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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.'"
Exactly. Shouldn't it be a bootable cdrom, at least ?
-- Let's go Viridian.
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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.
is cute, but seems more designed for a Movie than for actual use
Why that? It is very simple and easy to understand and most importantly it does something that your normal OS can't even do, as other OSs aren't build with group work in mind.
The biggest problem I have with the Sugar interface is that all that talk about zooming interface sound cool, but only till you realize that the OLPC isn't exactly a powerful machine. The machine is just to slow for fluid full screen animation, so every animation that Sugar does, looks kind of jerky and broken on a real machine and it would be much better to have a fast interface, then one that tries things the hardware just can't do.
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.
While not as light-weight at DSL, Qimo provides an educational Linux desktop that runs reasonably well on older hardware.
Disclaimer: I am the developer of Qimo.
http://www.mhall119.com
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.