XO Software

= Installing other software =

Emacs
Emacs is a popular programmer's text editor.
 * 1) open a command shell
 * 2) type su to become root
 * 3) type yum install emacs
 * 4) type yum install emacs-nox

You must also edit the alternatives link to emacs because default it points to the X-based binary, but since the XO doesn't use X, you need to use the -nox binary.

Still as root:
 * 1) type cd /etc/alternatives
 * 2) type ln -sf /usr/bin/emacs-22.2-nox emacs

The Sugar GUI traps many important keys and key combinations for its own use (Ctrl-q, Ctrl-s, Esc), so in order to use Emacs you must un-map these keys. Here's how you do it: (working on it) [In the meantime, you can use Alt for Esc in Emacs (as always), and Ctrl-Shift- in place of Ctrl- .]

The best solution is to use the Quake terminal in place of the Sugar terminal: see below.

Erlang
Erlang is one of the programming languages I use.
 * 1) open a command shell
 * 2) type su to become root
 * 3) type yum install erlang@@

Java
I downloaded the Linux installation binary from Sun's web site. It's a single-file self-installing program. Works fine. You have to set the path afterward. (just the path, not the classpath)

|Choose the '.bin' file, save it, then run it. It needs about 200MB of storage space to install.

Links
Text-mode web browser.
 * 1) open a command shell
 * 2) type su to become root
 * 3) type yum install links

Quake terminal (not the game)
The quake terminal is better than the shell activity, and better than Shell + Screen. I don't know why it's called Quake. It has nothing to do with the Quake game. It's a Python source file. The directions are found at the top of the file. It installs easily. Just follow the directions.
 * |Quake terminal

Within the Quake terminal, the Ctrl-S and Ctrl-Q key combinations are not trapped by Sugar, which means that Ctrl-S and Ctrl-Q and all combinations using them (say, within Emacs) work as expected. This is not true of the normal Shell activity.