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OLPC Fork Sugar On a Stick Goes 1.0
Marten writes "It was more than a year ago that Walter Bender left OLPC and started SugarLabs.org. Now, the first version of the new project has been released. Sugar on a Stick is a USB drive that runs on Mac and PC-style hardware. 'The open-source education software developed for the "$100 laptop" can now be loaded onto a $5 USB stick to give aging PCs and Macs a new interface and custom educational software.' Bender said, 'What we are doing is taking a bunch of old machines that barely run Windows 2000, and turning them into something interesting and useful for essentially zero cost. It becomes a whole new computer running off the USB key; we can breathe new life into millions of decrepit old machines.'"
The OLPC package is nice, but I still would prefer DamnSmallLinux http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ for this sort of thing.
None of of my old computers that were from the Win 95/98/2000 era have the option to boot from USB. Is there going to be other media available?
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Hey, kids, don't learn how to use Windows or MacOS! Instead, learn to use an OS that you'll never see again, on any computer, ever, outside of this classroom!
What are they going to use it for? Polishing their FORTRAN skills?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What we are doing is taking a bunch of old machines that barely run Windows 2000, and turning them into something interesting and useful for essentially zero cost. It becomes a whole new computer running off the USB key; we can breathe new life into millions of decrepit old machines
The problem with that is that a lot of computers that old don't support booting off of a USB drive. Plus, some of the computers might only have USB 1.1 leading to slower transfer times. If this is your goal why not try to have it be "sugar on a disk" thats going to be infinitely easier than "sugar on a stick".
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
by the time they're done with school, it won't matter what OS they used, they will have all changed so drastically. We had an Apple II in my classroom as a child, which OS would you say it prepared me for?
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Its not that the OS won't be used (already people use Linux in just about everything, from their phones, to routers to their TiVo), but rather the fact that the UI is terrible. Even with GNOME or KDE you can learn them and figure out any OS from there, if you use Windows KDE and GNOME (especially the way some distros configure them) will be easy for you to grasp. OS X is a bit different, but you can generally figure out other DEs after using OS X. So really, they are learning an interface which reminds me of a dumbed-down version of any generic smartphone which kids won't see the UI any place else in their life.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Sounds a bit sugar coated to me. Reading the article I get a sense of ego stroking here.
bash
Most of those Older Pc's cant boot from a USB stick. It's only been the past 3 years that booting from a usb drive has become the norm, before that it was an oddity.
Really cool project, But it's gonna be hell to un-shovel even the Windows 98 machines in schools as the teachers for the computer classes are highly xenophobic when it comes to OS changes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't think the goal of that project is to teach an OS. Instead it is very good to learn the computer science and to have access to very good tools and software. In my mind, I think that using only one OS is very bad. Try multiple OS and use the one that fit best your needs. For me, linux is my choice.
It prepared you for all of them. You know, most humans have to crawl before they walk; walk before the run; mumble before they speak.. etc.. Some skills you learn in life just so you have the fundamental knowledge to learn the subsequent intermediate and advanced skills. Unless of course you were born with all knowledge of everything in future. In that case why did you even bother posting?
Going by the pictures I would keep this away from children:
http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=page&page=learners
It depends though, what about the kid who uses Windows 95 in kindergarten in 1996, then moves up to using Windows 98 in 1999, uses XP in school in 2002 and Vista in 2007, by 2008 the kid is out of high school. All the while even with later upgrades, the kid never has much of a learning curve, you can even extend it to college where he can continue using Vista till at least graduation time.
Its not the 70s, and its not the 80s, computer UI interfaces are pretty standard, especially among OS families. About the last major change to an OS that totally redesigned it was OS X and that was back in 2002.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
A word of caution. In the U.S., asking for sugar on your stick is only legal in Nevada and Rhode Island.
Fact1: Kids are not learning any OS. They are learning to navigate a UI and exposing them to multiples enhances critical thinking instead of rote memorization.
Fact2: The OS means nothing, there are near ZERO highschools teaching an OS, and negative 10 grade schools teaching an OS. From your logic, people should be crying in the streets because the iphone is not like windows.
