OLPC Experience

So I bought myself an XO laptop from One Laptop Per Child organization (hardware specs).

After reading review after review after review telling me that it was not the revolutionary computing paradigm that OLPC was claiming it would be, I was a bit concerned about my purchase through the Get-One-Give-One program.

I found numerous little hacks and additions to this laptop, but my favorite one (so far) is how to add a nested X11 session into the laptop (at hackzine.com). I modified the ideas in the article a little, but essentially, it’s the same as what you’ll find there. Here’s the gist of the article:

Open the terminal activity, log into the root account, and install the Xephyr x11 server and fluxbox

$ su
# yum install xorg-x11-server-Xephyr fluxbox

Next, exit out of the root shell, and create a file in your home directory called .xephyr.xinitrc that launches the window manager of your choice:

# exit
$ echo exec /usr/bin/fluxbox > ~/.xephyr.xinitrc

Now open a text editor (vi is already installed) and edit a file called fluxbox.sh

$ vi fluxbox.sh

Put this line into the file and the save and exit the text editor (:wq in vi)

$ xinit ~/.xephyr.xinitrc -- /usr/bin/Xephyr :1 -ac -screen 1200x900 -dpi 200

Now all you have to do to enjoy your new fluxbox install is type:

$ ./fluxbox.sh

from the terminal activity and voila! you’re using a very lightweight (and quick) windows manager.

From there, things like adding firefox and more.