

Installing Ubuntu on the OLPC XO-1: "My XO went from being a novelty toy to a useful tool" - edw519
http://locut.us/blog/2008/05/26/installing-ubunto-on-olpc-xo/

======
rplevy
I could be wrong about this, but I think the mesh capabilities depend on some
of the intricacies of Sugar/Bitfrost and you lose that when running Ubuntu.
Admittedly meshing is not a practical need (I mostly use it for reading books,
but also some mobile programming and web browsing) but it's neat to be able to
see all the other XO users in my neighborhood (actually it seems to extend
pretty far past my immediate neighborhood). I actually like Sugar… (plus I
think the Matchbox WM/ single app on screen is alright), though I really
dislike Journal. I run Emacs in sugar when I work in the shell so I can split
the screen that way, but for the most part Matchbox doesn’t seem annoying. I
also use the real evince instead of the not as good evince-derrived “read”
activity. I have closed source flash instead of gnash, and opera just because
it's quicker to launch and find something that way than to fumble with the
browser activity. Those things combined make the XO a very useful device, and
I get to keep my mesh capabilities and the creatively designed Python Sugar UI
environment.

------
SwellJoe
It's total overkill to install a whole new OS.

The XO shipped with Fedora 7, and it's trivial to switch off of Sugar to
something good (xfce and xmonad are the two I'm tinkering with on mine).

