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Will OLPC's 'Sugar' Have an Effect on Other OSes?
g8orade wonders: "As a recent article notes: for the OLPC, the software is more important than the hardware. A generation or more of children in developing countries will learn about computers using a computer that doesn't use a desktop from either Apple or Microsoft. Will the OLPC software finally be the license-less tool, the uncharged-for value add that raises the bar for other OS makers to compete, given the same hardware?"
Firstly, all of the discussion about the machine influences the minds of hardware and software developers; I expect to see more low-power / long battery life laptops this year; some of the OLPC hardware innovations (LCD display) will be available in next years models.
The software will cause a rethinking on how schoolkids could work with computers, but I don't see a quick adoption in PC operating systems. Applications for collaboration may pick up some of the sugar features; PDAs may pick up features quicker than PCs.
Sugar is such a radical design that it is safe to predict that it won't be adopted for 100%... On the other hand it is safe to predict that some elements will be adopted. Without an in depth review it's hard to tell which features are "good" and likely to be picked up and which are bad and likely to be avoided.
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> OLPC, the software is more important than the hardware.
It always is. You don't buy hardware then try and find something to run on it. (Well, not perhaps unless you're an Apple user).
many years ago apple made a *huge* push in k-12 to get apple stuff out there. why? when these kids graduated, a lot of them had experience with apples and some had experience with only apples. it was a long term investment.
any software that gets uses on the olpc system will not make a difference *today* or *tomorrow*, but down the road it might.
one observation: it will start with educational software. if there are millions of these units out there, there will need to be software for teaching stuff. getting in that market will probably get you into the educational market in developed countries. if you want to see this in action, watch what textbook publishers do to get into the california and texas schools. once in these states, they tend to push into other states from there.
if the olpc project 'works', these children will grow up and this software is going to be what computers are all about.
this could be very interesting for ms and apple.
eric
What we've seen about sugar is not an UI. It is the interface of their "network connections" application, which indeed looks like an UI taken from a game.
One, this will be the first ever major large scale distributed computer that goes out the door with linux pre-installed, beating all the big vendors to the punch (nt counting embedded devices or game consoles or cellphones). It's a laptop, with working wireless and mesh networking out of the box, along with being self powered! A lot of serious coolness right there. Two, it will rapidly become the largest used linux distro. Within a few shipments, once you start talking millions at a time, it will surpass Ubuntu and the other "tops on distrowatch" distros.
I think just those two facts indicate that it will have a profound impact on linux and computing in general. Turn it around, how can it not?
OK, now, granted, this exact machine won't be offered for sale to joe average user, but... how it is being made and who is set-up to make the components etc, is either all known now or certainly will be soon. This thing is going to be torn apart, reverse engineered all over, and I expect to see clones hitting the market in various configs. Probably not as cheap as the original project, but pretty close, and they will sell, I know I'd go get one right now if it was there at a sub $300 price point, even with the limitations, it is still pretty neat. We have flash based memeory dropping in price quickly, this could probably be easily upgraded. Just the self powered part is enough of a consumer bump for me compared to the competition.
The more I think it is an almost useless academic exercise. Hear me out on this before flaming me. The hardware is severely under-powered; it cannot be reasonably used for most modern experimenting with computers. The software is built with a user interface that borrows very, very little from existing interfaces on everything from UNIX to Windows to BeOS to MacOS X. Let's say that kids want to learn how to write software for this platform. Will the tools available be even comparable to what they would expect with any "real environment?"
What I don't get, and have never seen a concrete explanation for, is how this will actually help developing countries' classrooms. They've made nebulous, feel-good comments about "kids exploring" and other crap like that. Right. What could they be "exploring" that $100 of school supplies for books, pen and paper couldn't handle? Looking back on my on K-12 experience in some halfway decent public schools in the US, I can think of precious few things that a computer would have been necessary to really help with. Even in high school, we needed subject-specific science supplies more than computers.
I wonder if there will ever be a release of an OLPC VM for us all to work (read: play) with. I'd imagine that the project could only benefit from giving us all the opportunity to enhance it, even if the OS ends up closed. Throw out a QEMU VM that looks exactly as the OLPC will and see what happens in the sandbox.
It doesn't matter what interface or OS-type is given to these children. Everything changes constantly anyway - even if you gave them an Apple or MS, 5 years from now, the next MS/Apple release will probably be completely different, and possibly unrecognisable. As long as the OLPC teaches the concepts of basic computer usage, above the actual manipulation of the UI, this PC will be valuable no matter what OS or UI is preloaded onto it. My two pence
I would really like to see something like the OLPC succeed. When I downloaded the OLPC vmware/qemu image and tried it, I was terrably disappointed. I think that if 'Sugar' is not replaced the whole project will fail.
You certainly haven't absorbed much of what you have supposedly heard about this project. The economics of it come into play by paying for this instead of buying obsolete textbooks in foreign languages. Now they will be able to have up to date textbooks, in their own language, and carry ALL of them around with them.
... the possibilities are endless.
The secondary goal is learning about the big wide world around them. Communication, it's called. Now the kids will be able to meet people who might not live within an hour's walk away.
All this applies to the kids' families too. The parents and older siblings and neighbors and friends will all get similar benefits. Parents can get medical information, advice about better farming, learn what the regional markets want to buy so they can make better decisions about what to make or grow
To think of the OLPC as a mere computer is hopelessly incredibly narrow minded.
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Here at Brazil it is on the major press, but they call it the US$100 laptop, instead of OLPC. Maybe you didn't listen about it because it is not aimed to your area.
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Lucky guy! How good is the self powered feature, and how does it work? List a few of the really cool points!
Can't answer your question on getting to an x term. They have a news group listed off the wiki though, ask there maybe. I would assume it is possible, a keyboard command or something. I haven't played with it yet, but I do know it is loosely derived from fedora. I would be surprised if it isn't really, possibly just slightly hid compared to normal distros.
Frankly speaking, I am more interested in the hardware aspect to the machine, looks to be possible for a cheap entry level solid state laptop there, that is self powered, which to me is just the spiffiest of features. I would be interested in getting one and just trying to boot something like damn small on it to use, rather than sugar and whatever their OS morphs into. A bit more RAM and up the flashdrive to a couple gigs and I could replace what I do every day with that thing and retire this energy hog desktop. I don't really want to get any more conventional laptops, too expensive, hard to upgrade, and not-self powered. I don't do video games nor much cpu intensive stuff, so the specs would be fine for me, a litle surfin, etc is more than adequate for my purposes. Can't wait until the clones hit, I bet we see some interesting variants.
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