Nicholas Negroponte gave a keynote at this year’s Boston LinuxWorld conference about the status of the One Laptop Per Child project, an ambitious effort to build a very cheap, Linux-driven laptop initially intended for distribution among the third-world countries.

Negroponte’s on-stage confidence, even smugness, that this project would succeed was striking, even in light of the obvious challenges involved in mass-producing a capable laptop at such a low cost.

It looks like those efforts have started to pay off, as the BBC reports that Libya has agreed to purchase 1.2 million of the laptops.

Check out the OLPC website, the prototype pictures are nice, if not downright impressive.

Jason