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OLPC Fork Sugar On a Stick Goes 1.0

Posted by Soulskill on from the one-easily-lost-usb-stick-per-child dept.

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.'"

10 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Old computers boot from USB? by DigitalReverend · · Score: 3, Informative

    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?

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    1. Re:Old computers boot from USB? by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's an .iso image written to a USB stick with Fedora LiveUSB Creator. Linky link

      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.

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    2. Re:Old computers boot from USB? by Runaway1956 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Parent has been modded up. Should have been modded down - maybe "-5000 Failed to read link"

      Clicking on the links, and browsing the site, one learns that he must download a standard 320MB ISO of a CD. Using this image, one then creates either a bootable CD or USB drive. If a guy really wants to run Sugar from the USB, but he can't boot from the USB, he can burn a "Boot Helper" CD, which apparently loads the kernel, then looks to the USB stick for the rest of the operating system.

      I hope you're not representative of your local gene pool.

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  2. Re:DamnSmallLinux by mspohr · · Score: 4, Informative
    DamnSmallLinux is great for Linux you can boot from a stick but Sugar is educational software and DSL does not have any of the Sugar programs or server components.

    OLPC is an educational project, not a computer project.

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  3. Use the boot helper CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is a boot helper CD available, see http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry under the section "Boot it!"

  4. Re:Problem is.... by amram9999 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    There is a boot helper CD for older computers like this. The beauty is that the OS on the computer is untouched, since Sugar runs from memory not the hard drive. Additionally, all progress is saved to the USB drive, so the stick is portable from computer to computer.

  5. USB better, stores the kid's data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  6. Re:It's not a fork by lfaraone · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...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

    Correct. OLPC is in fact becoming the new downstream of Sugar, pulling in the new packages in future OLPC distro releases.

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  7. Re:Does he really think schools are going to do it by joebok · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  8. Just burn it to a CD! by iYk6 · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.