mojombo

10 ms·

91.
by mojombo 12y ago
For browsing the web and simple development tasks, 2GB is sufficient. More is better, but if you're working on a budget, then 2GB will get the job done.
92.
by mojombo 12y ago
To be fair, pressing SPACE gets you a 2nd confirmation screen that must also be accepted, before your fate is sealed. And even then it just places you back into normal ChromeOS mode. The installer can easily be re-run to get you back to Co
93.
by mojombo 12y ago
I came to respond about the Minecraft point, but you've already said what I would have. I think it's folly to presume that learning is better when all the fun is removed. Thanks!
94.
by mojombo 12y ago
I've heard rumors that this is the case (at least for the Acer C720), though I can't confirm it. I did call Acer to speak with a sales rep and learned that Acer's cost to produce is nearly $250 (if their information can be tr
95.
by mojombo 12y ago
Touché. Though, to be fair, it's hard to "accidentally" do it, as there is a subsequent confirmation screen. The problem is one of ignorance, upon first receiving the laptop, and not knowing how to boot into an operating syst
96.
by mojombo 12y ago
That's amazing! Let me know if I can help in any way.
97.
by mojombo 12y ago
I meant diversity across all the CoderDojo events that I've seen. This one happened to be primarily African American, but in aggregate, the breadth of kids that show up to learn to code is really amazing compared to what we see in coll
98.
by mojombo 12y ago
We'd very much like to, but we're only a few months into this endeavor, and we want to make sure that our product is really polished before we start selling them in quantity. We'll get there! In the meantime, if you're w
99.
by mojombo 12y ago
It is very nicely integrated, and that may very well be the best method for a more experienced developer. For our recipients, the simplicity of the dual-boot setup is nice and makes it easy to understand what's going on under the hood.
100.
by mojombo 12y ago
We've currently funded 146 laptops over the last few months, but we'd love to be distributing thousands every year and are currently in conversations with a variety of companies to see if we can get sponsorships going. That would
101.
by mojombo 12y ago
Yep, that's not a bad value, but $30 extra is still quite significant to us, and the smallness/lightness and battery life of the Chromebooks is hard to beat.
102.
by mojombo 12y ago
That would be amazing, and it's something I'd love to pursue in the long run. It seems a natural evolution of our current approach.
103.
by mojombo 12y ago
Absolutely, and I mentioned that in a different comment. I'd love to provide Atom on our laptops.
104.
by mojombo 12y ago
Our installer will leave you with the ability to boot either ChromeOS or Ubuntu. It is possible to wipe ChromeOS completely and boot just to Ubuntu, if that is your goal.
105.
by mojombo 12y ago
That's a great anecdote, and you've brought up one of our primary hypotheses. A few weeks ago I attended a CoderDojo event in Virginia to deliver our first batch of Codestarter laptops, and it's always amazing to see the demo
106.
by mojombo 12y ago
I did come across DKMS during my research on solving the problem, and spent some time trying to figure out how to get it set up, but fizzled out in my attempts to get it working. Do you know of any more extensive tutorials on the matter? Re
107.
by mojombo 12y ago
That's rad. Minecraft is such a great gateway for getting kids into programming, it's awesome to see educators taking advantage of that. Does your friend have their curriculum available anywhere? I'd love to take a look at ho
108.
by mojombo 12y ago
Yep, and still totally possible by just booting into ChromeOS and firing up Chrome. But we want these kids to have the opportunity to explore a full operating system and see what makes the machine tick. It's also really important to us
109.
by mojombo 12y ago
The Intel Celeron processor is what finally made me interested in the latest Chromebooks. For development, ARM is still a pretty painful thing to have to deal with.
110.
by mojombo 12y ago
Even in developer mode, ChromeOS provides a very limited set of tools, no package manager, and a mostly undocumented environment. It's not really appropriate to use as the base of a developer machine. Ubuntu, on the other hand, has all
111.
by mojombo 12y ago
Thanks! We're targeting an age range of 7-17 years old, and distributing these laptops to kids that are attending learn-to-code programs like CoderDojo. For the very young, most will choose to boot ChromeOS and use online programming t
112.
by mojombo 12y ago
I'd love to offer free licenses of ST and am working on a way to do that. Until then, the trial will suffice for a lot of kids, and pre-installing it means they can easily try it out. But yes, a better long-term solution is needed.
113.
by mojombo 12y ago
Crouton is pretty nice, and I experimented with that approach as well. A big reason we chose dual-boot is to give kids a playground in which they can really explore their laptops. I fondly remember the joy of installing every operating syst
114.
by mojombo 12y ago
Great post! I'll definitely take you up on the offer, thanks!
115.
by mojombo 12y ago
Yeah, I saw this technique, but it requires violating the warranty (opening the case), and we'd really like kids to be able to get their laptops fixed for free if something goes wrong. Still great that it's possible to do, and can
116.
by mojombo 12y ago
These are both fair points, and we'd like to offer free Sublime Text licenses to recipients of our laptops, I just haven't had time yet to explore the best way to make that happen. Once Atom has a competent Linux version, we'
117.
How we turn $199 Chromebooks into Ubuntu-based code learning machines for kids(blog.codestarter.org)
492 points by mojombo 12y ago|215 comments
118.
by mojombo 14y ago
That project isn't actively maintained at the moment (nor is it an official GitHub project), but I'll see what I can do tomorrow to get it merged in and released. Sorry for the frustration!
119.
by mojombo 14y ago
Parker Moore and I (along with many contributors) have been spending quite a bit of time on Jekyll recently. Over the last 30 days we've merged 17 pull requests and closed 62 issues. We're ramping up for a 1.0 release and there's a brand ne
120.
by mojombo 15y ago
Yes, this happened via our support system which all happens through private emails.

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