OLPC/eepc and FIRST

[neutrino15]

Hello,

As I was browsing around the internet, I found that there are ways to install other distros of Linux on to the Asus EEPc (and even the OLPC). While price is the main attraction of these machines, their tiny size is also a big bonus (especially when you have to lug them to various competitions and events). I was thinking of getting one for myself (or maybe even the team ) but am being cautious.

Does anybody know how well the EEPc performs with an alternate distro of linux installed? Has anybody tried to use this machine with WINE and the c-18 compiler?

Further, has anyone put windows on it? (I couldn't find a conclusive answer online)..

The EEPc seems like such an attractive option to a robotics team. Its tiny, affordable, and well... Powerful for its size!


Thanks-
-Jordan

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by neutrino15

Hello,

As I was browsing around the internet, I found that there are ways to install other distros of Linux on to the Asus EEPc (and even the OLPC). While price is the main attraction of these machines, their tiny size is also a big bonus (especially when you have to lug them to various competitions and events). I was thinking of getting one for myself (or maybe even the team ) but am being cautious.

Does anybody know how well the EEPc performs with an alternate distro of linux installed? Has anybody tried to use this machine with WINE and the c-18 compiler?

Further, has anyone put windows on it? (I couldn't find a conclusive answer online)..

The EEPc seems like such an attractive option to a robotics team. Its tiny, affordable, and well... Powerful for its size!


Thanks-
-Jordan

The OLPC notebook computers are very low spec models. They only have a 433 Mhz processor with 256 Mb of RAM, they rely totally on 1 Gb of internal flash memory and a SD card slot to store everything; there are no hard drives or optical drives in them.

It would be highly unlikely that you'd be able to install anything newer than Windows 95 or 98SE on a laptop with those specs. You might be able to install a "thumb-drive" Linux distro, since that's basically the same specs that you have to work with.

Unfortunately compact laptops have never been cheap. The 13.1" Dell XPS mobile laptops and 13" Apple Macbooks both start at $1099 for about the same specs.

If your team is just looking for a decent laptop for programming at competitions, refurbished business laptops can be cheap and can work well for programming for several years. You might even get lucky and come across a compact Thinkpad or Dell Latitude on sale for less than $300 with decent specs.

[dsmason807]

I've had my eye on the Eee PC myself for the same reasons.

All EeePC models say they are "Windows XP compatible", though they have very low disk space and only moderate memory (both of which XP uses a lot of).

Rumor has it that there is a 10" (display) Eee PC coming out at some point, might be worth waiting for that. Small is nice for carrying, but a 7" screen is a bit tough to work with, to me, and the bigger model will probably have some other improved specs as well -- with a similarly increased price, no doubt, but such it life.

Good luck,
D

[neutrino15]

I just want to say that after a few weeks of the ee being out, people have already installed ubuntu, as well as tinyxp on it.. This makes it almost certainly able to program for FRC. Currently, we use sub 1ghz laptops with ubuntu (and that awesome python script) to program our bots.
One of my team members bought one the other day. He hasn't installed any other OS, but I will post again if he every gets it working with the FRC programs. (I really see no reason at all though why it would not work)..

As for storage, you can easily get a 2gb sd card for under $20.. Or you can use a pen drive...

I say that the ee is a great deal for anybody in first! (SSD = competition roughhousing!)

[moojoe]

A friend of mine got an EEEPc the week it came out, and before he even started it, he came over to my house, and we installed ubuntu 7.10 on it. after a little bit of frustration with the wireless and the screen resolution, we got everything working and the machine runs absolutely beautifully. I can easily see this thing used for in FIRST. I wouldnt imagine the 7" screen would be good for programming, but im not a programmer and really wouldnt know. I would imagine though that this thing would be perfect for scouting, and would be a great tool in the scout's bags.

[shawger]

Originally Posted by olpc website

We are using components from Red Hat's Fedora Core 6 version of the Linux operating system; we are tracking the main kernel fairly closely.

We will support five programming environments on the laptop: (1) Python, from which we have built our user interface and our activity model; (2) Javascript for browser-based scripting; (3) Csound, a programmable music and audio environment; (4) Squeak, a version of Smalltalk embedded into a media-rich authoring environment; and (5) Logo. We will also provide some support for Java and Flash.

Applications will include a web browser built on Xulrunner, the run-time environment used by the Firefox browser; a simple document viewer based upon Evince; the AbiWord wordprocessor, an RSS reader, an email client, chat client, VOIP client; a journal; a multimedia authoring and playback environment; a music composition toolkit, graphics toolkits, games, a shell, and a debugger.

Libraries and plugins used by OLPC include Xul, GTK+, Matchbox, Sugar, Pango, ATK, Cairo, X Window System, Avahi, and gstreamer.

This sounds like quite a capable device to me. Certainly they are running software much more advanced than Windows 95 or 98, as mentioned by a previous commentor. I can imagine these being configured as little cheap scouting computers. There are rumors of these things getting >5 hours battery life. They also include wifi and their own camera.

They could also be configured as programming computers, if somebody is willing to program on a 7.5" screen (although, it does have good resolution).

And the best thing is that the software is all completely open. The limit is literally your imagination.

[Daniel Bathgate]

Remember the robot controller is going to change in 2009, and probably the build tools to go along with it. Something that would be fine for the c18 compiler may or may not be good for whatever FIRST throws at us in the future, so if you're looking for a long term investment for your programming team this might not be the time to do it. Just throwing that out there.

[neutrino15]

Originally Posted by Daniel Bathgate

if you're looking for a long term investment for your programming team this might not be the time to do it. Just throwing that out there.

Well, considering that the EE can run linux AND windows xp, I doubt first will throw anything at us that it can't do. You might have to change the software around, but I suspect that the EE itself would be quite alright.
On the topic of screen size, the 7" screen is a bit small for programming. However, you "could" use it should your main laptop break. I agree in that it is mainly an awesome scouting machine. With a machine like that, you can run firefox (google gears!), openoffice.. If you drop it, it's SSD so it's ok! It's perfect! It also has VGA out.