$100 laptops arrive in India

AP< THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2007 02:26:45 PM>

CAMBRIDGE: The so-called $100 laptops for children may make it to India after all.

Last year, India rebuffed One Laptop Per Child, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spin-off that created rugged little computers for kids in the developing world.

India's education minister was quoted calling the project “pedagogically suspect,” apparently because it demands children be allowed to take the laptops home to maximize exploration.

Being shut out of the world's second-most populous country seemed a defeat for One Laptop Per Child, which has had a tougher sell than it expected. Mass production of roughly $190 laptops is expected to begin soon, but with fewer than the several million computers originally envisioned.

Even after hearing the minister's comments, One Laptop Per Child kept talking to Indian officials, companies and non-governmental agencies. And a pilot test began recently in which 22 children in first through fourth grades in a rural, one-room school in the Indian state of Maharashtra are using the computers.

http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2489269.cms

If you're going to learn, it's best to use something that works.

n/t

Macs just work my arse! overheating, dying a week after the warranty is up, and absolutley ridhidiculas pricing...

you simply must be kidding.

Less troublesome than a Windows...

Either way, whatever's easier for the kids to use. I'd guess in India that they don't have a lot of people handy to help kids with configuration problems, lockups, or virus's....

Linux sounds good too.

and unless its sound engineering or graphic arts you're getting into, windows provides a lot more robust platform.

They will have to update their operating systems once a week, every time there's a "kernel upgrade," and reinstall all their software, just like Linux users do here.

On the plus side for the kids, they'll grow up knowing that bastardly Linux system inside and out, and they'll be able to take over all those American IT jobs involved with running ISP's. Good for them, not for us.

Even I can Install it on my PC these days, and thats saying something.

Every time they upgrade the Linux kernel - and I understand it happens weekly - you have to reinstall it plus all your software. Linux is not an operating system. It is a model train set that you have to continually tinker with.

That's okay for servers, where employed IT people are expected to do that kind of regular maintenance, but for an individual human? One who has a life? Like I say, I pity those Indian kids.

You can download ubuntu, kde or whatever linux operating system, burn it to disk, install it to the hard drive, and you are done. Period. If you want updates, configure an internet connection and you have access to every update applicable to your system, automatic and easier than windows. No reboots, no crashes, no trial software or licensing issues....it just works.

You must reinstall the OS (the "kernel" once a week. And all the software.

There is no such thing as a "stable kernel" except in the Mac operating system, because they decided not to go through the weekly upgrade process that "real" Linux users insist on doing. In other words, they insisted on sanity.

Anything else that uses Linux requires you to tear down the system and rebuild it every week. Otherwise it isn't "real" Linux and the Linux community will banish you.

Maybe you've been banished and you didn't know about it, because they aren't talking to you. You may have been shunned.

regardless of what you might have heard. I have used the Mac OS on a laptop also, and liked it much better than windows. But the Open Office suite I have become very fond of and accustomed to didn't run quite as well on the Mac OS. I converted my Macbook to Ubuntu, Feisty Fawn, and all runs perfectly (except for the native Apple wireless).

The primary advantage in any case is that of cost - a $100 laptop becomes a $500 laptop if you want to have any good selection of commercial apps, but linux delivers the same functionality (or better functionality, I think) for free.

I have gutsy gibbon on two computers, windows on one. I cringe when something or other requires me to use windows - it is such a pain. Ubuntu is a joy, on the other hand - easy, friendly, beautiful, and virtually unbreakable.

There's VM Ware - freeish for Linux, and another one I saw recently that also Emulates windows perfectly (tho a bit slow) that way you only have to run it as needed :)

As far as constant re-installing, that's just MS FUD, typical. What you get on a weekly basis are a little thing called UPDATES! Actually they are made available as needed. but this is about the OLPC NOT one OS over another.

FYI, I'm getting ready to put Gutsy on my PS3.. SQUEEEEEEEEE, I love sony for that, built in multi boot :) NEXT... connecting a Xbox HD-DVD drive to play HD-DVDs on my PS3 JUST BECAUSE it's so WRONG!!!!! :)

So... another important OLPC... who if going to buy one with the Buy one Give one program? *raises hand* I know it's cheezy, but it'll go to a good cause, imho.

for that LINUX ... nothing? You're kidding? You mean there's no such thing as anti-virus for Linux? You mean MS has the most virus enabled OS? No, that can't be. I mean one OS that created a whole industry to protect it?

but one big current bonus of the linux os on these laptops is that there are currently no virus issues. windows user may disbelieve, but "no virus issues" means none. I am far from an expert, but have been told that the architecture of the linux os discourages virus propagation, unlike windows.