Balsa for Eee PC and other netbooks
Update!
[19 August 2010] The new Balsa v0.6 works on most older netbooks, laptops and desktop computers as well as on the XO-1.0. See Latest version for details.
The next version of Balsa will work on most newer (2010) netbooks as well; but it will no longer support the OLPC XO-1.0. If interest develops in running Balsa on the next generation XO-1.5, we will look into this as well.
You can not use Balsa v0.5 SD card created for the OLPC XO in any other computer! Stay tuned for the new Balsa system which will run on many netbooks and laptop computers.
Balsa development focus has been on the XO thus far, for several reasons.
- The XO is the lowest-power computer (other than pdas and smartphones) currently in use, uses 2-8 watts of power. This was the original goal of Balsa.
- Program packages have not been developed yet for the XO's native OS -- Fedora Linux with the non-standard desktop manager, Sugar. Thus the XO can not currently be used with the language software programs needed for translation and literacy; Balsa-for-XO enables this.
- Other netbooks can run the language programs with either Windows or Linux systems installed, so the need for a customized installation is not so urgent.
However, a version of Balsa is in process that will run on most computers with an SDHC slot, even if the computer is not equipped to boot natively from SD card.
Stay tuned for more...
USB stick?
I know this isn't your first goal (or second, probably..) but is there any reason this can't boot off a USB stick? Computers around here have USB ports much more often than SDHC readers, so that would be useful for us, where a worker may not have the same computer to use, next time has an hour to work.
Kent Rasmussen
USB stick
Kent, the main reason for choosing an SD card was because there have been problems in the bush with USB sticks simply breaking off, since they stick out from the computer the way they do. The SD card is inserted inside and there is less risk of this happening. Most netbooks, and a lot of laptops these days, come with SD card slots. Technically however there is probably no reason why USB sticks can't be used if that is what you desire. We have not tried it, but I suspect if you follow the instructions for making an SD card, but use a USB stick instead, it would probably still work.