OSx86 on the OLPC XO Laptop?

[00010]

Any Distro comparable with this weird laptop?

I have been doing much research I am purchasing a used OLPC XO for a great price, it can run linux and windoze but can it run OSx86, I know it dont have much power( as in processor speed) but I would be happy with running tiger on it.



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[Imkantus]

Such one: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO-1 ?

No way for OS X - the CPU doesn't support the necessary instruction sets.

[00010]

It may be a XO-1.5.

Thats right, you need atleast a SSE2 processor to run osx86.

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[Imkantus]

It may be a XO-1.5.

Well according to this page: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_1.5_A1 this version uses a VIA C7-M CPU, which is fully x86 capable and even supports SSE3. :)

There has been some cool guy who managed it to get OSx86 running on a OQO e2 (which is using that CPU as well) - you can watch his video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSJM4r4PVuY

Anyway I would expect, that a lot of Apps like iTunes and the PPC based stuff will crash, cause I allege that you would have to do kind of CPU-Opcode patching like it's necessary on AMD systems, but for with VIA Opcode...

Pretty neat computer anyway. :D

[00010]

I just got it in, its just a XO-1 but a very weird computer it is, It uses a AMD Geode processor, which(correct me if I am wrong) support SSE2 instruction sets. When I got it from a Goodwill thrift store, They messed up the Fedora linux based OS called "Sugar" that was on it I reinstalled and I am now currently awaiting a "Developer Key" that will disable this machines "DRM" feature allowing me to have full contol over it.

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[Imkantus]

Goede is a K7 based CPU - so I guess it maybe won't even have SSE support. You can check with using "cat /proc/cpuinfo" but I feel you won't have luck with that one.

[00010]

Its a nice laptop, I got my Dev. Key but what I cant figure out is that if it does support SSE2 then how will I coax it to boot, you see it uses Open Firmware (like the old PPC macs).

But these machines support the Fedora 10, which I assume needs a computer with atleaste SSE/SSE2?

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[Imkantus]

Its a nice laptop, I got my Dev. Key but what I cant figure out is that if it does support SSE2 then how will I coax it to boot, you see it uses Open Firmware (like the old PPC macs).Just use the command I wrote above on Fedora, it will show you wether your CPU supports SSE2 or not. You might need to run it as root. Try using sudo or su.

But these machines support the Fedora 10, which I assume needs a computer with atleaste SSE/SSE2?No - most Linux distributions have very minimal hardware requirements. See here - http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f12/en-US/html/index.html#sect-Release_Notes-Hardware_Requirements - Fedora 12 has a 200Mhz Pentium Pro given as minimal requirement - but I would not wonder if the Kernel would even work on any at least i386 based CPU. ;)
I personally cannot realy understand the philosophie behind this (I mean who's stuck using such hardware?!) and would prefer to use i686 optimized Linux system like Arch or Crux...

[00010]

intresting, I'll do some research and get back later, This would make an awsome Tiger machine, but as I said how in the world would Open Firmware boot an Intel based Tiger install?


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[00010]

This is what the readout is of the OLPC XO-1 is from the "cat /proc/cpuinfo" command.


processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 5
model : 10
model name : Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by AMD PCS
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 430.931
cache size : 128 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu de pse tsc msr cx8 sep pge cmov clflush mmx mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips : 863.20
clflush size : 32