Microsoft is apparently looking to run Windows XP on the $100 laptop, also known as the OLPC project said Nicholas Negroponte, the OLPC chairman. This marks a major shift in the strategy of the product.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, the OLPC project is to develop a low cost laptop (it will be around $140) that can be used in developing countries for education. Up until now, Linux had been the operating system of choice because of both the lower memory usage and open source nature of the applications. Actually, it was an adapted model of Red Hat’s Fedora distribution.
The trouble is, the system requirements for XP demand a minimum of 1.5 Gb of storage space for both the Home and Starter Version. The OLPC has 512 Mb in a flash type configuration. What the OLPC folks had to do was add an SD slot so that more storage could be added and XP could be installed.
What gets me is the fact that when the OLPC project was first launched, Bill Gates criticized the whole concept. He believes that the future of computing lies in mobility. Here are some of his initial comments:
“The last thing you want for a shared-use computer is for it to be something without a disk, and with a tiny little screen,” he said.
“If you are going to have people sharing the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can support the user.”
I wonder what his change of heart was? Could it be that 5 million OLPC laptops have already been ordered? And each of those had Red Hat on them? To me, that means an entire generation, who has never previously used computers, will be brought up using Linux.
I wonder if he finally woke up?
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