OLPC-related projects keep their source code in a variety of places.

http://dev.laptop.org/~mncharity/olpc-repo-watch/ is an exploratory attempt to create a combined list of OLPC-related project repositories.

Thus making it easier to see people’s work.

The list includes all projects on dev.laptop.org and src.sugarlabs.org, and projects found searching for “olpc” on gitorious.org, code.google.com, sourceforge.com, and github.com.  Also activity pages on wiki.laptop.org.

I would appreciate feedback on whether you find it useful.

Vision for a numeracy activity (Activity is OLPC-jargon for a software program) is my rough sketch of a numerate educational desktop.

A new version of xo-qemu is available.

http://dev.laptop.org/~mncharity/olpc_xo_qemu/
http://dev.laptop.org/~mncharity/olpc_xo_qemu/README.txt

xo-qemu is a script for downloading, managing, and running OLPC QEMU disk images on linux.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)<http://wiki.laptop.org/> project creates a linux distribution for its laptop. It is released as numbered builds (ie, “versions”), in several streams (eg, separate streams for developers and end users). These builds are available in several forms, one of which is a disk image that can be run on the QEMU virtual machine. This script makes it easier to obtain, manage, alter, and run these disk images on linux. It provides virtual, slightly broken, emulated OLPC XO laptops.

olpc_xo_qemu-0.006 is a bugfix release.
It should work with all the builds 0.005 did, plus current joyrides.

This is alpha quality software. It is unclear how many people, if any, are using it. Please drop me a note if you are. Thanks.

Mitchell

My thanks to Eduardo Silva (edsiper) and his XO_Monitor for the FUSE filesystem mounting.

Example use:
$ xo-qemu –report
$ xo-qemu –new-user
$ mkdir builds laptops
$ xo-qemu –get-build joyride latest builds/
$ xo-qemu –make-laptop laptops/one `xo-qemu –get-build joyride latest builds/ |tail -1`
$ laptops/one/xo on
$ laptops/one/xo xephyr on
$ laptops/one/xo xephyr off
$ laptops/one/xo ssh ls -a
$ laptops/one/xo do import -window root screenshot.png
$ laptops/one/xo mount
$ ls -a laptops/one/root laptops/one/olpc
$ laptops/one/xo mount -u
$ xo-qemu –help

Hi, I’m Mitchell N Charity, an ex-MIT software engineer.

This blog is envisioned as a few posts a month on a range of topics, including One Laptop Per Child, programming languages (especially Perl 6 and Ruby), and science education (especially rough quantitative reasoning).

This is my first public blog, and an experiment. Does blogging help fill the gaps between wikis, web sites, and mailing lists? Do I enjoy and keep it active? Does it find readers and generate discussion?

The name “Bootstrap Exercises” comes from computing. “Bootstrapping” is creating a not-yet-existant system, using (often) more limited existant systems as tools. Often the effort and pain of creation would be much less if the new system could be fully used as tool in its own creation. Eg, “if someone had ever done this before, it would be much easy for us to do now”. While you obviously can’t fully use something until it exists, often parts of it can be used earlier. The challenge and art of a bootstrap, is to incrementally orchestrate parts and placeholders and jigs, and tools partially working and variously broken, to craft a minimally costly development path to the desired system. And it’s a process which occurs with remarkable similarity in many fields of engineering, education, and society. Civilization is a bootstrap exercise. It’s a process usually frustrating, often tragic and joyful. And one dear to my heart. Thus the blog name.