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[Todd]

sola, currently the best place to ask technical questions would be the forum thread that Fedora has set up for this purpose:

I also started a support thread on fedoraforums.org:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1112399

I'd like to drive folks to this forum if they have any issues/questions.

I can tell you that it is setup with 256MB swap.

Also, what people have tested here IS NOT the final product which will not even be released until the 25th...and the Fedora developers are moving along at a phenomenal rate, so the information you will get in the Fedora Forum will be much more up-to-date than what we can expect to find here.

Hope this helps,
Todd

[markhadman]

@Todd, thanks for taking the time to reply. This bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=470317 seems to describe the problem. Maybe someone gave you a modified live-iso-to-usb script that works around the problem. Any chance of sharing it?

@Sola, There is a swap file made on your SD card, yes.
Regarding power management, have a look through https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=461806 . This is a list of bugs specific to Fedora 10 on the XO, and should give you some idea of how it's progressing.

[chiefbroom]

Sorry, I'm kinda just jumping in here, but is there a Fedora 10 release now custom made for the XO Laptop?
If so, is there a place to get it and a some reasonably easy instructions for installation?

Thanks!!!

[markhadman]

Sorry, I'm kinda just jumping in here, but is there a Fedora 10 release now custom made for the XO Laptop?
If so, is there a place to get it and a some reasonably easy instructions for installation?

Thanks!!!

No, there isn't a customized Fedora 10 for the XO*. The Fedora 10 base release (live CD version) has been tweaked to some extent to work with the XO.

As it stands, you're going to have a rather sluggish system that takes the best part of a 4 gig SD/USB stick. Customized 'spins' of the live CD will no doubt appear here and there, with (1) an application set more suited to the low-resource environment of the XO, and (2) custom configuration to work around the many remaining bugs (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=461806)

If you want to give Fedora 10 a go, https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/TestPlans/Fedora10_On_XO has the instructions that you need, except as of right now it doesn't reference the official F10 live CD release that you should grab, only the previews/betas. Go to http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora for the iso file. I'm going to give it a go (again) myself over the next week.


* Strcitly, if you look at the list of live CDs in the preview list at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/TestPlans/Fedora10_On_XO, you'll see that there is/WAS a custom spin made (olpc-gnome.iso, or something), way back on 1st Oct. This has most likely been superseded by changes made directly to the base liveCD - I shan't bother with it.

[marce]

Has anyone tried the Fedora 10 on sd from on-disk.com ?

[anna]

Last night I tried the "final" version of the FC10 Live CD installation that OnDisk is supposedly going to ship on their SD cards.

I couldn't get it to boot into a desktop, even after multiple attempts.  X seemed to start, but it just hung.  I managed to switch into a console, but that's about as far as I got with it before I gave up.

[UKXO]

I've had pretty good success with both the Fedora 10 preview using Gnome (a little laggy as expected) and the F10 final XFCE spin set up using the instructions from the link given on the first page of this thread.Having said that I've only got the one SD card for playing around with at the moment so my current Fedora install is soon to be overwritten with teapot's latest Ubuntu release, the main reasons for continued 'shopping around' are that the Fedora set up dictates a 'live' install - updates and installs don't seem to persist - and it's lacking many of the customisations teapot has incorporated (it is a generic release after all not XO specific). I'm thinking about having a go at putting an XO specific Fedora install together if I get some time over the holidays...I think it is in a very decent place for a starting point.

[Mike Lee]

My Fedora 10 on SD Card for the OLPC arrived Friday from On-Disk, and I must say, the out-of-box experience was tortuous. I popped the SD card into a dev-keyed XO and rebooted. There were some instructions on the back of the product card. The initial boot took 11 1/2 minutes. Part way through, an Automatic Login dialog came up to allow verification of selected language and keyboard which were already English/USA. This "automatic login" dialog comes up on every boot. Opening up certain preferences and configuration control panels take a minute or two on average each. Firefox, however, launched pretty fast at 20s. I was on wifi pretty easily using the network control panel .

Power management is completely absent in this SD card release according to bug 46528:

Comment #1 From  Jeremy Katz  2008-10-23 08:51:32 EDT  -------

Making this more generic -- we don't have any of the OLPC power management
support.

This leads to
1) No suspend
2) No poweroff on shutdown
3) No battery status in hal
4) No other power management

With no power management, I had to reboot between test sessions (eating lots of turkey in between). Second and third   boot died with kernel errors. Around the fifth reboot, Nautilus <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiouslee/3066909691/in/set-72157610387480722/'> generated an error [/url] and my desktop icons went away. A couple reboots later, Nautilus came back. Not sure why. Subsequent reboots, quickly clicking on "automatic login" and with Nautilus working settled down to 7m 38s. Just to contrast, Sugar 767 starts up in 1m 37s. Besides the missing power management (no suspend/resume), screen rotation, LCD brightness and sound volume buttons do not work.

In short, this initial SD card product is barely a conversation piece, and not worth the time. In the time I spent just getting to a stable boot as well as waiting for various UI elements to load, I could almost have burned my own SD card.

I really want to like this product, but it seems like it will be quite some weeks before the major problems will be addressed. In my opinion, it is irresponsible to ship this product to first-time XO buyers on via Amazon .

