Introduction... (and OLPC Fedora spin).

[David Farning]

On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 11:01 -0400, Jim Gettys wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm Jim Gettys, and I worry about much of OLPC's software and how it
> fits together....
> 
> This instant, I've been investigating with Gregdec and Sebastian
> Dziallas the feasibility of a more "conventional" fedora desktop to run
> on the OLPC.

This is an excellent idea.  The is a tremendous amount of development
potential in the operating system part of the OLPC stack.  By being able
to 'set' multiply desktops on top of stack we can better isolate the
problem areas, encourage more widespread engagement in os development,
and give the customer what they want.

This position might seem ironic given my strong support for sugar.  I
would like Sugar to become the desktop of choice in certain educational
setting because it is the best.  Not, because it is the only choice.

> Whether nirvana can be reached isn't
> yet clear; lots of people are very sloppy about dependencies, and some
> essential pieces are currently huge for bad reasons (like all glibc
> locales live in the same file...).

A thought here is to get in touch with the embedded projects like
openembedded, Linux base routers, and mobile devices.  These projects
are getting very good at stripping the unneeded bit from packages.

I can imaging Fedora as a whole benefiting from some ruthless dependency
chopping;)

dfarning