Opera for the OLPC
While the OLPC XO-1 is an extremely neat machine, it’s no speed monster. The activity I use the most is the Browse activity, which is based on the Gecko engine, used by Firefox and others.
Apologies for opening up a can of worms here, but the OLPC version of Opera is really superior to the Browse activity. Not only is it a lot faster (and can load pages the Browse activity had problems with), it has tabs and is easier to configure - which might make it less suitable for children, but certainly a lot more usable for grownup children like myself.
It can even be configured to be usable in handheld mode, making the OLPC w/Opera the ultimate handheld device for lounging about in sun surfing your favourite web pages.
Unfortunately, the Opera version available for the OLPC is 9.12, and there’s been a lot of changes since then. However, several Opera employees recently got themselves OLPCs, so I expect that to change very soon.
FWIW, I have been told that you should be able to install normal Opera builds (you might have to go for the statically linked, though).
They won’t have the OLPC skin, but you can always go there and install it yourself. Also, I’m not sure if you have to hack the activity, or if the menus and such will be “ugly”… or if it will be slower, especially if you do have to go for the statically linked.