You May Be Having A Linux Monday Without Even Knowing It

You May Be Having A Linux Monday Without Even Knowing It

You may have gone Linux over the holidays and not even known it, if you got yourself a new Android phone.

Android is in the mix of some big changes at the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. the goal of getting low cost ($100 per) laptops to kids in third world countries. It helped drive the then-new netbook market, and the low-end processors in OLPC and netbooks pushed Microsoft to keep XP alive juuuust a little longer, kill off the bloated Vista, and quickly launch Windows 7.

These moves, and Microsoft's sheer economic clout and market dominance, were pushing OLPC away from its Linux roots. But an upcoming redesign changes that:

"The new OLPC devices will take the lead from Apple's iPad but use Google's (GOOG) Android OS, at least initially. The keyboard will be virtual and be able to adapt to different languages.

(OLPC head John) Negroponte said the new tablets will not use Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows 7 because the software requires too much memory and computing power."

My own Linux Holiday included some kernel tweaking, some backup, some playing around with a simplified Fluxbox desktop, and some trying to figure out how to convert all of y'all.