OLPC thread

Nope. I think that was their mistake too. "Computers for African kids" is a great fundraiser and a terrible practical idea. So they should have just made money selling demo units to rich white people, sent a token number of OLPCs to Africa and used the rest of the money for traditional educational programs. It's a waste either way but a nobler waste.

I was fascinated with the B.A.T.M.A.N. mesh network.

>>61848903
Ask RMS

>>61849025
They did sell them to the public. I had one.

>>61849503
>had
What happened?

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>Fedora
>Sugar DE

>>61849554
not him but my then-infant sister ripped some of the keycaps off and because it was a membrane keyboard and a repair was expensive because there were no replacement parts anywhere nearby it wasn't worth it. T'was cool while I still had it though.

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>450 MHz
You can't even use it as a shitpost machine.

>>61849554
Mine got stolen because I left it somewhere.

>>61848903
You can get a used X220 with better hardware for similar price.

>>61850164
You could totally use that as a shitposting machine, it just depends where you're shitposting.

>>61849025
computers for any students never works

>>61850378
You're right.
Is gopher still running?

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>>61848903
no, they're literally good for nothing

>>61850344
or get an X200 and make it LIBRE

you could browse 4chan on it. just was incredibly slow.

>>61850403
I was thinking more IRC and Usenet (both still reasonably active)

>>61850411
they had the innovative LCD screen which you turn black and white and read directly in the sun.

>>61850429
>Usenet
Don't you have to pay to use that?

>>61850457
Not for discussion servers.

>>61850429
Could you connect to an African IRC server with this mesh network? Could someone explain that portion of the device

What do OLPCs go for nowadays in the West?

Getting one and putting a modern SBC would be kinda nice.

>>61850581
the software used the mesh for colearning or w/e and the teachers could connect to the internet and push it to the mesh. there was one home screen where you could see everyone else's olpc in the mesh and chat together.

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>>61850164
>Geode

Jesus Christ. You're better off buying an old acer zg5

>>61850581
It uses the standard wifi mesh networking protocol.
So the range is very limited.

Although the OLPC was designed to have a greater wifi range than normal laptops. Didn't find any actual tests though just wild claims ranging 2x normal range to 5 miles.

Why don't they distribute something like a raspberry pi of sorts or a pocket chip, the kids could get more functionality, the shitposting potential would increase greatly along with the actual function of the laptop. Is there any good reason to have these be x86? Arm64 seems fine

>>61850899
third world nations wouldn't buy them unless they could run windows. there is actually a windows xp version that can run on this.

>>61850899
Isn't this what the RPi0 is for?

>>61850926
Oh yeah, wasn't a problem with getting these laptops into eqypt was because it didn't have windows? Couldn't someone just copy the UI of 7, couldn't that work?

>>61851000
no, they want the kids to learn office suite.

>>61850926
Couldn't someone recognize more functionality? Libre office is quite close to their windows counterparts, with a raspberry pi you could get so much more in terms of programs and security? The current iterations of linux are lightyears beyond xp.

>>61851013
Couldn't they just get them onto google docs? I'd imagine that google could get on board with expanding their marketshare like facebook has

>>61850926
This is probably a stupid question, but why windows is needed?
And can't microsoft do charity and release Win ME/XP with those?

>>61848903
Did those even existed at all. I felt like it was all vaporware.

>>61851045
people tried to educate them on free software but they didn't understand or disagreed.

>>61851166
to run office like all the successful first world nations use. some people think MS was trying to intentionally sabotage the project.

>>61850629
50 bucks on eBay? I wouldn't get one for more, too useless

>>61851070
That thing was sold before Google Docs was a real competitor to Office

>>61851248
And is office still relevant in 2017?
After the emergence of the "cloud" many have shifted to google Docs/Sheets.

>>61850581
Think how early Nintendo DS's worked with pictochat and local games. The network expands with more machines on it.
On my DS I was able to talk to people 5 blocks away on just the NDS connection because of people in between that were also in the chat room.
Same shit, larger scale

How do you replicate the mesh network?

>>61853907
You could play around with Byzantium, a Linux distro made specifically for ad-hoc wireless mesh networking.

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>>61850329
At least it made it's way to a needy African in the end...

>>61851997
Yes, Office accounts for more of MS' revenue than anything else. Most people are using Office 365