The "One Laptop Per Child" project

Libya to buy 1.2 million Linux laptops?

Libya reportedly plans to purchase 1.2 million low-cost laptops, after signing a deal earlier this week. Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) non-profit association, told the New York Times that the deal had been reached in Libya on Tuesday.

Libya will pay the OLPC $250 million, according to the Times. In return, it will receive 1.2 million OLPC computers for students, one server per school, a team of technical installation advisers, satellite Internet service, and other network infrastructure.

The deal had not been confirmed by either Libya or the OLPC by publication of this story. The Times article was, however, listed among recent OLPC news items on the organization's website.

Assuming the Times report is accurate, Libya becomes the fifth country to express serious interest in the inexpensive student laptop. The others are Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand. Prior to this deal, Brazil, with a reported interest in buying a million of the laptops, was the country that appeared to have the most real interest in these systems.

The OLPC project has the support of AMD, eBay, Google, Nortel, Red Hat, and several other technology companies. While the systems are not yet in production, they are expected to start shipping in November. The OLPC laptops will come with a version of Fedora Linux and Sugar, a modified version of GNOME, for the interface.

Recently, concerns have come up both about the OLPC machine's security and its use of proprietary firmware for its Marvell 802.11b/g WiFi chip. Despite these objections, the OLPC project is continuing to move smoothly on towards delivering the first of its inexpensive laptops to users by year's end.