There’s nothing worse than hearing how an entire school district is switching operating systems from Mac to Windows (or vice versa) because that’s what the “business” world relies on or some other blather. The costs associated with the transition are enormous and the whole ‘to do’ is unnecessary, because features on applications mimic one another.

Recently, a few of us had a discussion about translating the book to Malayalam. GNU/Linux is now available in a lot of schools - and a local language version would be a boon to many smart kids who are capable of learning things by themselves. I suggested that we have a go at writing an `orignal’ book - mostly because I was having this pet idea of writing a book for kids for a long time.

What will a child in the UK make of a laptop designed to help children in the developing world? Rory Cellan-Jones brought an XO home to find out.