed for puppy on am xo (i'm shore that not just me) ..microsoft got it and came out with xp for the little laptop (@60$-80$ ) . To bad that Puppy bilders did not take advantage of that (a 10-20$ puppy for xo would have been a real help for olpc comunity and for puppy's development )

raffy
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bios

#27 Post by raffy »

Using the XO1 with another distro involved painful work around the "firmware" BIOS and the use of new kernel (2.6.27 was recommended).

Now that Puppy is experimenting with a 2.6.30 kernel, you could try and get Puppy working on the XO1. There are discussions here about trying to load Puppy on the XO1.
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

quickboot
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#28 Post by quickboot »

bump. Anyone Linux/Puppy savvy able to figure out the challenging OLPC boot puzzle to get Puppy to work on it? Barry?

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mavrothal
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#29 Post by mavrothal »

I used the newer puppy 4.3beta1 with the (olpc-aware) 2.6.29 kernel and a simple olpc.fth in a "boot" folder at the root of the stick

Code: Select all

\ Boot script
\ 
" root=/dev/sda4 rootfstype=fat16 console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 fbcon=font:SUN12x22" to boot-file
" disk:\vmlinuz" to boot-device
" disk:\initrd.gz" to ramdisk
setup-smbios
unfreeze
dcon-unfreeze
visible
boot
For the first time with puppy I saw that actually something is loading the camera and mic lights come on and off (the camera) and then it stops. Unfortunately I did not get off the OFW (the while) screen to get to a console and have a chance to see what's going on.

Then I used the F11-xo1/os5 vmlinuz (with the olpc 2.6.30 kernel) from here http://dev.laptop.org/~smparrish/xo-1/builds/ and all of a sudden I got a console and program loading(!) that stopped at

Code: Select all

Loading drivers needed to access disk drives           done
Searching for Puppy files in computer disk drivers...pp4a-423.sfs not found. Dropping out to initial-ramdisk console...
/bin/sh:can't access tty; job control turned off
The pp4a-423.sfs file is there but somehow not visible. I can only assume that the kernel module needed to recognize the puppy filesystem (sfs) is missing.
The kernel supports cramfs but the squashfs that the sfs files need(?), is missing.

As you can tell from my approach I'm a complete noob and recompiling the kernel is far beyond my limits. I just hope that a more capable person might take it and ride with it or that someone comes up with noob-appropriate instructions.
Just in case I also attache the dmesg output of this failed boot.
Attachments
puppy_dmesg.zip
(5.11 KiB) Downloaded 685 times

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Sit Heel Speak
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#30 Post by Sit Heel Speak »

I do not own an XO1 or whatever...however, am presently at work developing a custom Pup for the Dell Mini-9.

In order to load a Pup on the Mini-9 I had to devise a roundabout procedure using Rudy Puppy. I posted the procedure here. You need to have a nearby computer with a live-CD or already-existing installation of Rudy Puppy (a 2.14 variant). Perhaps other 2.14 Pup(pie)s will also work.

Maybe my procedure will work on other netbooks as well, provided it has a usb port and can boot from usb.

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mavrothal
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#31 Post by mavrothal »

Thanks for the pointer Sit Heel Speak.
I wish things where so simple...
You see besides the lack or proper BIOS in OLPC-XO hardware, they also have components that require specific kernel patches to allow a standard linux to run.

A properly crafted olpc.fth file (if the above is not good enough) can solve the BIOS problem but the kernel is a different story. Even the SugarLabs Fedora11 and Fedora12-based Sugar builds (the standard XO-1 UI) that use the official Fedora kernel, can not run properly on the XO. Patched are pushed *slowly* upstream but I do not know if they ever going to make it all into the official kernel branch.
So if puppy is to ever run on the XO-1 hardware (a perfect fit I might say) has to start with a proper kernel and then see what else is needed.

I do not know if puppy kernel will ever have OLPC patches. It is more likely for OLPC kernel to include puppy required modules. So what I'm hopping for is to get something running on the XO, so a pupplet can be generated, and debugged and then see if the required changes can be incorporated in the "official" OLPC kernel.

There are more than a million XO-1s out there and although most of those are "State owned" and run, they are given to school kids to have and keep with then all the time... Despite its ingenuity the Fedora/python-based Sugar UI (or any standard Linux distro) is really *heavy* on the XO hardware. Puppy linux can give a new level of experience to its young users. Ideally the Sugar UI (that now can be packaged for many distros) could run as an option on the top of puppy and get rejuvenated (speed-wise)

But I'm blubbering... Back to the kernel... Any takers...? pointers?....

