Re: Fedora 10 on XO

[Greg Smith]

Hi Erik, Peter and Chris,

Thanks a lot for the comments and offer of help!

I updated the requirement to explain that the idea is a slimmed down 
version of Fedora which fits on our NAND.

I added a comment about upgrading too.

Here are some comments on the rest of Chris's questions:

* So we'd ship two different distributions on the NAND?
GS - Yes.

* Would they live on different partitions?
GS - Prefer a single partition. I added a requirement to say that 
libraries and files should be hard linked so that any code is used only 
once by both implementations.

* How will we allocate space between them?
GS - The goal is that they (Sugar and "standard" X-Window manager) are 
both just different "views" of the same image. So we don't allocate 
space between them.

* How much extra space on the NAND are we going to use?
GS - Not sure. How much do we need, minimum? It has to be less than 1GB 
- user file space but exact amount still needs definition.

* Will it stop us from being able to hold two SugarOS builds on the NAND
   at the same time after olpc-update, as we do now?
GS - Possibly depending on space needed. I think we would consider 
losing that feature if needed. tbd.

Keep them coming!

FYI for the devel list, I pasted the original e-mail below.

Thanks,

Greg S

Hi All,

I am working on requirements for the next major release of the XO, 9.1.0 
(see: overview at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/9.1.0).

There are two major requirements which would benefit from expert Fedora 
knowledge:
- Rebase to Fedora 10
- Run Fedora applications

The first draft requirements on them are defined here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap#Linux_and_OS

Any comments welcome. Do they make sense? Are they well defined? What 
else do we need to track?

A few other questions (RTFM with URL responses OK):

1 - How big (MBs) are the supported X window managers? If we have to 
choose one or two which should we include?

2 - Is there a Netbook implementation of Fedora? We're going to need a 
bare minimum of default installed applications. Let me know if there are 
suggestions on which to include.

3 - Does Fedora 10 supports 802.11s?

I will do more research on those but if anyone has a quick answer handy 
it will save me time.

Also, send me a note if you're interested in working on either of those 
or anything on our not-yet-prioritized roadmap 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap.

Thanks,

Greg Smith
OLPC Product Manager

Erik Garrison wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 06:01:31PM -0500, Chris Ball wrote:
> > Hi Greg,
> > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap#Linux_and_OS
> > > Any comments welcome. Do they make sense? Are they well defined?
> > > What else do we need to track?
> >
> > FWIW, I think this is the first I've heard of:
> >
> > "Must allow switching between Fedora 10 with a conventional desktop
> >    manager and XO running Sugar, and back. Must/should? allow this on
> >    all XOs shipping with XO release 9.1.0. That is, an XO which ships
> >    with Sugar"
> >
> > Fedora 10 (at least, as shipped on SD for G1G1) doesn't fit on our NAND
> > at the moment, and requires swap, so this one needs to become much more
> > concrete.
>
> This is the case for the official Fedora 10.  It need not be the case
> for an rpm-based system built out of the Fedora 10 repositories.  I am
> currently working on a solution which should comfortably fit into the 1
> GB of NAND FLASH.  Call it a respin.  rpmxo.
>
> Erik

Fedora 10 on XO

[Peter Robinson]

> So we'd ship two different distributions on the NAND?
>
> GS - Yes.

Why are we planning on shipping two distros? Or am I missing
something? As OLPC is essentially based on Fedora and isn't that
divergent (and we're trying to make is less so) would we not be aiming
for two different desktop interfaces that can be switched between
(sort of like being able to switch between KDE and GNOME if you have
them both installed). EG Things like xulrunner are large so why would
we want two copies when we could use one and switch the interface?

If I've missed something and that is the aim, from following some of
the Fedora on XO threads on the various Fedora lists I think XFCE ran
reasonably well and is reasonably lightweight so I'm not sure if
that's an option?

Peter

Fedora 10 on XO

[Martin Dengler]

On Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 06:36:53PM -0500, Greg Smith wrote:
> [Chris] So we'd ship two different distributions on the NAND?
> GS - Yes.

GS: I think you meant "desktop environments", not "distributions".
> Greg S

Martin

Fedora 10 on XO

[Greg Smith]

Hi Martin and Peter,

Sorry got my Linux terminology a little munged there.

I meant that we would ship a Sugar interface and a "standard" Fedora 
X-Window interface (e.g. XFCE) on the same NAND. I should have said 
"desktop environments" as Martin notes.

Thanks for the tips and comments. You can even edit the requirement to 
make it more crystal clear if you think my wording there is confusing. 
I'll see the edits and roll back anything which I think changes the 
fundamental requirement.

Thanks,

Greg S

Martin Dengler wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 06:36:53PM -0500, Greg Smith wrote:
> > [Chris] So we'd ship two different distributions on the NAND?
> > GS - Yes.
>
> GS: I think you meant "desktop environments", not "distributions".
> > Greg S
>
> Martin

Fedora 10 on XO

[Chris Ball]

Hi,
> I meant that we would ship a Sugar interface and a "standard"
> Fedora X-Window interface (e.g. XFCE) on the same NAND. I should
> have said "desktop environments" as Martin notes.

Okay, I see, that sounds good.  If we're comfortable with Xfce, it
sounds like we should resurrect Scott's work from about six months
ago on Xfce-and-Sugar in the "faster" builds.

Thanks,

- Chris.

Fedora 10 on XO

[Mark Bauer]

I second the motion of putting the xfce as an option in the control  
panel.  As these kids with the
machine get older, it gives them an option to continue learning and  
using a machine that will
come closer to matching those in business.

I have been playing with the gentoo xo spin, and it boots from off to  
gnome in 90 seconds.
This is from the SD card.  Running gentoo is harder for me because  
most of my machines are
Fedora based.

Mark

On Dec 4, 2008  Thursday, at 6:44:20:0, Chris Ball wrote:
> Hi,
> > I meant that we would ship a Sugar interface and a "standard"
> > Fedora X-Window interface (e.g. XFCE) on the same NAND. I should
> > have said "desktop environments" as Martin notes.
>
> Okay, I see, that sounds good.  If we're comfortable with Xfce, it
> sounds like we should resurrect Scott's work from about six months
> ago on Xfce-and-Sugar in the "faster" builds.
>
> Thanks,
> Chris.
>
> -- 
> Chris Ball
>
> Fedora-olpc-list mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-olpc-list

Fedora 10 on XO

[Greg Smith]

Hi Chris,

That sounds good! Please call up Dr. Frankenstein and resurrect the 
beast for inspection :-)

Can you also put a link to any description of it (or to the code, 
relevant e-mail threads or whatever is available) in the specifications 
section of the feature?

Thanks,

Greg S

Chris Ball wrote:
> Hi,
> > I meant that we would ship a Sugar interface and a "standard"
> > Fedora X-Window interface (e.g. XFCE) on the same NAND. I should
> > have said "desktop environments" as Martin notes.
>
> Okay, I see, that sounds good.  If we're comfortable with Xfce, it
> sounds like we should resurrect Scott's work from about six months
> ago on Xfce-and-Sugar in the "faster" builds.
>
> Thanks,
> Chris.