Yes linux is good future!

Dylan Walker, bellville, ontario

Brian Appleyard should loose his job for this article. He was completely fooled by Negroponte's "I'm just doing this for the kids and the big boys are all against me" act. In reality the XO is a useless machine bound for junk heaps. Give the kids books and food, not cheap gadgets!

Bob, San Jose, USA

" What a ridiculous anti capitalist tirade. Complete unadulterated opinion."

Of course anything that doesn't bow down to the love of money and power is " anti capitalist " .

David B Parks Jr, Richmond, USA

"he is the greatest philanthropist in the world." I should say not. Gates didn't give away a penny until he had $36 billion in the bank. Before that, he'd been derided by the public, including Warren Buffet, for not giving ANY of his money away. Great example? Give under duress after 21 years greed?

Akukla, Seattle, USA

1. Gates sent Apple free software at an important stage in the early days (Wozniak).
2.used computers undercut 400mhz laptots; friend's 400mhz Apple Grape OS 9, working (but mains power) £10.
3. No one screaming WE first worlders are being denied $100 computers?

But a fascinating article.

Ewan Lamont, Edinburgh, Scotland

Look for past articles involved with OLPC, Microsoft, and Intel on publications outside of Times Online. A great deal of past news articles involving these companies have been extensively written, even though they may not be shown here.

Andy, San Jose, USA

I wish the OLPC much success, but it should stick to just running linux, and avoid the Microsoft Windows option completely. Microsoft tried to kill the OLPC, so having Windows as an option is like doing a deal with the Devil.
I am a strong supporter of open source software, where can I get Sugar?

David King, London, UK

As a proof of concept, and in setting other real precedents, we can call the XO a success. There has been a profound increase in "bang-for-the-buck" in the laptop market. Intel has revealed their anti-humanity bias. Perhaps something like this won't really take off until say, India takes the helm.

P. Webber, Bronx, US

This project is commendable . Unfortunately, OLPC is very unlikley to succeed in Africa. An organisation I work for provided wheel chairs for children dissabled by polio, almost immediatly their parents sold the chairs, it's the same story with mosquito nets, text books and TB drugs.

Mathu Martin, Luanda, Angola

The UI works well for the the target group: Previous expereince might be hindering
I'm doing IT training (Unix administration). Participants having administered other OS always complain "why is it all different?". Unexperienced people have far less problems, they just accept what I'm telling them.

Steffen, munich, germany

Negropont killed the scheme.

His bizzare educational "theories" and refusal to sell in the first world denied the product traction, and have marginalised his efforts.

Prices have risen in large part because of rising prices of rare metals, which can hardly be blamed on intel or microsoft.

Leon Wolfeson, Oxford, UK

It would have been a great move, in hindsight of course, to take Apple up on the offer to use their OS. The media love apple, and apple would have OLPC's back. And the software would have worked better. Sugar on the sys=many flaws. Right now, you'd be seeing iphone apps working on the OLPC too.

ms, kansas city,

The OLPC, due to the nature of the G1G1, maybe skirted around basic customer service. They could say, "sorry bad screen? well it was a "donation"" Forgot to mention, your touchpad isn't fully operational yet. Unfinished stuff needed to be highlighted with the arriving XO. Treat donors better NT.

ms, kansas city,

What a ridiculous anti capitalist tirade. Complete unadulterated opinion.

Hank Vreeland, Liby, USA

You can use a Linux live CD and access your ntfs drive bypassing passwords and do anything you like...Kwikdisk on Mepis or most distros does the same no need for ntfs-3g although its easy to set up in Ubuntu... Linux has come of age against all the malice and greed from M$ ... IMHO its fabulous.

H E Torrance, London , England

A couple of points;

Firstly - does anyone really expect commercial companies to welcome competition? I don't think that MS, Intel etc can be blamed for feeling ill-will towards the newcomer.
Secondly - try using one of these laptops and see how practical they are in the real world. Not great!

Nik, London, United Kingdom

It's not that Microsoft did not want the underdeveloped world to have access to cheap computers it is that it did not want the developed world to also have access to them. In the UK we pay ludicrously high prices for computers and software.

Richard Temple, Sevenoaks, England

Apples system is much better? Ok... And how many people have you asked about this? Apple is for people that cant understand windows and like to mash their keyboard and mouse and get to where they want to go.

This is a great idea and I don't understand why they tried to destroy it.c

Chris Kolar, Dorking, UK

How good of MicroSoft to sell for just 3$ what they have for 0$ and are not selling anymore.
Also, XP is heavier than Sugar and requires an additional Gb of RAM, for an additional cost of +10$.
Really.
How good of them.

Francesco Orsenigo, Athens, Greece

Bill gates working with the Rockefeller family and the Ford Corp, say no more.

We know why he doesn't want 3rd world countries to have technology, he’s an elite with globalist agendas.

Dont let them trick you into thinking this is all "business", it's far, far past that mindset.

Andrew, Durham, England

OLPC has failed because of the lack of an implementation plan to bring this dream to life. Irrespective of its hardware and software components people did not buy into the concept nor its delivery

Michael fitzgerald, Hersham, Surrey

OLPC developed a good design, if, perhaps, a bit over ambitious in its goals. That's what drives innovation, though. However, I think the OLPC project will be remembered not for its educational success, but its proof (w/ EEE) that cheap ultra-portables with free software are viable products.

Adam Keck, Boston, MA, USA

Jesse, NYC, USA

So you believe Apple is a superior system to Linux distros because it is BSD and can run KDE? KDE also runs on Windows.

Not to mention, Apple's neo-MS operating mentality with kill switches in iPhones and stealth updates.