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Sit Heel Speak
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#32 Post by Sit Heel Speak »

mavrothal wrote:...components that require specific kernel patches...So if puppy is to ever run on the XO-1 hardware...has to start with a proper kernel...
I understand. I'm developing a program to provide visual comparison across dotconfig's of several distro's, specifically Fedora 11, Ubuntu 9.04, and several Pup(pie)s. Thus I hope to learn what I need to add to the Puppy 2.6.29.6 Aug 22 kernel, to run all the gadgets my client wants to, on the Mini-9.

I could do a similar analysis for the XO-1, if I had the dotconfigs for the kernel(s) which have been patched to run most sweetly (or at least, least awfully) on it. This is the first I've heard of Fedora 12 (didn't know it had advanced beyond 11; 12 isn't supposed to come out until November 3rd, says Wikipedia) --are you referring to a Fedora 11 on which the kernel has been upgraded through version stepping and / or driver patches? If so, I would like a dotconfig for it, if you would be so kind as to attach it. And pointers to the patches. And then perhaps I can better grasp the problem.

Also any list you can point me to, of which CONFIG_ switch in menuconfig goes with which patch, would be helpful.

Is there a particular reason why a 2.6.30 kernel would be superior to a 2.6.29 kernel, on the XO-1?

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mavrothal
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#33 Post by mavrothal »

Sit Heel Speak wrote:I could do a similar analysis for the XO-1, if I had the dotconfigs for the kernel(s) which have been patched to run most sweetly (or at least, least awfully) on it.
As I said kernel hacking is far from my abilities but I think that this mail http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel ... 24939.html has the info you want. You can also look here for kernel rpms http://dev.laptop.org/~dilinger/olpc-2.6.30-xo1/.
Sit Heel Speak wrote:This is the first I've heard of Fedora 12 (didn't know it had advanced beyond 11; 12 isn't supposed to come out until November 3rd, says Wikipedia)
You are right. The F12 are development builds.
Sit Heel Speak wrote:If so, I would like a dotconfig for it, if you would be so kind as to attach it. And pointers to the patches. And then perhaps I can better grasp the problem.

Also any list you can point me to, of which CONFIG_ switch in menuconfig goes with which patch, would be helpful.

Is there a particular reason why a 2.6.30 kernel would be superior to a 2.6.29 kernel, on the XO-1?
I'm not sure I understand what exactly you are asking for. Sorry. If you can tell me where I should be looking for these (eg in my XO?) I could try to find them... And I certainly have no idea if and why 2.6.30 may be superior to 2.6.29. All I know is that is used successfully on OLPC hardware.
Thanks for your help.

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Sit Heel Speak
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#34 Post by Sit Heel Speak »

mavrothal wrote:You can also look here for kernel rpms http://dev.laptop.org/~dilinger/olpc-2.6.30-xo1/...no idea if and why 2.6.30 may be superior to 2.6.29. All I know is that is used successfully on OLPC hardware.
Ah so. Well, if Mr. Saxena is the lead developer, and he says "all development for both XO-1 and XO-1.5 will be done on the olpc-2.6.30 branch of the olpc-2.6 repository" then that means 2.6.30 will be from here on out superior!

Back when I have something practical to contribute.

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mavrothal
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#35 Post by mavrothal »

Sit Heel Speak wrote:
mavrothal wrote:...components that require specific kernel patches...So if puppy is to ever run on the XO-1 hardware...has to start with a proper kernel...
I understand. I'm developing a program to provide visual comparison across dotconfig's of several distro's, specifically Fedora 11, Ubuntu 9.04, and several Pup(pie)s. Thus I hope to learn what I need to add to the Puppy 2.6.29.6 Aug 22 kernel, to run all the gadgets my client wants to, on the Mini-9.
Any progress on that? I'm trying to use olpc-kernel source with squashfs support to rebuild the puppy 4.2.1 kernel and also meet olpc-xo1 requirements/patches (they are both 2.6.25) but the menuconfig is a nightmare...

Alternatively, can anyone point me to a post that describes the minimal puppy kernel configuration, eg without the components that assure compatibility with a wide range of hardware/peripherals/network/video/modems etc. The olpc_config should take care of the hardware compatibility part but what else (other than squashfs) is _mandatory_ for the full puppy experience?
I did look around the forum and BK's pages/blog bun no luck...
Thx

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