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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.'"

7 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: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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