Comments on: Negroponte: Slimmer Linux needed for $100 laptop

The head of the One Laptop Per Child organization says he'll use Linux, but it needs to go on a diet.

[wakizaki]

Who about Damn Small Linux

Only 50 mb, It fits on a CD business card or a flash disk and can be installed :)

[nicmart]

Silicon Snake Oil

Virtually any country with cars on its streets gives a better
education to its kids than the one American kids receive. Kids in
other countries do better than Americans without the aid of
computers, but by studying and reading. Instead of foisting the
technology that helps to make U.S. kids fat, ignorant, and lazy,
why not take the computers out of the hands of American
children and get them reading, writing, and doing math again.
Instead of the technofetishist Negroponte, we would do better to
listen to aspects of what Clifford Stoll wrote in Silicon Snake Oil.

The first question to ask is this: What educational or intellectual
improvements have been yielded by the wide availability of
computers to American schoolkids? None that show up in
standardized testing.

[OLPC]

fully agreed

slam those kids a few breadboards and transistors to play; and this serves much better education.

[Captain_Spock]

I think that Clifford Stoll and you may...

... be highly mistaken about "What educational or intellectual improvements have been yielded by the wide availability of computers to American schoolkids? None"... I can tell you man, as one who has attended technical schools in three countries around the world, when the schools laptop program first started here in the the US it was a "wake up-call" for me as a parent (and a tech junkie) of a child who has participated in this program. After all, what do you "think" has gotten Bill Gates where he is? He did whatever he had to do hands-on. DUH! ;-)

[Chung Leong]

Another good book

MR. Negroponte's is precisely the sort of utopian activists critized in "The White Man's Burden : Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good" by William Easterly.

A brief description from Amazon:

Easterly, an NYU economics professor and a former research economist at the World Bank, brazenly contends that the West has failed, and continues to fail, to enact its ill-formed, utopian aid plans because, like the colonialists of old, it assumes it knows what is best for everyone. Existing aid strategies, Easterly argues, provide neither accountability nor feedback. Without accountability for failures, he says, broken economic systems are never fixed. And without feedback from the poor who need the aid, no one in charge really understands exactly what trouble spots need fixing. True victories against poverty, he demonstrates, are most often achieved through indigenous, ground-level planning.

[OLPC]

He or his lab should do the shrinking

Com'on, Ponte. Why talk to Linux geeks? If you have the vision, why ask others to do the hard and hands-dirty coding work? You should sit and work by a computer (in your Media lab) instead of a podium.

Your media lab does not seem to work out anything meaningful.

[Steve Bryan]

Update

Negroponte is no longer the Chairman of the Media Lab. He is Chairman Emeritus. He left that position some time ago to make it possible to devote more of his time to One Laptop per Child. In other words he is actually doing something rather than taking ill-informed potshots at others.

[peteinpdx]

Sun 3/50, SunOS 4MB RAM/40MB Disk

1986 -- 15MHz 68020, 4 MB RAM (MB not GB), No disk, 1152x900 B/W,
Full GUI, NFS to a server. Add 40 MB disk and you had a pretty complete Unix with GUI, etc. Primitive by todays standards, but
it all could be done in 4 MB RAM, 40 MB disk.
And not all that slow running the GUI either.

[OLPC]

The pedal is another sign of child labor:)

EOM

[OLPC]

May all ya children pedal our Ponte to thy glory

Amen

[Captain_Spock]

Geez! My $50 - D_O_E_T_S_C_H....

... that I bought at a "close-out" must make most of you look as though you are in a dream world... Come on now folks, give the world a decent laptop like the D_O_E_T_S_C_H (upgraded) now that we have the LENOVOs... and perhaps, with a free OS/2 from Microsoft and IBM! Geez, install a stable OS/2 Operating System in the gizmos and let them run instances of Windows or Linux as is needed from time to time!

Kids Porgramming

http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com

[StargateFan]

Hate The Tablet IDea

I agree the message is great and the motive behind it is great. The laptop being $100 is superb. However I feel with Microsoft pushing the issue with the tablet pc and the actual device not succeeding in the world, I don't believe we should give it to children who otherwise do not have access to a computer functionality that is hopefully going to disappear. I love the idea it's great!!!! But I have a certain hatred towards tablet pc hardware and do not believe it is going to make it, and giving it to children in the US and the rest of the world for that fact would be setting them back. Only of course if I am right about the tablet market dying out.

[javierbds]

Go to the real sources (not to retellings)

If we stay out of legalesse (and if you are a tech person you should ...):
Buying a rip-off and fixing it to run on PC does not make it less of a rip-off.
You should search for information from the guy that made QDOS (Quick and Dirty OS). He took the CP/M API and implemented some part of it ...
Does that make DOS less of a rip-off than Linux?
The objective of Linux is a free OS for x86 ...
The objective of MSDOS was to provide a basic OS for PCs so that the project (the PC) would go on, as Digital was not interested in working with IBM (this is still debatable) ...

[javierbds]

So DOS is no ripoff but LINUX is (MONEY TALKS)

Buying/cleaning/tweaking/embelishing a rippoff does not make it less of a ripoff ...

