Seems like this Christmas will bring me a great gift: my time back! As you might have noticed I haven’t been able to write much, nor was I able to attend any of the last 6 months BLUG meetings or even spend time with my lovely girlfriend! All this time was not wasted, I have in fact joined a great new project managed by Dexxon, the company making the Gdium, which goal is to “provide access to information affordable to all, so that all can exercise their right to education”. So we’re building a 10″ MIPS based netbook (Loongson based to be precise – the Chinese CPU) running a customized version of Mandriva Linux (MS Windows won’t run on it) and developing an online platform to promote Open Education and provide the means to use Open Source Software and the community to build sufficient resources to make this dream come true. The “Gdium.com” foundation is being set up to manage the resources and ensure the durability and non-profit side of the project. 3% of all Gdium sales will go to finance that foundation. Of course we want to involve the community and developers straight from the beginning and as such are starting the “One Laptop Per Hacker” program where one can purchase an early release of the Gdium (with some known issues) at 250 €. So if you’re feeling like helping out and making this dream happen, please join us!Seems like this Christmas will bring me a great gift: my time back! As you might have noticed I haven’t been able to write much, nor was I able to attend any of the last 6 months BLUG meetings or even spend time with my lovely girlfriend! All this time was not wasted, I have in fact joined a great new project managed by Dexxon, the company making the Gdium, which goal is to “provide access to information affordable to all, so that all can exercise their right to education”. So we’re building a 10″ MIPS based netbook (Loongson based to be precise – the Chinese CPU) running a customized version of Mandriva Linux (MS Windows won’t run on it) and developing an online platform to promote Open Education and provide the means to use Open Source Software and the community to build sufficient resources to make this dream come true. The “Gdium.com” foundation is being set up to manage the resources and ensure the durability and non-profit side of the project. 3% of all Gdium sales will go to finance that foundation. Of course we want to involve the community and developers straight from the beginning and as such are starting the “One Laptop Per Hacker” program where one can purchase an early release of the Gdium (with some known issues) at 250 €. So if you’re feeling like helping out and making this dream happen, please join us!9 thoughts on “Gdium One Laptop Per Hacker Program”
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I wondered why you choosed Mandriva for such a project buy why not a Ubuntu derivative one.
I wasn’t part of the project when the decision was made but the answer is in two folds: there are other distribution than Ubuntu and this is what Linux is about … “Choice”. Now the second part is that we’re working on providing hardware to people to port other OSes on this architecture, that would cover Puppylinux, OpenSuse and others.
I also think at the time we made the decision Mandriva had better Chinese support than Ubuntu. I haven’t checked the latest version but I think this has been improved lately.
Actually if you’re using KDE4 (like I do) Mandriva is pretty hard to beat. Kubuntu just isn’t there yet, and actually OpenSUSE is as close as non-Mandriva gets.
You might have a point about Gnome on Ubuntu, but I don’t like GTK+ apps.
Fred, do you happen to know, where it’s possible to purchase Gdium in U.K.?
Hi! Actually I doubt you can find one yet in the UK. Your only chances would be to participate to the OLPH program if we have any left. You’d end up with a US keyboard and adapter though, as we haven’t started making the UK ones. If you want to know what’s happening with OLPH and talk with members I’d recommend you to visit http://olph.gdium.com and our IRC channel.
OLPH is a nice program for geeks, but I meant, in the statement above, the consumer market. I’ve seen Teknote from Holland offers Yeeloong laptops, but Teknote itself is an internet shop, not a mall – where you go around and take decision after wathching a product.
I could find the resellers list at Gdium’s site for US market. Any ideas when EMTEC will introduce something for Europe?
Sorry for the late response. My BLOG is not necessarily the best place to get timely commercial information, or any commercial information related to Europe or the US. Dexxon has a strong distribution network in Europe and the Gdium will be introduced gradually one country at a time I believe. I unfortunately have no more information that that.