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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."
Love that they a)wanna focus on usability b)are still keeping to the project aims c)recognizing that people will happily use sugar on anything if it's good. I think sugar is adorable, wanna throw it on my laptop when I babysit, so I think this could be a good teaching tool. One interface with clicky pictures is easier to work with when teaching, even if there are all sorts of games separately-look at the whole jumpstart line of games. So I'm really psyched, though it'd be nice to have a live usb/live cd version.
open source modern art: laser taggi
For the last time, the man's name is Nicholas Africanamericanponte. I've learned to expect a little racism in Slashdot articles, but when even the story submitters are doing it, things have gone too far.
And whatever you do, don't respond to this post with your favorite humorous variation of Mr. Africanamericanponte's name. That would be truly depraved.
P.S. My "captcha" word is "enemas". No joke. This place is sick.
As the proud owner of two Asus EeePCs and someone who has experimented with the Sugar interface in virtual machines (I live in the UK, so no G1G1 option was offered here or I would have bought the XO machine as well), I think that is a little unfair.
If nothing else, the OLPC project was responsible for the low priced UMPCs which we can now buy - remember the price of a UMPC a year or two ago? It was cheaper to buy a pretty high spec (but full size) machine.
The OLPC project has lost its way - perhaps because of Negroponte, perhaps because of Intel or maybe pressure from other (Redmond?) forces. Whatever, the OLPC original idea was great - create a functional, robust laptop and include a user friendly interface, a simple peer to peer networking system to allow sharing of files between these machines, an OS which allowed you to learn how things worked etc.
Because of the political infighting which has taken place, the project seems to have lost the support of those who would be of most use to it - i.e Open Source enthusiasts who could have worked on the XO machines and the Sugar interface to create new programs. So the folks behind that Sugar interface have taken it to the community in the form of this new effort called Sugar Labs - intending to develop, with the assistance of the community, the interface and make it available for other small UMPC machines - including the EeePC.
IMHO, this is to be applauded and I for one will certainly have a look at it again. The only small snag at the moment is that it doesn't seem to like running in my VM install of Kubuntu. But I am sure I can find a spare drive here somewhere to install (K)Ubuntu 8.04 or another supported system and fire up the Sugar interface.
Awful UID - but I have been here ages...
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/