As a kid, I loved James Bond movies (I still like the old ones), especially the gadgetry. A shoe compartment, a multi-purpose watch, a micro camera. Needless to say, a lot of money has gone into ThinkGeek purchases Imagine my pleasure when I recently had to introduce the OLPC project to someone (potential funding source for a deployment). I pulled out a 8GB microSD card from a secret zipper in my shirt, placed it squarely on the table, and said "We won't be needing the Internet for now. This little piece of technology holds well over 100 albums and hundreds of books that are freely distributable. It also has a web server, a database server, a collaboration server, backup software, and a bunch more. We won't be needing the Internet to get this deployment off the ground".

Recently, I presented at a workshop on telecommunications, open source and mobility at the First Caribbean Regional International Telecommunications Society Conference in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Key points in this workshop were:

• The network's value proposition can be fully realized only if it remains open and unencumbered. 
• Setting up independent, yet interconnected PBXs using Asterisk: small ones with AstLinux, large ones with Trixbox.
• Asterisk and the OLPC project. Setting up local phone networks in villages, schools, communities.

Slides are up at  http://www.slideshare.net/sverma/open-connect-network

55,000 Sugar/GNU/Linux XO machines are being shipped every month to kids all over the world. This is a generation getting ready to break the bonds of digital dependencies and building a commons for themselves on free and open source software and open content and standards. In the meantime, Microsoft announced a pilot study to run Windows XP on these very machines.

 So, let's do a quick comparison:

Sugar is built on top of Fedora 9, the current and cutting edge version of Linux from RedHat, which then in turn creates its commercial platform based on Fedora releases. So, with Sugar, you get fresh code. Windows XP is from 2001. I was much younger then and had no grey hair Even at that, it is some specialized version of XP that you can get only if you are a third worlder. Its called Windows XP UP where UP stands for Unlimited Potential. Unlimited potential for whom? The users or the company? XP is no longer sold in the US, so the revenue er, I mean "potential" has to come from someplace else. 

A new live CD is now available (XO-LiveCD_080812.iso 426.01 MB) at:

 

Bittorrent - http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=0902d803b94822a07b7a5da6193147c10e0c83d8
HTTP - http://www.skolelinux.de/download/XOLiveCD/XO-LiveCD_080812.iso

Fedora 8 is out! Get the ISO files (including torrents) here.

My respect for Fedora has gone up after working with the OLPC project which uses Fedora as its base. I had (of course) lost respect for Red Hat from its "killing the RH9 to RH10 release" days. Anyway, here's are list of things that are new in Fedora 8 as per their release notes:

2.2. New in Fedora

This release includes significant new versions of many key components and technologies. The following sections provide a brief overview of major changes from the last release of Fedora.

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The official Fedora Core 6 live CD is out.

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2006-December/msg00007.html

"After lots of feedback, bug fixing and testing of the beta live CD announced 3 weeks ago, I'm pleased to announce the first official Fedora live CD. This live CD is based on packages from the Fedora Core 6 (code named 'Zod') and Fedora Extras package collections and is 100% free software. At a glance, the live CD features: Linux 2.6.18, GNOME 2.16 desktop environment, GStreamer 0.10 multimedia framework, X.Org 7.1, AIGLX and Compiz for 3D desktop, lots of applications including, but not limited to Beagle (desktop search), F-Spot (photo management), Evolution (email and calendering), Firefox (web browsing), Ekiga (IP telephony)..."

Download via BitTorrent or directly from Red Hat's server: FC-6-i386-livecd-1.iso.