Jonesieblog

A first glance at this image (click on it to view it full size) might lead you to conclude that I’ve installed yet another operating system on the EeePC.

Look more closely though and you’ll see the Firefox bar along the top. What you are seeing is EyeOS – an operating system that runs inside your browser.

It isn’t perfect yet, and someone is going to have to figure out a way to make money out of such services if they are going to be sustainable, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Surely the time is coming when all the “computer” most users will need is a browser.

Stumble it!

If you really need to run a bit of windows software, then sometimes a nifty project called WINE can come to the rescue.  WINE allows Windows software to run on a Linux operating system.  It doesn’t always work, and obviously space is limited on the Eee PC’s memory, but it can be done.  Here’s a screenshot of Graph (GPL Software, in case the IT boys were wondering) running using WINE:

Stumble it!

My feeling is that the Eee PC needs a touch screen to be the perfect 1-1 device. The chat online is that this is coming soon, for very little extra money, so I’ve been exploring how we migh use it, with the help of my wee Volito graphics tablet.

I installed the excellent open source xournal and plugged in the tablet. The Eee recognised the tablet immediately, and I rattled off a quick quadratic equation. Xournal can export to pdf, so you can see that here or just look at the screenshot (click on the screenshot for full size image):

Stumble it!

I’ve been adding some useful maths programs to the Eee PC, and adding icons for them to the Maths/ Learn tab.

The scientific calculator is jscicalc, which works exactly like the calculators that pupils use. Maxima and Geogebra should be familiar to you from previous posts of mine.

Stumble it!

The Eee PC is a fantastic wee device. Add a touch screen (which is apparently coming soon) and you have a viable means of delivering 1-1. What makes all the difference to the cost point of the device is the fact that you don’t have to pay for a copy of Windows xp. That would add something like 20-30% onto the cost. You don’t have to pay for Windows because the Eee pc uses Linux.
The Eee pc does not shout about its Linux operating system – it just uses it. So I’d like to shout about the hundreds of thousands of hours of work given freely by thousands of developers to create the Linux operating system and the vast range of free software that runs on it.

These people have given of their own time without any financial reward simply because they wanted to help to make something useful to humanity, or maybe because it was just an interesting problem to solve. Whatever their motivation, I am immensely grateful to them. Without them we would still be stuck with the duopoly of MS and Mac, and the Eee pc would not exist.

Linux has benefited from considerable investment by IBM and other companies over the years, but it is the vast army of unpaid volunteers that created Linux and continue to drive its growth.

Stumble it!