On Saturday 16 May 2009 01:47:49 am Chris Ball wrote: > We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release > for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we > plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving > users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead. > (This will mostly be useful for older kids in high school.) I would like to put in a word for KDE desktop given our long term mission, focus on kids' education, and need for small form-factor machines. My intention is not to trigger a Gnome-vs-KDE war. I help many remote rural schools in my locality work with computers and my choice of KDE was purely pragmatic. E.g. - KDE has a much wider target than Gnome including an interest group for K-12 education (see edu.kde.org). Why not work together? - KDE is highly customizable by users (no programming required). It is easy for teachers to use a restrictive profiles (themes) for young children and liberal profiles for elder children. - Sugar can be run as a container Plasmoid (see http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/Vocabulary). There is no need to switch desktop sessions. Zooming and resolution independence are two bonuses. - Qt (basic toolkit for KDE) is multiplatform and is available even on mobile form factors. It already comes with support for SVG, OpenGL, multilingual support that can help keep suites like Sugar small and clean. - KDE needs lesser RAM leaving more room for apps. All our systems run on 1.6GHz/256MB RAM. Low base RAM becomes important for swapless systems.
If the decision has already been locked down, please ignore this mail. Subbu _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