Btw, how many apps have you written for OSX?

Thomas, Kansas City, United States

Is it just me, or does this article make a lot of claims and back very few of them up.

Has Microsoft released a statemtent against the OLPC project? No? And if they did, HYPOTHETICALLY, how does this signal an intent to "kill" the project, or provide anything other than constructive criticism?

Close, Leeds, North Yorkshire

I think it's about time that someone took a stand against the major corporations of the world to do something moral. Windows and Intel trying to stop the XO is just symbolic of how big buisness feeds off of the misery of the people. Hopefully more people read this article and realize this.

David, middletown, usa

IIRC, Steve Jobs actually offered to provide a version of OS X for the XO laptop (however, I'm not sure if it would have been a no-cost option), but the XO makers declined and went with Linux.

Michael Engel, Dortmund, Germany

Microsoft's selling XP for $3 is the exact same tactic used by every drug dealer in the world. Give it away for free or cheap until they're hooked. Then start to milk them.
Everyone knows that is what they are planning, and it should just not be allowed to happen. Negroponte should know better.

Patrick, Cottage Grove, USA

For me the most pertinent part of the article was "Yet laptops were expensive and they never seemed to get any cheaper, they just got more complicated. They have become loaded with “bloatware” – over-featured, over-complex software".

Nigel, Pretoria, South Africa

Thomas, Kansas City, MO, United States

you know you can use KDE on Mac OS X? You know they have x11 over there?

Given it's just a BSD, and you love open source so much....

ohh wait. You don't know what your talking about.

Jesse, NYC, USA

Let them fight. Meanwhile the best solution appears to be from NComputing: take a powerful Intel or AMD-based PC and share it with virtualization technology among a whole bunch of students for a fcartion of the price.

drand, San Francisco, USA

Kind of says it all "It is tuned specifically to the needs of children and they, I am told, pick it up quickly. Adults who have any experience of computers, however, will find it hard. It has also been quite buggy. And the user interface (UI) – the way you interact with the machine – is very hard "

David Arneson, Plymouth, United States

Mike Mitchell- we use micro$oft because there are several thousand programs (at least) which don't run on anything else. While there are other spreadsheets nothing has the functionality of Excel. Try finding a Kingdom Suite substitute that runs on MAC or Linux. The main driver of course is games.

Brad, Singapore, Singapore

Not sure whether Bryan Appleyard intended his comment about drug companies, poor and malaria as a dig at Bill and Melinda Foundation where the same Bill has stated their firm focus on finding cures for exactly the illnesses mentioned.

So, big pharmaceutical co monopolies to be broken by Bill! Hmm.

Lilly Evans, Egham, UK

Microsoft has forced itself into a situation that it has been avoiding with all of its might: a head-to-head trial of Windows XP and Red Hat Linux on the same software by the same people. And no matter what the attitude in Ministries of Education, the schoolchildren don't care who you are.

Edward Cherlin, Cupertino CA, USA

While not ignoring the point of your article, I can't ignore that you state as a fact that "Apple's system is much better". That is not a fact, it's an opinion. In my opinion as a software developer, both Windows and Linux are superior systems to Apple.

How much more of your article is opinion?

Thomas, Kansas City, MO, United States

Sugar is just the name of the interface (based in Gnome, if I'm not mistaken), not the OS. The OS is actually GNU with the Linux kernel.

Bruno Miguel, Cidade,

mr. Tim Unwin, Your argument is almost as good as the one used 100+ years ago: "Just learning those kids reading and writing is a waste, we need them in the mines now".

Maciej Szeliga, Hillerød, DK

Well, first I am a 'digital immigrant' who works with an ICT centred NGO. Read the whole long story and found many 'gray' areas of MNCs of the world. Digital divide seems a whole new word after reading this 'ugly' story. Hope 'drugs' do become cheap sometime in the future and India benefits from it.

Pritam Sinha, New Delhi, India

Appleyard claims the XO laptop is "superb" with the "best laptop screen" and "best connectivity of any laptop in the world".

Then why does he use a Apple Mac? Because this "minority brand" is "much better" than both Windows and that geeky Linux thing?

Appleyard ought to learn about impartiality.

Rufio Ainthorpe, Manchester, UK

Much of what Brian Appleyard has to say has already been well reported . However, his report gives a misleading impression about the 'value' of the XO. It is a good piece of technical kit, but is NOT the educational solution for Africa that is claimed. Just giving some kids laptops is a waste!

Tim Unwin, Egham, UK

why wouldnt microsoft and intel try to compete with the XO, they know africa and south asia will be the next computer market worth billions of pounds. you think they should just right off that potential? its not like the XO hasnt got big backers, it should be a fairly fair fight.

will, grimsby, uk

Big organisations need to guarantee their income, this article illustrates the lengths to which some will go. In the future, hardware costs will shrink and open source software will be free for many uses. How will the organisations make money then? Simple, by selling services.

Steve Ward, Milton Keynes, UK

I never understood why anybody uses Microsoft. People look at me in disbelief when I say this but Michael in Lake Oswego is absolutely right. Linux is the way to go.

Digby James, Windsor,

It might have been the "mesh networking" feature independent of the internet that could have killed it. Being independent of the internet means you cannot be controlled by any Total Information Awareness scheme as beloved of current US and British governments. It must be verboten!

Mike Mitchell, Spalding, England

The last thing Microsoft wants is any population anywhere to understand how computers work... that is what Open Source is doing to Microsoft. Giving children a tool with transparent software that can be improved with use, is fatal to a poorly designed platform like windows. Linux is the good future.

Michael Crock, lake Oswego, USA