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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.'"
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
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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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.
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.
OLPC is an educational project, not a computer project.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
There is a boot helper CD available, see http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry under the section "Boot it!"
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.
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.
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)
> 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
...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.
Maybe if this signature is witty enough, someone will finally love me.
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
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.
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.
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.