What do you think it would cost to hire some Unix wizards to make either Fedora or Ubuntu work perfectly on the AAI, and package it as an easy-to-install download?
Let me make a guess here: a month of work, maybe split between two or three people. $50 an hour, for a total of $8000. We might be able to get it done for a ton less than that, but that depends on both the difficulty of the problems, and the price of the hackers. Acer sold seven million units in 2008 and is shooting for 15 million in 2009.*
So if we used something like Fundable (http://www.fundable.com/) to set up a pool, we could find an appropriate team to make all the hardware work, sort out the power management issues, make the fan control safe and reliable, make it possible to record sound and video off the web cam, mount the SD cards properly and everything else. If we got 800 people - and out of 7 million that's not that many - it would be $10 each. If some people throw in a bit more to get the pot started, so much the better.
What do you think? Could we do this? Which distro would we start with, and how would we identify a credible team to do the work?
I'd really like a known-perfect Fedora or Ubuntu (pref Ubuntu) for the AA1, but I can't see how we're going to get it without hiring somebody to make it happen. But I think there are enough of us that it could be a few bucks each, we'd support some great open source development work, and maybe encourage other communities to get Linux customized for their hardware too.
Win-win-win. Who's with me?
Vinay
* http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=13264
