First impression of the OLPC OS
Shortly after reading the note about a VMWare image of the operating system for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), my curiosity got the best of me and I promptly started downloading it into my laptop (roughly 180 MB) and waited for my lunch break to give it a spin.
The bootup process was very quick, even running on VMWare, and within a few seconds I was staring at the desktop.
The concept for the mechanics of the desktop is “interesting” and, in my opinion a bit hard to get used to at first for those of us who have been around computers a bit too much. 
The “frame” around the desktop works as the main menu/panel from where all applications and features can be accessed, hiding when you’re busy doing stuff on the laptop, and appearing whenever the mouse is close enough to the lower edge. Unfortunately, exploring all the buttons and features was extremely painful since the operating system, for some reason, was very slow to react to the mouse/border interaction.
During my exploration, I was able to find an instant messenger, a web browser, a rss reader (above), a drawing/modeling application, and a text editor (below) that I believe to be the new Abiword widget.
Due to the unexplained slow response of the system and being pretty busy at work, I was unable to perform a very thorough test. My initial impression is that the OLPC will be a system very similar to the mobile devices out there. Though it felt awkward to maneuver the mouse through the screen, I believe that this should not be an issue for younger computer users. Above all, I think any kid would be extremely happy to have a system as cool-looking and chock-full of features as the OLPC!
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November 29th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
I think the choppy mouse is just a VMware issue in general. If you managed to install the VMware Tools, the mouse cursor would be rendered on the client, making it no less smooth than your current cursor.
I think the cursor will be perfectly smooth on the actual laptops with real hardware. I have found that my 400MHz machine renders a smoother mouse than one in a virtual OS on my 1.8GHz machine.
December 1st, 2006 at 2:29 pm
On another blog there was a big concern as to why these laptops did not have Microsoft Windows and what harm this would do .
For the life of me I could not understand what the issues and concerns were.
It is all very similar – Windows , Linux and even the Mac.
All they are are operating systems to run computers.
Indeed the origins of the gui’s all went back to the xerox Parc computer.
As well something is better than nothing.
The concern escapes me . http://www.adgerlinux.com
December 2nd, 2006 at 11:26 pm
I too have seen the sites with concerns about the lack of “windows” I won’t go on too much, but the short reason most people seem to forget about this, is cost and flexability.. Even at an insane discount there is still a cost compared to free *nix
.. As far as flexibility what I mean, is that people seem to forget that the machines ( or from waht I have read ) won’t be really bulky at all, I mean even these shots somewhat explain that.. So what would a bloated windows be able to do? This way the company is in control of every little piece it needs in there, and nothing extra.
OK I went on a little too much
December 15th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
I really do not see what all the fuss is about.
The key is get computers and access to the internet to these kids.
People in the first world live in a world of non reality.
Something is better than not being able to go to an inernet cafe for internet.