Paterson designed QDOS with the same API and user commands as CP/M. His first version, marketed as 86-DOS, was finished very quickly but lacked many CP/M features. He did not clone CP/M's file system, but used the FAT filesystem supported by some versions of Microsoft BASIC.

[javierbds]

Getting riped off and being unable to do anything

From wikipedia

When IBM released DOS, it sold for $60 USD, and was much more attractively priced than the $240 CP/M. Digital Research considered suing Microsoft, since DOS replicated nearly all of the CP/M system calls, program structure, and user interface (not the filesystem), but decided against it. Digital Research realized that they would have to also sue IBM, and decided that they did not have the resources to sue a company of that size, and would not likely win

[Captain_Spock]

"since DOS replicated....

... nearly all of the CP/M system calls, program structure, and user interface (not the filesystem)....; one can understand the logical limitations that were extended to even perhaps "Vista" as far as the "system calls" scenarios, computer languages (R_E_X_X) et cetera, et ceters are concerned; and apparently because the engineers at Redmond have not yet sat down with the "International Economic Analysts" then these apparent limitations will continue to persist. Maybe, the "Nicholas Negroponte's" idea for an appropriate OS will see the "Buying/cleaning/tweaking/embelishing" of (or, built from the ground up) an able-to-do-the-job "OS/2 Warp" which, from all appearances has been abandoned by both Microsoft and IBM! Duh.

[sanguma]

Minix, anyone?

perhaps we should look at Minix 3, with Nano-X and Ftlk as the GUI. And of course, Linux isn't the only Posix-compliant OS around - there are quite a few, ones like Thix, and there's SanOS with Posix and Win32 compliance.

[sanguma]

Minix, anybody?

Ever heard of minix? Minix 3 with Nano-X and the Fltk as the GUI, would fit very satisfactorily in that memory space. That's not forgetting Thix either, or SanOS, which has Posix and Win32 APIs.

[Russ Nelson]

Familiar LInux

Somebody needs to wave an iPAQ running Familiar Linux in front of Negroponte's face. Somebody who used to be working on that project. Somebody with a two-letter username.

Seriously, we already have all the functionality he's looking for. http://familiar.handhelds.org/

[spoonyfork]

meet people where they're at

My father tells a story back in the 80's when a chairty group he belonged sent a dozen tractors to a group of farmers in eastern europe. After less than one season the tractors sat idle while the farmers went back to using manual plows. There was no one among the farmers who knew how to maintain or repair the modern tractors.

[msgale]

Teachers?

The idea that basic learning is possible without teachers is ludicrous, otherwise do we demand pre-school, and programs like "Headstart"

[leebert]

Least bloated Linux - Vector

Negroponte needs to try "Vector Linux." It's a Slackware variant and can run like a rocket on older, slower machines (even 486s) but yet has all the latest GUI features (KDE eye candy) that seem to make other Linux distros such slow dogs.

I experimented last summer with 30 or 40 different distros and the slackware variants were consistently the fastest.

/lee

[Nocturnex]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmyou lose

if linux wanted to be a unix clone it would have done that been sued for patent infringement and been gone long ago, go act like you know what your talking about where good little kiddies play like www.barbie.com, or if your a smart little kiddie change the /. css to OMG Ponies then youll be right at home <3

as for not feeding trolls, dont feed em, have fun with em, if there an angry little bugger beat em at their own game so they can cry to their ogreish moms(i wonder what a troll mom looks like, little billy troll should be scaaared)

[Nocturnex]

samrt kid

you retard linux is a command line os, god make sure your balls drop befoer you come here, kids who dont know what there talking about arent welcome

[Zeno77]

Amiga 2000 Operating System Needed

ONE: John Dvorack of PC Magizine has rightly harped on the virtues of The Amiga 2000 Operasting System as the smallest great system over the years. Now Negropointe should try it. Negropointe should open communications with Old Hand Computer Journalist John Devorack, to see what he may have heardo of or know.
TWO: Replace Abominable Hand Crank. With what? Well a modern small Stanley Steamer motor using dead vegetation for fuel, that burnt compoletely and did not add to Asian Brown Cloud. Also the Old Time US Sugar Cane Mill powered by a mule that went round and round could be a model for powering a home AC Motor that used a Forty-Eight Volt version of the US automible alternator, or even 12 volt alternators out of an automotive junk yard. If they don't have a small Burro, then how about a dog or a goat or some other hardy small animal that is easy to keep? Then there is the Telsa Coil. And Sterling Cycle.
THIRD: The means of internet connection is unclear, so how about a super wireless internet using solar powered Blimps at One Hundred thousand Feet, or super satilite wireless.
FOURTH: The poorest nations and peoples need some sort of an economy that can produce exports. Sure,rich nations can give cheap enough computers, but if they are economicaly useless and the people don't have some sort of export economy, then this New Cheap Computer Technology and associated learning will be seen as useless. These poor regions need small guage steam powered 19th Century stsyle Rail Roads, using dead vegatation as fuel.