Digital Trends
They call it Sugar on a stick. It’s the collaborative open source software originally developed for One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the hoped-for $100 XO laptop, which actually comes in a $199. And now it’s available for all PCs, and “a great new opportunity to breathe new life into these old machines," Walter Bender, founder of Sugar Labs, told the BBC.
It can be run from a USB drive, giving older PCs a new interface and access to collaborative educational software.
Microsoft Corporation and the non-profit One Laptop Per Child project has announced an agreement that will put Windows XP on the OLPC XO laptop—albeit with a higher price tag attached. OLPC XO’s will still be available with the organization’s Linux-based operating system and education-centric Sugar interface, but versions will also be available with XP, which should make the notebooks easier to sell to governments and educational programs who want to be sure students are acquiring marketable skills. The companies also plan to work together on a version of the XO notebook that can boot into either XP or Sugar, and the OLPC foundation says it plans to work with third parties to port the Sugar interface to Windows.
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has announced that current CFO Charles Kane will be stepping into the roles of President and Chief Operating Officer of the organization as the non-profit looks to put recent snafus and key personnel losses behind then. OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte will stay on board as Chairman, and will focus on fundraising and promoting OLPC to world governments; Kane will assume responsibility for all OLPC operations, as well as negotiating agreements with third parties.
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) effort has reached a major milestone: Shanghai’s Quanta Computer has pushed the first 1,000 XO laptop computers off its assembly line to begin environmental testing and software refinement.
The idea behind the One Laptop Per Child initiative is to improve the educations of children around the world—and especially in developing nations—by putting low-cost, energy-efficient, open-source, network-capable computers in the hands of children and teachers so they can more readily access information and knowledge. The units till be sold to governments to be issued to children on a one-computer-per-child basis. Spearheaded by the MIT Media Lab’s Nicholas Negroponte, the OLPC project has not been without its challenges and setbacks—not to mention skeptical tongue-lashings from the likes of Microsoft’s Bill Gates—but the project continues to move forward.
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