| XP for OLPC is almost here |
Feb. 07, 2008
 Blog -- It's not like anyone has asked for Windows XP to run on the Linux-powered One Laptop Per Child XO laptop, but Microsoft is getting ready to deliver it to us anyway.
In an eWEEK news story by Peter Galli, Orlando Ayala, senior vice president of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential Group, said Microsoft is conducting field trials to make sure that a modified XP Service Pack 2 will run well on the XO. According to Ayala, "We are encouraged by what we have seen of Windows on the XO machine so far, and field trials started at the end of January involving about 200 XO machines running a customized version of Windows XP SP2 with a reduced footprint image."
Of course, as Ayala admits, getting XP and Microsoft Office isn't easy. In an interesting slip, Ayala admitted that at least 2GB of memory is required for Windows and Office. The official minimum requirement for Microsoft Office Basic 2007 is 256MB and XP SP2's minimum daily memory requirement is also 245MB. The XO, of course, has no hard drive and only 1GB of built-in memory.
Still, porting XP to the OLPC is the result of a détente between Microsoft and the OLPC project. Nicholas Negroponte announced at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) that the two were working together on a dual-boot XO. While Microsoft has steered clear of that particular plan, the two are working together now.
Of course, not everyone is happy about the Microsoft camel putting its nose in the OLPC tent. Bruce Perens, an open-source leader of long standing, argued that Microsoft is trying to grab control of the OLPC to ensure that Windows, and not Linux, will be what the next generation of computer users will learn to accept as the one desktop standard.
The inexpensive OLPC has long faced opposition from industry giants like Intel and, before this recent deal, Microsoft. Even when it has been sold, it's faced unexpected opposition. For example, in Nigeria the Nigerian company LANCOR has sued the OLPC's nonprofit leadership for 20 million dollars on the grounds that the OLPC keyboard violates LANCOR's keyboard patent.
It's a great pity that a project that began as an effort to put inexpensive computing power into the hands of even the poorest of the poor, not to mention showing how open-source software lent itself so well to such a plan, has been hijacked into delays and multibillion-dollar corporate politics.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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