And yes, if the programming classes in highschools did fortran or cobol instead of the abortion that is basic. From my daughters experience her Computer science class at her highschool was a complete and utter joke.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Is a sugar stick anything like a disco stick?
With my new invention, what I call "The Sugar Stick", Bender has been given god-like abilities and can breathe new life into millions of decrepit old machines!
A previous fork named Sugar On My Tongue was deemed inappropriate for children.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
There is a boot helper CD available, see http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry under the section "Boot it!"
Great! Now there is a real chance that many teachers can test this new learning platform.
-- bzg
There is a CD spin too, but the USB solution means the kid can do stuff in school, then come home, boot up the old computer and show her parents what she did right off the stick.
That's a good point, we went from Apple II computers, to those obnoxious 9" early Macs to combinations of first-gen (and maybe second?) Pentium PCs and Macs from the same era in my progress through grade school.
That's a pretty big change.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I would call that kid less prepared than the one who used an Apple II in 4th grade, Windows 98 in H.S., and Linux and XP in college (Side note, I know that guy)
The sharks don't have laser.
Less prepared for what? Sure, that kid probably won't be very good with technology, he will probably never go into IT though. Anyone who wants to be in IT would have diversified their skills (unless that kid really really wants to be a MS developer). The thing is, schools, particularly elementary and high schools cater to who needs the least amount of tech. Considering that Windows is A) Available on most computers (x86 at least) B) Has Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc that are all somewhat used in the business world, and C) Most every teacher already knows how to use them. Is why they choose to stick with Windows, and honestly, even though its not going to prepare a kid for any sort of IT career, it works great for people who are going to need secretary-level tech or below.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I started with BASIC on a Commodore 16, moved to a 128 with 64 mode. With a basic introduction to it, I taught myself machine language for the 6510 using a chip reference book.
Then I started working on the IBM clone computers at work. I would definitely say that had I gone as in depth with an IBM clone rather than a Commodore 64, I would have been better prepared for coding on 80386's.
If you are talking about learning a GUI, several of us here switched to Mac OS X. That was about a month long learning curve, and over a year later I still don't know all the shortcuts I know in Windows.
Yea, it does make a difference what you learn on. Our schools were on Mac's a few years back. Now they run Vista on Dell. While I love the Mac, it's not what my kinds need to be learning in school.
> Bender said, 'we can breathe new life into millions of decrepit old machines.'
If it doesn't work, I wonder if we can bite his shiny metal ass?
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
I know, individually, what all the words/acronyms mean but when put together in that order, they make no sense to me.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Re the headline, they're also working on backup software to automagically push a kid's work to a centralized (in the school) backup server, thus enabling the sticks to be replaced without data loss if the stick itself is misplaced.
Maybe if this signature is witty enough, someone will finally love me.
Not every country in the world treats it's children like morons in school, thereby generating morons. Perhaps you are totally ignorant of the fact that several governments are migrating to Linux, and encouraging populations to migrate. The official operating system in China happens to be Red Flag. Google it - but I warn you, you may be exposed to ideas and concepts foreign to American capitalist ideals. Nor is it only a communist country that is migrating. A number of articles have been written in recent months about South American countries migrating to open source operating systems.
If we in the United States weren't totally retarded, our school kids would be learning computer science in school. Any junior high school student should be able to compile a kernel, and be capable of installing multiple operating systems.
Schools in the states may or may not use this thing, on an individual school district basis. But schools around the world are adopting Linux. Don't you ever wonder why we seem to be losing the cyber war to China? They hack into everything we have, and our Microsoft establishment shakes their fists impotently. Makes you proud to be American, doesn't it?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
From the demo video, I've got to wonder what the they were thinking. This doesn't seem like a kid-friendly UI.
http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=gallery&page=media_01
The intial interface showing what I assume is the "neighborhood" view of other Sugar users/machines (arranged in cum-by-ya campfire circles) is cute, but seems more designed for a Movie than for actual use (cf Jurassic Park's "Oh, it's Unix! I know that!" interface where they zoom down from a building view to an individual computer).
One you get past this odd and confusing initial user interface it seems you're using traditional apps like the Editor/Word Processor they show.
