I was a sysadmin at OLPC for a year. There were so many epic things about that project. The whole idea of building a soup-to-nuts platform with all bespoke hardware and software wasn't necessary to build a "Children's Machine". Could have used an early google android phone.
Hired the smartest people from the past 20 years of Media Lab. The first few years produced so much unnecessary awesomeness I've never seen emulated. The open source boot in FORTH. The containers and jffs -cont-