Dextrose

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The deployments' XO Operating System

Dextrose is a Sugar distribution for the XO-1 and XO-1.5 jointly developed by Activity Central, Paraguay Educa, Plan Ceibal and Sugar Labs in collaboration with the OLPC and Sugar community.

The focus of this build is stability and usability in a classroom environment. While there wasn't much time for new development, we've merged a few features contributed by other deployments and freelance contributors.

Dextrose 1 "Juky"

Dextrose 1 RC for the XO-1: os373pyg.img os373pyg.crc (2010-08-16)

Dextrose 1 RC for the XO-1.5: os373pyg.zd (2010-08-16)

Want to help us testing? Check out our latest development builds.

Installation

XO-1

First, ensure that your laptop is unlocked.
Download osNNNpy.img and osNNNpy.crc to the root directory of a USB stick
Drop to the "ok" prompt by pressing ESC repetedly during boot
Type the command: copy-nand u:\osNNNpy.img followed by ENTER
During the next reboot, keep the charger connected to allow OFW to self-update

Also check these detailed instructions.

XO-1.5

Download osNNNpy.zd to the root directory of a USB stick
Drop to the "ok" prompt by pressing ESC repetedly during boot
Type the command: fs-update u:\osNNNpy.zd followed by ENTER

Also check these detailed instructions.

New features in this release

Journal sorting options (Andrés Ambrois)
CPU/Memory display (Anish Mangal)
Journal Backup/restore to removable devices (Martin Abente, Esteban Arias)
Journal Backup/restore to schoolserver (Martin Abente)
Protected activities support ( Martin Abente)
Improved GSM/3G handling (Daniel Castelo, Martin Abente)
Tabbed browsing (Anish Mangal)
Accessibility features (Esteban Arias)
Journal repair functionality (Esteban Arias)
Fast switching between touchpad and pen-tablet modes (Walter Bender)
OLPC Microformat support in activity updater (Akash Gangil, Anish Mangal) (pending)

Using this build

A few customizations make this image somewhat deployment-specific:

Limited language support: in order to save space, only English and Spanish translations are included.
Image is signed with the Paraguay deployment keys. Laptops from other regions need to be unlocked in order to load this image.
The software update control panel icon checks for new activities on the Paraguay Educa wiki.
The Browse home page contains the Paraguay Educa logo and links to our website.

We may find the time to release slightly modified images to meet the needs of deployments interested in upgrading.

More importantly, we're happy to help other deployments produce their own OS images independently of us, thus exploiting the Freedom #1 provided by Free Software.