[IAEP] Sugar/OLPC Relations

[Samuel Greenfeld]

Yes it is possible to use external batteries with XOs.  But at what point
will the costs of distributing those batteries along with spare/recycled
parts make the marginal cost of distributing modern, cheap, disposable
computers worth it?

I should probably note that the 2020 deadline originally came from the
end-of-support date for CentOS 6.  It is a pretty common practice in the
software world not to support your software longer than the OS, and CentOS
is/was the closest thing to 14.1.0 which officially has i386 support.

{There are special interest groups for x86 as well as ARM for CentOS 7.
But at least when I was discussing this with Peter a while back there was
some early concern as to their viability.}


On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Caryl Bigenho <cbigenho at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Could a small external battery pak, like we see so many of these days, be
> used to power an XO? You would need a suitable cable.
> Caryl
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jun 3, 2016, at 11:43 PM, Samuel Greenfeld <samuel at greenfeld.org>
> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 12:02 AM, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:
>
>> Sam, I am eager to learn what you personally think the date should be :)
>>
>
> My personal answer (at least in past private discussions) has been to end
> support sometime in 2020.
>
> The logic behind that being:
>
>    - OLPC no longer makes any batteries compatible with the XO-1 (or any
>    unit prior to the XO-4).  By 2020 the existing battery stock for older XOs
>    should be pretty much dead.
>
>    It may be possible to convince Paul Fox or someone to write
>    "compatible" embedded controller firmware which charges multiple types of
>    batteries sub-optimally given the limited EC flash space available.  But
>    that would require the more general availability of replacement batteries.
>
>    - Support for i586 CPUs is starting to leave mainline Linux
>    distributions.  Note Debian's recent announcement about processors
>    supported in Jessie but not Stretch.
>
>    https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2016/05/msg00001.html
>    {The AMD Geode LX in XO-1's is a MediaGX derivative}
>
>    The somewhat odd processor in XO-1s has had a history of throwing
>    illegal instruction errors whenever someone compiled a library incorrectly,
>    or a just-in-time compiler took advantage of an instruction the CPU lacked.
>
>    Other Linux distributions such as RHEL/CentOS have gone 64-bit only.
>
>    - Experiments have been made, but no big push has been made to update
>    XOs beyond Fedora 18, which hit end-of-life in early 2014.  This requires
>    kernel work to fix upstreamed drivers (XO-1 & 1.5) & more kernel work to
>    upstream & port non-upstreamed drivers (XO-1.75 & 4).
>
>    The alternative is to port an older systemd forward; potentially an
>    equally annoying headache.
>
>    - By 2020 one would hope Sugar is targeting the latest & most
>    appropriate platform of the day, and not restricting itself to capabilities
>    invented 15 years ago.
>
>
>
> Fair enough. I've schedule a chat with Leah at OLPC in a couple of weeks,
>> and I'll keep you all posted on what I can find out.
>>
>
> If there is a reason to go to OLPC's Miami office again I don't have an
> issue with that.  I was there in October, and as far as I know I'm still on
> good terms with them.
>
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>
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