The Linux Society

This is the following email I posted to TayLUG:
I have just got the 2 OLPC's to play around with (last on the list).
With the factory default build version 650 WPA is not working (nobody
mentioned this). An internet connection can be made via a USB wired
ethernet as the Fedora operating system picks it up O.K. The only
problem here is that an internet update only works with build version
653 or higher, due to a bug in the OLPC-update rpm. An updated rpm can
be downloaded and rpm forced to correct this. I decided that I wanted
to update the firmware and o.s. image to the latest stable build (703)
via USB. I down loaded the image etc. and it only took 10 minutes to
do the upgrading via USB, nice and simple, I had to put on the
activities separately via USB as this was not included with the o.s.
image, I used the latest activity version and the menu bar looks a lot
better. So now we have both laptops updated to the latest versions and
WPA is working perfectly. To update the o.s. in the future,  all you
have to do now is open up the terminal:
$ su -l
$ olpc-update <version no.>

To continue with further details:
It is easy to upgrade via USB, this is akin to clean re-install as data is wiped when upgraded. There are good clear instructions from the OLPC wiki (reasonable Linux documentation for once),
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activated_Update
Follow the instructions and there should be no problem. My own observations:
1. Use  2 x 1GB flash drives (they only cost a few quid now) to have the fs.zip & iso image separate from the activity directories if you want to keep them as master discs if they have to be used again. I could see teachers having them in case a schoolchild trashes their system so they can rectify things in ten minutes.
2. Reformat your fat32 filesystem on your USB disks prior to use - any large files that were on the disk previuosly could interfere with the iso image system even after deletion.
3. Very little user intervention in upgrade process, even teachers could manage this (no offense to teachers).
4. For normal update/upgrade process use the network upgrade as it will only affect parts of the system that has changed.
5. Activity menu has changed slightly to include terminal at boot up instead of scrolling for it.
6. Looks like a better TAM-TAM.

I will let you know if I notice anything else as I have just started using it.

Gordon