Bill Clementson's Blog

VanLUG OLPC XO Meeting

Monday, March 10, 2008

The Vancouver Linux User Group (VanLUG) March meeting will be an "OLPC XO-1 presentation". In addition to looking at the OLPC XO laptop, there will be a number of similar small Linux laptops to compare to the XO.

Full details are on the VanLUG site; however, I'll reproduce the meeting summary here:

Topic: "OLPC XO-1 presentation"
Date: Monday, March 17th
Time: 7:30pm - 9:00pm
Venue: BCIT (Burnaby), Bldg SE6, Telus Theatre
Summary: The March 17th VanLUG meeting will be a presentation on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO-1.

Revolutionary in its quest to bring the benefits of computing technology to the developing world, the OLPC project and it's XO-1 hardware have received a lot of attention over the past several years.

Now that the XO-1 is shipping, a number of VanLUG members have purchased laptops. This will be your opportunity to see if the finished product stacks up to the hype and how Linux and other F/OSS projects have contributed.

The presentation will include:

• OLPC vs XO-1 (organization vs computer)
• OLPC Mission
• XO: Design Goals
  • Hardware specs
  • Software (Sugar GUI, Activities)
  • *** demonstration *** (sharing, networking,...)
  • XFCE alternative GUI
  • *** demonstration ***
• Personal impressions (pros & cons)
• Legacy (feud with Intel, keyboard patent, delayed shipments, XP on XO)
• Competition (Asus EEE, Intel Classmate)
• Conclusion

VanLUG members Otto-Matthias and Chris Brand will be presenting along with Bill Clementson of the Vancouver OLPC XO user group.

If you have an XO-1 please bring it to the meeting so that you can participate in the mesh network and show off your new toy.

VanLUG meetings are free and open to all. Please pass along this invitation to anyone you know who may be interested in learning more about Linux and/or Open Source.