Source: OLPC wiki

Computerworld Australia reports that Peru will conduct the first trial of OLPC laptops with Windows XP instead of the custom Fedora build. The trial is to be conducted over the next nine months.

Kids and their teachers in the country will use the laptops as part of efforts to introduce more technology into classrooms in Peru, including Microsoft’s Student Innovation Suite of software, which includes Microsoft Office 2003 as well as Learning Essentials 1.0 for Microsoft Office.

The decision to put Windows on the laptops came about because officials in some countries, such as Egypt, feared a non-Windows laptop would ill prepare students for the real world, in which Microsoft software dominates.

The group now offers XO laptops with either Linux or Windows XP. Within the next few months, laptops armed with both operating systems will be available.

I’m pretty sure that if the idea behind OLPC was to train children for using non-XO machines that GNOME or KDE would be used instead of Sugar.

• Computerworld
• Slashdot