OLPC + Fedora = ?

[Andy Green]

Hi folks -

There doesn't seem to be a place to talk about the RH OLPC project yet.
 I mailed the olpc at redhat.com address last week but didn't hear anything
yet.  It seems that Fedora and the OLPC development effort would have a
lot in common.  I wanted to make some suggestions which are a little
radical but hopefully can make some interesting discussion before things
are set in stone.

My core starting assumption is that the box cannot be made for the price
suggested and that triage will be needed.  Therefore the software must
get ahead of the game by assuming a weaker processor and half the flash.

Please understand though that these are just suggestions for thinking
about, not demands, complaints, etc.


Hardware

Seems hard to believe that with such a low price point, AMD will deliver
optimal pricing and that the target CPU throughput is not excessive with
x86.  Isn't it better for the longer term to only weakly couple the
concept of the cheap laptop to a processor arch?  Isn't it better if
it's more of a virtual specification that, say, random Chinese companies
can compete with each other to provide at the lowest possible price,
without encumbered CPU designs even like Arm?  It's great to tout it
around Large American Corporations, but it would be a big win if the
final specification was buildable by anyone.

 - AMD x86 -> OpenRISC 1200 (Has working GNU toolchain)
http://www.opencores.org/projects.cgi/web/or1k/openrisc_1200

 - ??? expensive patented video --> Opencores VGA/LCD controller
http://www.opencores.org/projects.cgi/web/vga_lcd/overview

 - Sound -> Cheap SPI codec, eg,
http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/tlv320aic23b.html or AC97
interface to external mixer

http://www.opencores.org/projects.cgi/web/ac97/overview


Software

 - Linux 2.6 with hardware-optimized .config

 - glibc -> uclibc http://www.uclibc.org/ or newlib
http://sources.redhat.com/newlib/

 - coreutils + bash + a ton of other stuff -> busybox http://www.busybox.net

 - ssh -> dropbear (http://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/dropbear.html )

 - apache -> lighttpd (http://lighttpd.net )

 - firefox -> Opera?  Used in Nokia 770... thought it was OSS now but
couldn't find link on site.

 - various media players / codecs -> Ogg Vorbis + Theora only

What will the new modular X do faced with linking to something other
than glibc?  What about Gnome?

 - Although I am a KDE man, Gnome really impressed me for the first time
on the Nokia 770.  The KISS vibe actually worked in that context.  The
770 would be a good model for what's needed generally in fact
(http://maemo.org ,
http://maemo.org/platform/docs/maemo_exec_whitepaper.html )

 - Ext3 root filesystem -> JFFS2 NAND root filesystem

 - Grub -> u-boot (http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=65938 ) .. can
pull a bzImage out of JFFS2 directly in <100K


Well I'm sure these ideas and more are already floating around, it would
be cool if these can be dual-purposed into a uber lightweight "Fedora
Beanie" version.  Ultimately a lot of package specfiles will have to
have the configure options revisited anyway...

-Andy
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