Maybe there are other elements of Sugar that are better designed or more innovative, but the demo doesn't seem too compelling.
...if the old codebase is not maintained: http://dev.laptop.org/git/sugar/
and the original copyright owner switches to the new codebase:
http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2009-May/024487.html
Hey I used a Commodore 64, which can be directly compared to the iPhone. Don't you remember the /. article a few days ago?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
the best thing a school can teach a kid is how to learn. Teaching a kid to "use a computer" is not nearly as valuable as teaching a kid how to learn how to use a computer. A kid who was taught how to use 3 very specific applications on exactly 1 operating system is going to be in deep trouble (or at the very least a nuisance to his IT department) when he starts a job that uses a custom application to do 90% of his work. Trust me on this one, I work in that IT department
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In my case, it made me comfortable with the command line, so I didn't have a conniption when I was presented with an MS-DOS prompt.
This fact was quite useful when I started playing with djgpp and then actual Linux.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Any junior high school student should be able to compile a kernel
I want to reply, but all I can think of is a quote from Futurama. "Like putting too much air in a balloon!"
Interesting.
You can boot from a CD as well as a stick, if your system can't boot a USB device.
Go to http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry and look at "Boot it", where it says: "If your machine doesn't support that (booting from USB), download and burn: http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/soas-boot.iso". It's a small 8MB bootloader that easily fits on a CD.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Kind of reminds me of something one of my college Computer Science professors told us. He said that everything he taught us would be obsolete by the time we graduated, but we'd be able to use the basic principals of his teachings going forward. Sure enough, coding simple C programs (not even C++) isn't my day-to-day job, but I took those concepts and use them every day in my job as a web developer.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
In terms of schooling, kids *are* learning an OS, and it's whatever OS their school uses. (Yes, kids today are more than likely learning an OS at home, too).
No, schools don't offer "Windows XP" courses or tell kids about preemptive multitasking, processes, drivers, etc. but that doesn't mean they aren't, by virtue of being taught to use a particular computer that runs a particular OS, learning *that* OS.
Introductory computer education, even at the college level, suffers from a lack of ability to imbue far transfer, the ability of the students would be able to perform the same tasks in a different paradigm, whether it be OS or software suite. Students learn how to do the task in for example Word 2003 on Windows XP, but would be lost trying to do the task in OpenOffice on OSX. I think your view of computer education is optimistic and tinged by your own technical ability.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I don't have a USB stick handy but I just tried the VirtualBox image and it didn't work. The errors aren't very kid friendly. Kernel Panic.
Sure, but the problem is there is no real way in a 50 minute class period to teach a kid how to use a computer without the focus being on how to use Windows, Word, PowerPoint and Excel and without a doubt no way with the sub-par teachers that make up 75% of all public educators. Very little of what I know about computers came from formal classes, and about all formal classes really taught me was how to program. Learning computers takes time, money and motivation. Most public schools have none of them.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Because omnipotence got really boring after you developed air conditioners.
Anyone know where I can get a 30,000km wide magnifying glass?
God
who built the cathedral of Saint Denis:
http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/ARTH/ARTH212/gothic_texts.htm
The goal of the project is not even to teach computer science, it's just to teach. The computer is a tool just like books or paper and pen.
While I admit that Sugar on a Stick sounds slick and should appeal to many kids, isn't the $100 laptop intended for third world countries, where food is scarce. Is this a bit of a political grenade to call it this?
At first I thought "Sugar on a Stick" was a new Jeff Dunham puppet to go with José Jalapeño on a Stick. I was simultaneously pleased and disappointed that I was wrong.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
the best thing a school can teach a kid is how to learn. Teaching a kid to "use a computer" is not nearly as valuable as teaching a kid how to learn how to use a computer. A kid who was taught how to use 3 very specific applications on exactly 1 operating system is going to be in deep trouble (or at the very least a nuisance to his IT department) when he starts a job that uses a custom application to do 90% of his work. Trust me on this one, I work in that IT department
You can't teach a kid to learn. You need to give them tools and resources and freedom and leave them alone until they ask you for help. The education system combines with the economic system to prevent people from having these things, which causes them to be fatalistic and unmotivated. Let people be pioneers and explorers and inventors and they will learn obsessively.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Can someone tell me how many of these old PCs have USB drives fast enough to run an entire OS off of them?
