Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[rrolsbe]

During the two week window starting Nov 12th, I am considering the purchase of two OLPC laptops "One for me and one to donate". Does anyone know if PuppyOS can be used on these beasts? If so, will it have to run from flash attached via a USB interface or can it be installed to the flash soldered on the OLPC motherboard? The OLPC laptop Linux OS is written mostly in Python and installs and runs from raw flash, IE... uses a JFFS2 file system with "Wearleveling performed in software??" At one time, I know Puppy OS was considered to be used on the OLPC laptop.

www.olpc.com

The technology implemented into the OLPC laptops is fantastic.

Regards
Ron

[raffy]

Puppy runs well on the decTOP, which is the lower speed version of the current OLPC laptop's processor. In fact, the decTOP's processor (GX466) used to be the OLPC processor, until they decided that the "sugar" OS ran too slowly in it, so they upgraded to LX700.
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=19223

[rrolsbe]

Forgot to add this link to my original post.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4285568518538296189

Enjoy
Ron

[BlackAdder]

The OLPC XO-1 runs a modified version of Fedora 7, but it is booted using OpenFirmware (OFW). They previously used LinuxBIOS, but switched to OFW when it became open source. So the boot sequence is not a conventional one in X86 terms. They say that one reason for using OFW is to get a fast boot.
I would have major doubts about being able to get Puppy booted on the machine without quite a bit of effort - unless OFW allows alternative boot such as from USB - ???. The machine does have the ability to re-flash the firmware and load a new image to the flash memory, I don't know how difficult it would be to subvert that process. Pictures of the internals look as though the flash memory module is soldered to the motherboard, so no exchange or upgrade.
Just FYI - the link in the previous post shows a presentation by Ivan Kristic. Ivan was the person who gave Barry K. a very negative response when he suggested that Puppy would give them a head start in terms of a software platform.

[rrolsbe]

Blackadder

Thanks for the FYI. I probably will not buy the OLPC if the bios will not allow booting of PuppyOS via USB attached devices and/or allow network booting. I am sure there is a lot of politics involved with the OLPC initiative and Redhat and Google are surely lobbying to get there name in the limelight.

Thanks Again
Regards
Ron

[Lobster]

There may be politics . . .
but . . .



Kids + Linux + laptops


http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Khairat_Chronicle

[mcewanw]

[muggins]

I'm curious about BlackAdder's point regarding the OpenFirmware boot code. If you can't point it at whatever you want to boot, then it doesn't seem very open to me!

But I thought that one point of OpenFirmware, was that it was a forth interpreter, so that at bootup you could access the interpreter, and get it to boot whatever. But I certainly wouldn't be getting one until I was sure I could boot what I wanted.

[BlackAdder]

There have been several items on the Internet about the OLPC decision to move to Open Firmware(OFW), which was made about a year ago. Interested folks could have a look at the OLPC OFW FAQ (no more acronyms for the moment).
The FAQ says that you should be able to boot from a USB device, but that seems to be an alternative to using the internal flash, and OFW looks for particular files on the device. It may be possible to get Puppy booted from USB by obeying the OFW rules.
You can find the FAQ here.
There is an earlier posting by Jim Gettys of OLPC that discusses the reasoning for adopting OFW and comments about the Open-ness of OFW here.
Writing Forth code might not be for the faint-hearted since it uses Reverse Polish notation and, by definition, can get very close to the machine hardware.

[raffy]

It's very likely that you will be able to boot Puppy on it, see quote below from the OFW FAQ:

[BlackAdder]

Raffy,
I agree that Puppy should/could/may boot and run on the XO-1. But it would be limited in what it could do and would need some coding effort to use some of the XO's fancy features. For instance, the mesh networking support, suspend/resume/standby etc. depend on XO-unique drivers and routines. I also think display style, resolution and orientation may need software control.
Cannot help wondering if Barry's "underdog" trick would work to get some of that stuff active, but never having even seen an XO-1 we can only speculate.
Over on the OLPC lists they are only now close to deciding which build of the OS will go onto the production machines. I wonder if the Give One Get One (G1G1) folks will get their machines by Xmas.

[snakieee]

I am new somewhat new to linux and I recently received a OLPC laptop for x-mas. I have used linux before and have put it one an old computer and an Ipod and now I wish to put it on this OLPC laptop. I think it would be neat to have Puppy linux on the little laptop because face it this is designed ranges 10 and under... not that I am old but still haha

PLEASE make a version that will work on the little computers. I believe the Puppy community will greatly appreciate and enjoy it.

Thank you,
Jake

[raffy]

It's designed for kids, so perhaps mimic one.

When demonstrating the live XO live CD today, I noticed that it can use multiple desktops (activities), but they get shown in the frontpage wheel. When moving the mouse to the borders, the control icons at the borders would show.

Pretty neat design, I should say. Maybe it's the processor horsepower that is needed for the user to enjoy its features.

[rkevans]

The OLPC project encourages 'us' to make it do cool stuff. They're not going to be offended if we start hacking the thing. I think they're even a little pleased to see so many get into the hands of real enthusiasts...

To use the OpenFirmWare for dual-boot requires a developer key. It's an automated process with a short time delay. They give them to everybody that requests one.

The built-in upgrade process allows the owner to install Debian as a dual-boot OS. This seems to be a proof-of-concept to explain how it all works. I've tried booting the thing from a USB stick (fully supported by the h/w, btw) with the Puppy 3.01 files and it doesn't work. Then I tried again with the OLPC stable kernel and it dies trying to mount the SquashFS.

So, I have a copy of Fedora installed on a spare machine and I'm going to patch the OLPC kernel (with all their h/w support patches) with the SquashFS files.

Rick

[mdd]