Text-to-Speech and WebKit Now on One Laptop per Child Devices

It wasn't too long ago that we reported on OLPC's next project, but now we have something to say about those that are already out there.

Long story short, the operating system running on them has received a major update.

But first, some context: Mozilla, maker of the Firefox OS and the Thunderbird e-mail application, decided, last year, to stop support for embedding the Gecko browser engine in third party applications.

OLPC used to rely on Gecko, but has now decided to switch to WebKit, a “far superior alternative” that delivers “faster activity startup time and a smoother browsing experience.”

In addition to this, the 12.1.0 release adds a text-to-speech function, support for USB DisplayLink adapters, and a refreshed offline Wikipedia library (in English and Spanish).

Go here to read more, including the installation instructions.