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Yes, you can use Sugar on a Stick with your old PC that doesn't support booting from a USB drive. In this case in addition to the thumb drive you need to make a "helper CD". Your system boots off the helper CD but all the data goes on the thumb drive. This is not just a Live CD to try out Sugar; it's a system children can actually use to do all their work. It's quite impressive and I encourage all Slashdot readers to try it out.
Have you seen Sugar? High school kids won't be doing their term papers in Sugar. It is for little kids. They will be learning about the keyboard, about the mouse, etc. They won't learn an OS, they will learn the basic skills necessary to navigate any of the modern graphical user interfaces. They'll be able to use the computer to practice other things they should be learning in school - reading, math, etc. They will hopefully have an opportunity to associate "fun" and "learning" and get practice using a very powerful tool at a much earlier age than I had the chance to.
What the schools do is irrelevant. It's what the kids do. And what the kids can do with this software is:
Learn to program in Turtle Art (like LOGO), Smalltalk (EToys), or Python (Pippy). ...and a bunch of other stuff.
Download and read free books from Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive.
Write documents with a word processor that allows collaboration: multiple authors of the same document at the same time.
Draw pictures with Activities that support the same kind of collaboration.
Run the GCompris suite of educational Activities, which teach basic math concepts, etc.
Play games that develop thinking skills
Plus, this software does not replace Windows. It runs off a stick. So the school can have a computer lab full of Windows boxes to teach the next generation of office drones, and the kids can still use SoaS on those boxes without interfering in any way with that important task.
I'd like to correct the title of this post. What Sugar Labs is creating is NOT a fork of Sugar. It is the thing itself. There is no other version of Sugar being developed now. Sugar Labs is making Sugar available in all major Linux distros, as well as creating the version that runs on the XO and Sugar on a Stick. All this will make it possible for far more children to be able to use Sugar.
In my case, it made me comfortable with the command line, so I didn't have a conniption when I was presented with an MS-DOS prompt. This fact was quite useful when I started playing with djgpp and then actual Linux.
LOL.
If I was to make a generalised comment on the technical abilities of a young and bright individual asserting that "tech saviness" is the birthright of his generation, or someone who lived through the DOS years, I'd say that in my experience, it's that the latter who is typically more competent and adept.
The former, regrettably, often resembles a mime stuck in a make believe box. Instead of a box, it's usually a web browser.
You can just burn the iso to a DVD, if you prefer, but it is a 1GB image so CD is out of the question.
Correction. The iso is 380 MB, so burning to a CD would work just fine.
Plus, this software does not replace Windows.
Though it could replace Windows. Unfortunately many of the Sugar navigation elements are dependent on the OLPC hardware, and don't work very will on a generic PC.
http://www.mhall119.com
I have no idea which navigation elements you are referring to. I have an XO, I test my Activities on an IBM NetVista running Fedora 10, and I have tried Sugar on a Stick. The one thing the XO does that my other computers don't is it it can rotate the screen image. Handy, but not indispensable. While the XO has special keys for moving between its different views, in fact they are just F1-F4 with different labels. The special keys on either side of the display map to the numeric keypad on a regular keyboard. IMHO Sugar works just fine on any PIII or better machine.
I've heard this so many times about Linux that I'm kinda sick of it. DSL, Puppy, etc... time and again I've found too many gotchas with old video cards, ISA ethernet cards, and out of date BIOSs the manufacturers have stopped hosting upgrades for. I've got a large pile of P1 era equipment that's going to recycling, because I just can't put an OS on any of it that'll run a modern secure browser, & thus make it worth giving to someone.
Sincere kudos to DSL, Puppy, et al, but in my experience hardware support drops off steeply before P3. And a P3 can run a 'buntu variant or PCLOS just fine with eyecandy turned off. If they mean P3s when they say 'decrepit', well they're really not that bad, or hard up for an OS.
