This MIT effort has help from Allan Kay, Negroponte and other big names from the days of the invention of the PC. They have been working on this without a lot of press, but fixedly for several years.

While a robust physical machine with a screen that isn’t going to be an energy hog are important technological milestones, to me, the use of Linux and OS is an economic paradigm shift. Imagine a world of kids with computers they can use and when they think of something new for the computer to do, they can just figure out how to program that–no paying a middleman or being beholden to the rich capitalist from another country. News from PC Magazine: A Computer for Every Kid