OLPC might ditch Linux for Windows XP, says Negroponte

Resigned OLPC project founder Nicholas Negroponte says that the OLPC project might shy away from open-source soon enough, given that this platform has made their much-talked about project hard to pick up. He further adds that insistence on open-source software has actually scared some people away. And while I don’t think Linux is so bad that it scares people away, I agree with Negroponte when he says that using open-source software hampered the usability of their small computers.Take for instance the lack of support for the latest version of Flash animation; this kills all possibilities of letting the children visit fully-Flash enabled web sites that are easy on the eye and offer to educate children using animated graphics, among other things. So the logical thing to do would be to trash Linux and just opt for Windows XP like Asus seems destined to do? Not yet, because they’re still toying with the idea of having a dual-boot option which lets users run either Windows XP or Linux on the same machine. Think of it as a downgraded boot camp software for Mac OS X. But don’t expect it to be released any time soon. They’re having a hard time making good on the current version already.