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[K.Mandla]

As something of a side note, I wanted to mention that the Ubuntu "method" on the OLPC wiki worked for me with both Crux Linux and Arch Linux -- the latter somewhat surprising since it usually refuses to run on machines that don't identify themselves as i686.

However, inserting the OLPC kernel, firmware, modules, etc., into a fresh Arch system works fine, and of course a Crux machine can do the same thing too.



Personally I'm not 100 percent satisfied with that method, since it's ignoring some of the key benefits of both Arch and Crux, but it works if you're after, for example, pacman and/or yaourt. I'd prefer a pure Arch system or a pure Crux system tuned just for the OLPC rather than hijacking the OLPC-built software, but I'm willing to live with this in the short term.   

[moocapiean]

That's great!  The more distros the better!  The "Ubuntu method" would probably work with any Linux distro, assuming the distro doesn't check to see if the hardware can support it (it surprises me that it fooled Arch Linux).

If you want to take advantage of the package management system, couldn't you create a local repository for the OLPC packages?  It also sounds like you can edit the compile flags to customize the builds specifically for the OLPC's hardware.  I don't know if you'd want to do all the compiling on the XO, but it could be possible to use another computer for that.

I'm not happy with copying files onto the Ubuntu install from the XO either.  I've been thinking of setting up an Ubuntu install on my computer that I can use to compile programs for my XO (running Ubuntu) to create my own local Ubuntu repository.  I haven't really had the time for this, nor have I felt the need yet, but it's been in the back of my mind for awhile.

...Or did I completely misunderstand what you're not satisfied with?

[K.Mandla]

...Or did I completely misunderstand what you're not satisfied with?

No, I think you've got the right idea. It's just that Arch is a rolling release (maybe you know this already), so there are regular software, driver, etc., updates and so forth, including the kernel and other stuff, and so having them on hand and downloading and installing, but not being able to use them, seems a bit ... redundant.

But mostly it's just because I'm a little bit of a purist, and I'd rather have the sense of accomplishment that came with a 100 percent Crux or Arch system, rather than relying on the core elements from Sugar. It's silly, I know. ... 

[moocapiean]

I know what you mean, I'm a bit of a purist myself, although switching from Gentoo to Ubuntu has relaxed that quite a bit (I have no idea why).  Is it possible to create a local repository that you can update with the latest software source code from OLPC?  I'm more familiar with Gentoo than either CRUX or Arch, but CRUX sounds like Gentoo.  In Gentoo, it's possible to create a local repository and some ebuild scripts to handle the compilation and installation, so I'm wondering if it's possible to do the same in CRUX.

This isn't quite an ideal solution.  It'd be nice if a distro officially supported the XO (other than Fedora+Sugar/Xfce), but I don't know if that'll ever happen.