I'm happy to see On-disk present on the boards, but I don't expect that they'll offer a remedy since their terms of service state no responsibility whatsoever for the open source software:

4.3 Limitations to Custom Downloads service. On-Disk.com is not responsible for software, technical support for software, or documentation on using any software obtained from On-Disk.com All inquires as to the nature of any listed software, any problems to your system caused by the software, and information about properly installing or using the software are the responsibility of you, the "end user" and the individual software manufacturers. On-Disk (i) will not download files or programs that are not freely available for download on the Internet.

I also got a replacement from XOexplosion of their Ubuntu SD card, which on first shipment came with a broken network control panel applet. On a couple tries, it runs significantly faster the the Fedora 10 SD. Boot time is 2m 52s. Firefox launches on 8s! The screen rotation, lcd brightness and volume buttons work, but power management is not working. I may post more findings on the Ubuntu SD card later in the week.

In conclusion, both of these products are not suitable for casual users, but perhaps in time, with a lot of testing from the community, we'll have a viable offering. I know that individuals have gotten Ubuntu running well on the XO--Teapot's is a notable example--but the attraction of the SD card products is the time savings in having all the hacks rolled up into a boot-n-use product.

-Mike

[BeckyJ]

In short, this initial SD card product is barely a conversation piece, and not worth the time. In the time I spent just getting to a stable boot as well as waiting for various UI elements to load, I could almost have burned my own SD card.

I really want to like this product, but it seems like it will be quite some weeks before the major problems will be addressed. In my opinion, it is irresponsible to ship this product to first-time XO buyers on via Amazon .

I'm happy to see On-disk present on the boards, but I don't expect that they'll offer a remedy since their terms of service state no responsibility whatsoever for the open source software:

4.3 Limitations to Custom Downloads service. On-Disk.com is not responsible for software, technical support for software, or documentation on using any software obtained from On-Disk.com All inquires as to the nature of any listed software, any problems to your system caused by the software, and information about properly installing or using the software are the responsibility of you, the "end user" and the individual software manufacturers. On-Disk (i) will not download files or programs that are not freely available for download on the Internet.

-Mike

Thanks, Mike.

Clearly, On-Disk.com has got some serious explaining to do to the OLPC community and this Forum, in particular.

[anna]

Thanks for the detailed review, Mike.

Your experience explains why I couldn't get a desktop when I gave the "final" version a try the other night.  I just wasn't patient enough and figured it wasn't going to boot into X after waiting over 5 minutes, which isn't an unreasonable user response.  I can't fathom how the vendor thinks thinks this product is anywhere close to acceptable.

I agree it's irresponsible to ship this.  More worrisome, there's the potential of making OLPC look bad.  Many customers probably won't realize that OLPC didn't have anything to do with this.

[XOpher]

My Fedora 10 SD card came today. I had the developers key, but needed to reinstall it. Plug card in, reboot, Get Sugar! Oh well. Back to the drawing board for On-Disk. This is going to be a major PR nightmare on Amazon. I'm not all that upset as I can tolerate Sugar, but I'd like them to make it right. I'll wait a day or two to see if they respond and offer a fix before I get serious about pursuing a refund.

[XOpher]

OK, I looked away for awhile and it did indeed boot. Now I need to see what I can do with it.
Slow so far...

[XOpher]

I got in and got my feet wet. I see promise but...oh so slow! Also w/o power mgmt this is a no-go for my ham radio / emergency communications needs. Perhaps they will listen to our gripes and see where things can be improved in a 2nd iteration.

I did load a few programs via Yum and they seem to work great (fldigi & gmfsk anyway!)

BTW for any hams, the old sugarized Fldigi is now dead in the new Sugar.

So it goes.

[Mike Lee]

I think I just bought an SD card. It's a nice one.

I don't think we need to pile on Karlie and On-Disk for explanations as a previous post from them made it clear that they just burn the data they are given. They say it was Fedora who approached them with the idea and had the imperative to align the launch of Fedora 10 with G1G1.

There was also mention of a 21-day replacement guarantee, but this is only if there is a defect from the duplication process or shipping. I won't get a replacement card for Fedora's extremely long boot time or lack of power management.

The mental model I have of the small market for ready-to-use alternative OSes for the XO is an hourglass. On top, where most of the sand lies, are the masses of donors who are content with Sugar as is. On the bottom, a small quantity of sand accounts for the power users and open source supporters who don't mind going through umpteen steps and tweaks for hours or days to get a single card working for themselves.

In the narrow of the hourglass, are the few like me who (perhaps in transition to the power users) understand the benefits and don't mind paying for a product that greatly reduces or eliminates the hassle. We'd all like to get some more from the masses through the narrows to the other enlightened side, but the initial challenges are substantial.

I might be proven wrong, but the hourglass tells me there aren't that many people who care about this product. I don't think OLPC or Fedora will be hurt by this marketing tactic.

[Devon]

Very well put, Mike.  I'm in your spot, too, and from my perspective it seems the way forward is to try Teapot's Ubuntu Intrepid version.  Other novices seem to have succeeded with it, and that might be enough to help push the sand out of the narrow of the hourglass!