(Caveat -- as of Ibex, legacy Nvidia support has bad holes, and some cards can no longer do 3D -- means no GoogleEarth on machines that run it fine on 8.04LTS, which expires in April. The Edubuntu program is going to take a big hit that month.)
Sincerely don't mean to flame here -- I'm only stating that I'm very doubtful about the claim. Theoretical legacy capability does not translate into real-world legacy capability.
You can't teach a kid to learn.
On the contrary, that's about all you can teach kids. Anything else is just guided rote memorization.
You need to give them tools and resources and freedom and leave them alone until they ask you for help. The education system combines with the economic system to prevent people from having these things, which causes them to be fatalistic and unmotivated. Let people be pioneers and explorers and inventors and they will learn obsessively.
That works for some, but not for all. A good teacher guides students in the manner that suits them best, individualizing the experience across the classroom. Kids with high persistence will teach themselves what they need to know, getting help when they REALLY need it, but some need to be led or guided to the knowledge that will be worth the effort for them to retain.
Teaching a kid how to learn is about figuring out what their strengths, weaknesses, and temperament are, and coaching them to turn those innate faculties into knowledge and insight. The same stuff doesn't work for every kid (or adult).
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
While the XO has special keys for moving between its different views, in fact they are just F1-F4 with different labels.
But while the keys are obviously market on the XO, they are not on generic PC keyboards. Also, most of the Sugar interface was designed around the dual-mode display of the XO, which is why it is so heavily black and white, which actually makes it quite eye-straining on a CRT or standard LCD.
http://www.mhall119.com
First of all, I think for a meaningful discussion on this issue we need to be clear what we are talking about. "Teaching kids how to learn" is pretty vague, especially with that darned difficult to understand word "how." Anyway, I agree with you partly and with ShieldW0lf partly, as he is correct in letting children explore and play (until a certain age) and that the current "educational system" is anything but, and you are correct in your latter part, although it is somewhat obvious or at least should be. I disagree with you when you seem to imply (sorry if that's not the intent) that rote memorization is somehow bad, as memorization for young children is particularly powerful. The method by which it is done is really the issue -- children under say age 7 or 8 should not be held to a curriculum and should not be pushed in the same way one could push an older person. They memorize simply by mimicry and we take for granted all the diverse actions that children memorize and thus perform -- our jobs as parents would be unbearably difficult if this were not so.
Anyway, I will provide a link to Dorothy Sayer's excellent essay "The Lost Tools of Learning," in which she addresses these issues in much more depth and more eloquently. As a muslim, the essay is particularly relevant as it is a reaffirmation our traditional method of upbringing (although we generally would replace Latin with Arabic, but nonetheless). This piece is more important now than when it was first issued in 1947!
http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html
It's not a 'fact' that the UI is terrible.
Would I want to use it as my day to day UI? No, but I think that it does have some interesting ideas and can be useful for its intended use -- educational usage.
Because "everybody" knows if you don't buy Microsoft software, you are "stealing" software. After all, you can't run a computer without a Microsoft, can you? An absolute certain zero-tolerance policy violation! Expulsion and jail time certain! Turn back young lad, for you have done evil.
I haven't seen any Commodore PETs or Apple IIcs anywhere lately, and yet I, and everyone I grew up with, seem to be getting along just fine.
If I had mod points I'd mod everyone who spouts this ridiculous meme as a troll, because really, that's all it is.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
i was reading BBC News and noticed that Sugar on a Stick is targeted at old PCs, well a lot of old PCs are not capable of booting from USB devices, a live CD would be more apropriate...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Emacs?
*ducks real low*
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
amazing how a little "children can actually use" and "all slashdot readers" juxtaposition can lead an insightful comment to +5 funny. you know, a little mixed bag wouldn't have hurt (I just ran out of mod points).
The way I see it, we are in a good disposition to try and judge the technology. Readers of /. should try it out. It has other potential uses as well. I have already been using Ubuntu in this fashion for about 6 months now. It is absolutely phenomenal. And if you will indulge some self-promotion - http://slaps.sf.net/ is what I use this thing to boot (aside from occassional regular docs). I have a work environment almost exclusively windows, and now I have a means to use my home-brew software to dramatically cut costs.
When all else fails, try.