OLPC goes the full Fedora

Fedora 11 running on an XO-1 laptop.
Source: blog.printf.net Developer Chris Ball has announced that the upcoming OLPC XO-1.5 laptop software release will be based on Fedora 11. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is a non-profit organisation who's mission is to provide children across the world with low cost laptops for self-education.

Unlike previous releases, the developers are planning to use a full Fedora desktop build which will boot into Sugar, the open source learning platform used on the XO laptops, and also give users "the option to switch into the standard GNOME install instead." The option is mainly intended for older students, such as those in high school. The upcoming XO-1.5 machines will feature a new VIA processor, 1GB of RAM and 4GB to 8GB of flash memory, making them more than capable of running both environments at once.

An early sample of the new XO-1.5 motherboard for developers is expected to be available by the end of the month. Several hundred prototypes for software development and testing are expected to start shipping in late August of this year. A final release date for the XO-1.5, however, has yet to be officially announced.

The current Fedora 11 build images for the XO-1 are available to download and images for the XO-1.5 are expected to be available soon.

See also:

• New version of the XO software released, a report from The H.
• OLPC XO-2 may use ARM-based processors, a report from The H.

(crve)