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[mavrothal]

A marine navigation instrument.

So, in conclusion, where I stand is probably somewhat unique, and there is unlikely to be a large community of others using the XO in this way. Questions 1 &2 above are the most challenging for me.

Unique but very interesting

Upgrading the firmware is recommended for ALL XO-1 OSs. q2e45 (the latest for the XO-1) works fine with teapot's Ubuntu.

Regarding the OS, I would think that you need something as robust as possible when in the open seas. To that extend either Teapot's Ubuntu or Fedora 11 - OLPC11.3.1/Dexrtose2 would be  a good choice.
I do not know though if they work with opencpn. It requires libwx >= 2.8 and I'm not sure if it is available for these.
I can tell you the opncpn works on XOpup and I'm sure that will also work in Ubuntu 10.04+ and Fedora14 - OLPC 11.2.0 but I haven't checked.

I'm still waiting Teapot's version for a newer Ubuntu so I never tested the one from your link. I like Fedora14 - OLPC 11.2.0, with the only problem being its size and thus if will be enough space left to install the rest of the programs that you need. But you can run it from an SDcard, though some linux knowledge is required...
Regarding Linux "cheat-sheets" there are few but they are encyclopedia size  

[eden]

Hi Kerry,

That sounds like fun!  

mavrothal's latest version of Puppy Linux for the XO is based on Ubuntu Lucid. (See the thread in this forum.)  You put it on a USB drive or SD card and reboot the XO, so you could potentially have one distribution (like the Fedora base with Sugar and Gnome) on the XO itself and another on the SD or USB.  I've been enjoying Puppy on the XO for a week and so far, so good.

I found a thread in a forum about opencpn on Puppy: http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f134/opencpn-for-puppy-linux-47195.html

Abiword, that comes with Puppy, is a nice word processor that doesn't use too much of the computer's resources.  Midori, also on this version of Puppy, runs pretty fast for web browsing (faster than Firefox).  I've heard that FBReader is good for ebook reading.  (There is even a way to get the Amazon Kindle application running on Linux but it would probably go realllly slow on an XO.)  

You can burn a regular version of Puppy to a CD and reboot your home computer and play with it without installing to see what you think.  See http://puppylinux.org/main/Download%20Latest%20Release.htm

Keir Thomas released a pdf version of his book the Ubuntu Pocket Guide for free: http://ubuntupocketguide.com/index_main.html  There is also a lot of help for Ubuntu users on the Ubuntu forum and for Puppy users on their forum.  There are also many resources for free about Linux.  One pretty entertaining one is http://lowfatlinux.com/

And by the way, if you do try Puppy on the XO, you would need to upgrade your firmware. See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Firmware_q2e45

[Kerry]

Mavrothal & Eden,
Thanks for your spot-on advice. I have ordered the pocketguide. Looked at some stuff on Puppy. Scanned this forum's thread on Puppy and looked at the thread on Opencpn-for-puppy.

I will go ahead and download regular puppy to gain familiarity on my regular PC, then re-flash my XO-1's, and download XOpup.

Your 2 responses have been extremely helpful. If (more likely when) I have followup questions I'll post to XO-puppy thread. Thanks for your help.
      Kerry

[canin]

Yeh...,
but I guess very few of the 60.000+ G1G1 XO-1s are really in any kind  of frequent use, outside deployments, today...

Maybe you can write a font page post entitled "Is anybody still using the G1G1 XO-1s?"

bought the xo on ebay, dont know about 2-3 years ago? they are still rather high prized, and thats because of the same reason i have it.
first, i just like the olpc ideas and concepts.
second, its an interesting machine with some rather uhm...
character like a person, weaknesses and...
third its not like a machine nowadays, that gets ruined in a year.
i like that. im not able to repair things, but i like good quality.

what did it change?
its a laptop for me.
activities are tested when i installed a new version.
then deleted, for mb. rather fast, but in reality i feared the first update 
i used it in work (surfing, wiki, dictionary), i used it when i was ill and in bed, i still use it because its my second machine.
i cant afford a new pc every year, more likely every ten years...
never tested it with children, but my collegues at work left their smart phones etc for a try.
i learned about file structures in linux, i learned about fedora, i learned about compilations, and terminal programmes.
my pc is also a linux machine, but i had ubuntu and changed to fedora.

what else...
at the moment:
its a netbook maybe, i think more stable able and commode to use.
even the buttons on the keyboard are perfect, wished for a keyboard like thaat for my pc.
installed is a fedora 11 gnome, panels and programmes replaced with xfce-programmes. mplayer, ffmpeg, imagemagick, etc.

i hope to get a xo 3, because i know its a good machine, as my xo1 is.

i really say thank you to the people, who enabled that for me and helped me (including you)!

[koopdi]

I've been using it for my chemistry class as an ereader. The teacher wanted us to print out hundreds of pages of lecture notes to bring to class! Using the XO, I can easily find all the documents and search them, etc. I'd like to get it set up as a dedicated VOIP machine at some point. I tried it with skype but for some reason the other party said that the audio quality was really bad. I'm hopeful that there is a way to get good quality audio going. I really like the industrial design too. Even if I weren't a broke college student and could afford better hardware, I would still use my xo just because I like the look and feel of it so much. I expect to get quite a few more years use out of this device yet, being of a similar mindset as mavrothal about using something until it absolutely wears down...you should see my those little things on your feet heheh.
Edit: ZOMG little things on feet 0.o

[GregYohn]

I use Twinkle as my VOIP application via Terminal on the XO. On updated versions of Sugar the Yum install is too big, unless you can do additional things beyond basic skills. Instructions are shown in a previous post in this topic. My Blackberry costs just $.05 more a call to use it as a VOIP device.

[samphilomath]

I've been using it for my chemistry class as an ereader. The teacher wanted us to print out hundreds of pages of lecture notes to bring to class! Using the XO, I can easily find all the documents and search them, etc. I'd like to get it set up as a dedicated VOIP machine at some point. I tried it with skype but for some reason the other party said that the audio quality was really bad. I'm hopeful that there is a way to get good quality audio going. I really like the industrial design too. Even if I weren't a broke college student and could afford better hardware, I would still use my xo just because I like the look and feel of it so much. I expect to get quite a few more years use out of this device yet, being of a similar mindset as mavrothal about using something until it absolutely wears down...you should see my those little things on your feet heheh.
Edit: ZOMG little things on feet 0.o

As for VOIP you could give Google Voice a try