[IAEP] Which cheap 2016 Laptop should be our reference?

[Sam Parkinson]

If we want a reference device, it needs to be as boring as possible.  
Let's not repeat the XO situation.

The issue with XOs now seems to be that they are all special snowflakes 
with their special kernel versions.  This is my understanding of why we 
can't update them to the new versions of upstream software.

Devices with mainline kernel are very good.  I'm sure everybody is 
familiar with this experience; having a random old laptop (XP era, 
older maybe) that can run all the latest distributions,  Supporting my 
software on that laptop is not hard - it is the same as the Fedora on 
every other laptop.

If we choose something with a special snowflake kernel, the support 
burden falls on us to keep the kernel up to date so that we can run new 
Systemd versions for the new Fedora versions.

Thanks,
Sam

On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 10:40 PM, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:
> 
> On Jun 21, 2016 10:41 AM, "Walter Bender" <walter.bender at gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> >
> > soliciting a small donation of hardware from Google as a reference 
> platform.
> 
> Who do we know at google who could help with that?
> 
> Despite google fonts being a client, I don't know anyone there who 
> could help with this :(
> 
> In any case, which laptop they might give us may not be the best to 
> recommend.
> 
> There are 2 obvious candidates to me, the new "olpc laptop" available 
> from olpc inc to USA resident individuals for us$200 plus us$100 
> shipping from china, with other countries shipping fees varying; and 
> the One Education "Infinity" which is us$350 plus shipping from 
> Taiwan/ Australia.
> 
> The olpc unit ships with sugar and its cheaper so seems a better bet 
> given both launched around now.
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