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$100 Laptop Platform Moves On
The BBC is reporting that Sugar Labs is planning on taking "Sugar," the XO laptop's innovative interface, to the next level and distribute to a broader audience. "Sugar is a user interface that allows children to collaborate even when working on different machines. For example, they can write documents or make music together. The open source software also contains a journal and automatically saves and backs up all data. [...] Sugar Labs will work closely with developers from the open source community to develop the user interface for other computers and operating systems. It has already been bundled with the most recent releases of the Ubuntu and Fedora Linux operating systems."
In 8.0.4
aptitude search sugar
aptitude search sugar | grep XO | wc -l
19
Yes, because Sugar is supposed to be a general purpose window manager, as opposed to an environment targeted at kids with no specific experience with any operating system.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Because the OLPC group promised a $100 laptop, and delivered at twice the price.
It's got a ton of dependencies (at least, on Kubuntu 8.04):
$ sudo apt-get install sugar
[sudo] password for hardy2:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
gnome-media-common gstreamer0.10-alsa gstreamer0.10-plugins-farsight
gstreamer0.10-plugins-good libavahi-gobject0 libblas3gf libcamel1.2-11
libebook1.2-9 libecal1.2-7 libedataserver1.2-9 libfarsight0.1-2 libgfortran2
libgnome-media0 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0 libgnomeprint2.2-data
libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgtksourceview-common
libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtop2-7 libgtop2-common libhippocanvas-1-0
libjinglebase0.3-0 libjinglep2p0.3-0 libjinglexmllite0.3-0
libjinglexmpp0.3-0 liblapack3gf libloudmouth1-0 libmatchbox1 libmetacity0
libnautilus-burn4 liboil0.3 libshout3 libtelepathy-glib0 libtelepathy2
libtotem-plparser10 libwnck-common libwnck22 libxres1
matchbox-window-manager metacity-common python-avahi python-gconf
python-glade2 python-gnome2 python-gnome2-desktop python-gnomecanvas
python-hippocanvas python-json python-numpy python-pyorbit python-telepathy
python-xapian sugar-artwork sugar-base sugar-datastore
sugar-presence-service sugar-toolkit telepathy-gabble telepathy-salut
telepathy-stream-engine
Suggested packages:
python-gconf-dbg python-gnome2-desktop-dbg python-gnome2-desktop-doc
python-gnomecanvas-dbg python-numpy-dbg python-numpy-doc python-pyorbit-dbg
xapian-doc
Recommended packages:
gnome-media gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-x gnome-mount python-gtk2-doc
sugar-activities
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gnome-media-common gstreamer0.10-alsa gstreamer0.10-plugins-farsight
gstreamer0.10-plugins-good libavahi-gobject0 libblas3gf libcamel1.2-11
libebook1.2-9 libecal1.2-7 libedataserver1.2-9 libfarsight0.1-2 libgfortran2
libgnome-media0 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0 libgnomeprint2.2-data
libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgtksourceview-common
libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtop2-7 libgtop2-common libhippocanvas-1-0
libjinglebase0.3-0 libjinglep2p0.3-0 libjinglexmllite0.3-0
libjinglexmpp0.3-0 liblapack3gf libloudmouth1-0 libmatchbox1 libmetacity0
libnautilus-burn4 liboil0.3 libshout3 libtelepathy-glib0 libtelepathy2
libtotem-plparser10 libwnck-common libwnck22 libxres1
matchbox-window-manager metacity-common python-avahi python-gconf
python-glade2 python-gnome2 python-gnome2-desktop python-gnomecanvas
python-hippocanvas python-json python-numpy python-pyorbit python-telepathy
python-xapian sugar sugar-artwork sugar-base sugar-datastore
sugar-presence-service sugar-toolkit telepathy-gabble telepathy-salut
telepathy-stream-engine
0 upgraded, 63 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
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It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
just do this:
/usr/bin/sugar
/usr/bin/Xephyr :1 -ac -screen 800x600 -dpi 72
1) sudo apt-get install sugar sugar-activities xserver-xephyr
2) create xephr-xinitrc file in your home directory with this line in it: exec
3) run this to start it in a windowed xserver:
xinit ~/xephyr-xinitrc --
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
1) MS is not offering their software from the beneficence of samaritan spirit. They are offering it at that price to ensure that even the 5th world will be hooked on their constant upgrade and pay to play cycles. $3/CD is better than zero, and it will lead to sales later on. In the marketing world it's called a loss leader... http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lossleader.asp
2) More functionality in this case includes wasted battery usage through OS issues, BSODs, virus prone applications, upgrade cycles that are longer than the XO will be a viable product (read no upgrades)
3) No matter what language it supports, XP still has the same problems, so this is not much of a bonus, here is some data to see what the real language support is:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Linux_language_support
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson/dev/winxpintl.mspx
Now, when it comes down to it, neither is likely to support a dialect that is spoken by only several thousand people in the world, but both support a large number of languages making this an odd point to harp on. I've given you a couple of links, perhaps you can point out to the rest of us what huge advantage XP offers over Linux in general and the XO's original system in particular.
3) Redhat, Novell, Canonical et al were not asked to step up. OLPC chose their operating system and MS 'convinced' them to re-choose. I say convinced with all the irony that I can muster in this life and the next. MS is offering a raped version of XP, and not the version you are obviously used to.
Sugar OS was just right for the OLPC and with a few tweaks would have been very nice for the goals of that project.
As for your general attitude in your comment, I offer this review as rebuttal. It's from http://www.engadget.com/tag/olpc and the emphasis below is mine. It's been a controversial decision, but it looks like the OLPC XO has completed its transition from revolutionary education project to just another tiny Windows laptop with a useless keyboard -- albeit one with a pleasantly whimsical design. Yep, it's official: Microsoft and OLPC just put out a joint press release saying that XP-loaded XOs will be available starting in August or September, with some countries to get the machines as soon as next month. Users will get all the regular functionality of XP -- it's basically the same build as on the Eee and other ultraportables -- but Microsoft's spent over a year developing specialized drivers for the XO's various features like e-book mode, the writing pad, and camera. (We're pretty certain that doesn't include mesh networking, but WiFi is supported.) XP is too big for the built-in 1GB flash chip, so it'll come preloaded on a 2GB SD card, leaving just about 1.5GB free total for apps and media. It seems like Microsoft is thrilled about this partnership, but it's a not going to make NickNeg's search for new vision at the top any easier. As for Sugar? You'll still be able to get it, but we have a sinking feeling about its future. Demo video after the break. I realize that you seem to have been throwing down the gauntlet for the Linux fanbois, but you would be wise to remember to bring more than a knife to a gun fight.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Surprisingly, nobody posted the URL yet: http://www.sugarlabs.org/ .
Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
Actually, the Fedora based LiveCD is out of date and there are better options available. More details can be found on the OLPC wiki: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/LiveCd
Funny, I've been using linux distros for years...free updates, upgrades, software, whatever I want, whenever I want...for all my computer courses that I teach.
However, the idiotic, criminal,unaccountable school board I work for pays M$ about $400,000 A YEAR for the so-called "Software Assurance Program", which essentially is meaningless, since school windoze labs are still crashing, full of BSODs, malware, etc.
There is NO comparison. M$ junk is a huge money sink compared to anything open source.