Eerste OLPC op Curacao

Het One Laptop Per Child Project is een project om te zorgen dat elk kind (in de derde wereld) beschikt over een eigen laptop.

Op de site www.laptop.org vind je alle informatie over dit project, dat door de VN gesteund wordt. De missie:

To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.

De laptop is een erg klein en robuust ding, gemaakt voor kinderhanden, en er is software geïnstalleerd voor tekstverwerking, rekenen, programmeren, muziek maken, foto's en video's maken (er zit een camera in, een microfoon en speakers.)

Er zit standaard wireless op zodat je ze kan aansluiten op het
schoolnetwerk maar er zit ook een MESH netwerk op, zodat je zonder
netwerk, toch de andere laptops kan zien. Zet je een groepje laptops bij elkaar dan zijn ze dus zonder verdere investeringen in staat elkaar te zien en kunnen de kinderen chatten, foto's uitwisselen, en wat niet meer. Er zit zelfs software op om te leren programmeren, iets wat nu in elke school nog ontbreekt!

Suares & Co heeft er 1 gekocht, deze is uitgeleend aan een aantal ICT-coördinatoren van het VPCO en het RKCS, en op Bonaire gedemonstreerd. Suares & Co heeft ook een korte presentatie gegeven aan het ICT-platform op 15 mei 2008.

De OLPC wordt door Stimul-IT overgenomen en kan op afspraak bezichtigd worden. Telefoonnummer Stimul-IT: 738 62 99 (Monique Raphaela). Er is een artikel op de voorpagina van de Amigoe verschenen (26 mei 2008).

Ebox 1.4 and HP Color LaserJet 2600N

• Follow instructions here: ubuntuforums.org, except the last step.
  
  
  $ wget -O foo2zjs.tar.gz http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/foo2zjs.tar.gz
  $ tar zxf foo2zjs.tar.gz
  $ cd foo2zjs
  $ make
  $ ./getweb 2600n # Get HP LaserJet 2600n .ICM files
  $ sudo make install
  $ sudo make cups
  
  
  Now go to Ebox -> Printer Sharing -> Add Printer
  And go find the HP -> Color Laserjet 2600N. It will now have a driver (foo2hp). The next page you can select stuff:
  
  "Color Mode" = Color
  "Bits Per Plane" = 2
  "ICM Color Profile" = (something like hpclj2600n-0.icm)
  

Firefox on LTSP as Local Apps (Thin Client, Ubuntu)

• 
  Firefox as Local App on Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04
  
  LTSP: The possibility of running Local Apps on the Thin Client is part of Ubuntu since Jaunty (9.04). The most obvious choice is to run Firefox (inlcuding Adobe Flash) locally. As you might have experienced video (f.e. on YouTube or Vimeo) can be very slow on the thin client because the content gets decoded on the server and video is sent uncompressed over the network to the thin client. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of Flash. (Rant: Flash should be open sourced, it's a PITA on Ubuntu 64bit!)
  
  On the Edubuntu website, it's advertised that it's very easy to install firefox as a local app. Well. It's kind of easy. See www.edubuntu.com/Download. In fact, my lts.conf looks like this:
  
  
  $ cat /var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/i386/lts.conf
  # Global defaults for all clients
  # if you refer to the local server, just use the
  # "server" keyword as value
  # see lts_parameters.txt for valid values
  ################
  [default]
  X_COLOR_DEPTH=16
  LOCALDEV=True
  SOUND=True
  NBD_SWAP=True
  SYSLOG_HOST=server
  #XKBLAYOUT=de
  LDM_DEBUG=no
  LDM_DIRECTX=True
  LOCAL_APPS_MENU=True
  DNS_SERVER=10.0.0.1
  #SCREEN_02 = shell
  SCREEN_07 = ldm
  
  
  By the way, I tried 'locate lts_parameters.txt' but found nothing.
  alkisg on #ltsp says:
  zcat /usr/share/doc/ltsp-server/lts-parameters.txt.gz | less
  
  So it's with a dash not and underscore. Someone should file a bug. Why not you!?
  
  What I had to do to get firefox and flash installed:
  
  
  sudo -s
  chroot /opt/ltsp/i386
  apt-get install firefox flashplugin-installer
  exit
  ltsp-update-image
  exit
  
  
  Firefox but no internet...
  Firefox worked right away as local app. Not very fast (my thin client is not a powerhorse, that's what thin clients supposed to be: lean and mean, cheap, low RAM, etc. Be advised that Firefox and Flash need RAM and CPU and everything. No Pentium I with 64 MB that normally works fine as a thin client!
  
  Okay, now how about some browsing? Sorry, you need to do a lot of things to make that possible. After some searching and with help of the kind people in #ltsp, I found this: wiki.ubuntu.com/ThinClientHowtoNAT
  
  Dazzling uh?
  
  My network has a firewall/squid proxy. The proxy is on 10.0.0.1:3128. My LTSP server is on 10.0.0.2 on the LAN side and on the Thin Client side it's 192.168.0.1. The thin clients are in the range 192.168.0.200 - 250, it's a seperate LAN (standard setup by the way).
  
  Now can't I skip the whole ipforward and NAT? The NAT stuff is not that complicated but it opens a whole range of possibilities to get from the Thin Client LAN to the other LAN.
  
  Maybe redir (a TCP redirector) will help? It's helped me many times, when migrating servers for example. Say your old POP3 server is on 1.2.3.4 and the new on on 1.2.3.5. After you changed your DNS there will be a period of time (up to 4 days with our local braindead provider) before all the DNS changes have propagated. Simply install redir on the old server and redirect all TCP traffic for port 110 to the new server. No one will notice any service outage, great!!!
  
  So here's what I did:
  
  
  sudo apt-get install redir
  sudo redir --laddr=192.168.0.1 --lport=3128 --cport=3128 --caddr=10.0.0.1 --bind_addres=10.0.0.2
  
  
  Here is an explanation of the options to redir:
  
  --laddr: the local address of the LTSP server on the Thin Client side
  --lport: arbitrary, but 3128 is the standard.
  --cport: it's the port my squid proxy runs on by default
  --caddr: the address of the firewall/proxy on the LAN
  --bind_addr: the address of the LTSP server on the LAN side.
  
  Be sure to make sure to ensure that redir is not quitting on you, it does that often, build some stuff around it that it will always restart.
  
  The funny thing is that,after you told firefox to use 192.168.0.1:3128 as a http proxy, it also doesn't moan about not being able to resolve DNS. (See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ltsp/+bug/348305 and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/LocalAppsResolvConf)
  
  Of course it only works for http on port 80, but there are probably ways to make it work for https and other ports too. Is https really proxy-able? Hmm. Anyway, for simple requirements this is sufficient, and maybe Ubuntu 9.10 will have the NAT stuff all automated, that would be nice then this post will be absolutely obsolete. That'd be nice :-)
  
  Oh, flash does give me sound but no image, but I guess that's some other problem.
  
  See also https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ThinClientProxyRedirect