Just thought you'd like to know. BibleDesktop runs just fine on an
OLPC. (see laptop.org for more details on the OLPC)
My impressions of the OLPC? It's cute. I'm certainly not it's target
audience. My fingers are too big for the tiny keyboard. And with the
non-traditional layout of the keyboard, I cannot help hitting the
wrong keys. Generally, two at a time. Also, I am too old for the tiny,
but high resolution screen. The screen is 1280x960 pixels and works
well in daylight with the backlight turned off. However, the screen is
only 7.5" diagonal. That is 214dpi. That means I cannot read 10-12
point font.
When I got the OLPC from my son (who got it as part of the G1G1
program) it was in need of updating to get it to work with my network.
It took a while to actually update it to the latest stable build as it
does not have a wired internet connection and I had to downgrade my
home network's security to connect. Hopefully that is all sorted out.
The laptop is slow at nearly everything, about as slow as my old 486
laptop, which runs Win98. Maybe that is not fair. It's certainly not
empirical. Just an impression.
The OLPC is running Fedora 7 with a python based Desktop/UI called
Sugar. The laptop has very little "disk" with about 640M free.
As such it is straightforward to install Java on it. I don't recommend
that though. There are a couple of problems with installing Sun's
Java. First since it is not fully open yet, it requires developer's
skill to install it. Second, it is redistributable, but only with a
program that uses it. Third Java takes 50M+ of disk space, which is
nearly a tithe of the remaining space. (I'm going to play with it and
maybe, I'll change my mind.)
So, I loaded "Portable BibleDesktop" on a USB stick. (see www.crosswire.org/bd
for details.) This has Java for Windows and Linux on it and can be
used without installing Java to the machine. Also, one can copy it to
the machine and run it locally.
Upon firing it up, I realized that there were issues. The splash
screen was tiny! To make it usable, I went into options, clicked on
Advanced and changed the "Applications Font" to 24 points. Then I
clicked on Bible Display and turned on Font Smoothing and also set the
font to 24 points. Controls such as scroll bars are not scaled,
unfortunately.
The other problem with BibleDesktop is that it is not integrated on
the desktop. So to start it, one has to fire up Terminal, and then
navigate to the shell script on the USB stick to run it. While running
there is copious diagnostic output, never intended for casual viewing.
What's needed is an "Activity" that will run it. If anyone has or can
point out how to write a sample activity along with icons that would
be great.
In His Service,
DM
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