Comments on: this is how easy it can be

By: Alejandro

Alejandro — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:42:54 +0000

Uruguay is the first country to buy XO laptops in large scale.
Here in Uruguay, the government plans to buy XO laptop not only for children, but also for school teachers. But for adults, the experience is very bad:
1) The laptop hangs frequently.
2) The operating system do not allow to create directories or copy files to internal memory.
3) The laptop dont recognize USB mouse (needed for adult’s fingers).
4) Also, this version of Linux do not recognize any printer.
5) Internet is unstable. Web pages with Flash hangs laptop.
MP3 files hangs the laptop too.

How our childrens can print his/her job? How about saving files? How the teachers can edit text created in Word in standard PCs?
Why the applications have bad translations , or no translations at all? (Here we speak Spanish).
Why the laptop hangs without an only error message?

By: blizzard

blizzard — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 03:23:54 +0000

I actually agree that the current develop activity is probably too hard for most kids to learn out of the box. But at the same time it’s a far cry from learning makefiles and compilers and whatnot. For programming, which still requires a lot of text and understanding flow control, I’ll take what I can get at this point. Python is better than Java, which in turn is better than C which is better than assembly. It’s just a matter of degrees.

By: Monolith

Monolith — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 23:08:13 +0000

I’m surprised that you’re going ahead with programming with python+gtk and branding it as an entry-level programming “game” for kids. I’m very enthusiastic about the idea of OLPC, and I was having a look at the mockup of the Develop software (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Develop-activity-very-early.png) and it really doesn’t seem like easy enough for kids. Python, though it might seem the best option for today thanks to its bindings to GTK and vast capabilities, is by far more difficult than HTML (which made the Web popular) and doesn’t even come close to being understandable to non-programmers. How is this supposed to be fun? Has anyone made any tests with children as to how they play along with the idea of Python programming? I really admire your creatity with the project, but I think that perhaps the task is over-ambitious. Imagine if Linux had something on par with AppleScript in terms of its simplicity and efficiency in coding.

By: Americo Damasceno

Americo Damasceno — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:14:04 +0000

If you read brasilian portuguese, there are a complete course about the creation of Python activities for the x0, including the use of the SQL database.

Many codes, samples and a simplified kit to install an emulator at a Windows PC for recreation of the exercices.

The address is:

http://www.dmu.com/admin/admin0.html

By: blizzard

blizzard — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:31:44 +0000

At some point I hope we’ll add the view source option.

By: One Laptop Per Child News

One Laptop Per Child News — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 11:21:31 +0000

Meet the OLPC Team Behind the “Sugarized” User Interface

After two days of constant OLPC XO BTest-3 hardware upgrade coverage, thoughts, and impacts, its time to remember the greater vision, the complete One Laptop Per Child program. What better way to remember that this project is about people, not machine…

By: monk.e.boy

monk.e.boy — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 08:43:52 +0000

So, there is a share link on the menu, but no ‘edit source’? Is this going to be added?

monk.e.boy

By: Robin Norwood

Robin Norwood — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 02:34:24 +0000

“So easy, even gdk can do it!” is the slogan. Run with it.