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OLPC's New XO for 90,000 Teens in Uruguay

By Pamela Jones et al.

OLPC has just been awarded an order from Plan Ceibal for 90,000 XO's for teenagers in Uruguay. Yes, there will be a new XO specially for teenagers. Uruguay already has 380,000 of the original XOs for younger children, and now the kids can graduate to one designed for them as they mature.

It's to be a dual boot laptop. Note not triple boot. No Microsoft in this picture at all. GNOME has leaped into the pool to help out. The press release says, "It will feature the learning-focused Sugar user interface together with the Gnome Desktop Environment to provide a dual-boot Linux operating system with office productivity tools." I wish I were a teenager in Uruguay so I could have one. If they do the partner program, I'm in.

It has a larger keyboard, larger keys than the XO for little kids, different colors, and it will come with specialized learning programs for older children. It has a rugged surface still, will be faster than the earlier XO, will use 3 times less electricity than usual laptops, and it can be powered by alternate sources like solar panels. It ships in September. OLPC lives.

You see? Even with Microsoft and Intel in the picture and some tacks strewn on the roadway, you can't kill off a project that's FOSS-supported. The code is out there, volunteers will continue to work on it regardless of what the Big Boys pay for, despite all the nay-saying in the media, even bogo-lawsuits, and in the end, it moves forward if there is a real need for the project. I really commend Sugar for the role it has been playing.

What a lovely story.

Full post as published by Groklaw on June 15, 2010 (boomark / email).