Walter Bender — Taking Sugar Beyond the XO Laptop

waderoush writes "While the One Laptop Per Child Foundation tries to reboot after drastic staff cuts, Sugar, the original open-source graphical interface for OLPC's XO Laptop, is rapidly evolving into a stand-alone learning platform that can run on any PC. Walter Bender, who left OLPC last year to start the non-profit Sugar Labs, has given a detailed interview about 'Sugar on a Stick' — the USB drive that allows any machine to boot into the Sugar environment. Bender also describes the Sugar upgrades coming in March — including better tools for file management, portfolio presentations, and Python code hacking — and talks about his hopes for expanding Sugar Labs and getting Sugar into more classrooms than OLPC can reach through its hardware."

XO Security Model

[Anonymous Coward]

What I found most interesting about the OLPC wasn't Sugar, the networking, or even the hardware. It's the Bitfrost security system, which is a different take on implementing security. [wikipedia.org]

To my mind, it presents a radical way of approaching security, and seems entirely different from that taken by Microsoft. That is, instead of locking out applications based on whether they have proper credentials, it locks applications out based on bad behaviors.

I'd like to see this approach taken and explored more fully. Linux and other Open Source OSs will be facing more exploits and attacks, and a security model based on how trustworthy an application behaves instead of the credentials it carries seems a much saner approach.

Re:like etch-a-sketch,sugar = a "tool for expressi

[ElSupreme]

A lot of people bash the environment as being bad. But I doubt they use it. It is a bit different that a PC/MAC but really other than file storage (which you can do via the terminal the old fashioned way) it is really a good interface. I actually have one, and would use it more if I actually bought a USB keyboard. That keypad is not much better than a cell phone qwerty pad (other than the spill resistance and cool green color).

Re:eh?

[corsec67]

My TV has a USB port. (It is there for firmware updates)

Can this boot Sugar on to my TV?

Re:Schoolkey

[mhall119]

I have my own XFCE desktop with educational games, aimed at slightly younger kids (aged 3 and up), that I developed for a charity.

See http://www.quinncoincorporated.org/ [quinncoincorporated.org] for screenshots and a beta download of a CD ISO.

Re:like etch-a-sketch,sugar = a "tool for expressi

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Orrrr.... as numerous studies have shown, when someone does not have preconceptions they can adapt much easier. Similarly the younger someone is, the more they can adapt to change.

But, meh. Easier to blame the users, yes?

Re:eh?

[mhall119]

If your TV can boot from the USB port, then it more than likely can.

Re:View Source

[mhall119]

And an operating system shell needs to be both fast and solid. Sugar is neither.

Sugar, if I recall, is basically an application launcher running the Matchbox window manager, with a consistent look and feel between applications. In that respect, Sugar is not an OS Shell at all.

The second problem is the code isn't simple like BASIC used to be. It's object-oriented event-handling GUI code that uses containment based layout, multiple libraries, sound servers, uses magic numbers etc. It'd be hard to figure out for an adult, let alone somebody new to programming.

While you are largely correct, I think you missed the point. The kids that would be using sugar aren't going to read the python code and try to determine what the program is doing. Rather, they will look for something that looks vaguely similar to what they want to change, change something about it, and see what happens. Repeat enough times, and they're starting to get an understanding of Python and programming. I don't know about you, but when I saw my first program code, I didn't read it top to bottom for an understanding, I skimmed it for words that I was interested in, and started changing stuff.

Re:Schoolkey

[gnick]

Thanks for that link. I have a 4 year old who does just fine in Windows (I haven't introduced him to Linux - I've got my Linux side set up for work and Windows for play), but I'm reluctant to really let him loose because I don't want him mucking things up (wiping my desktop out, shuffling files around, deleting my porn, etc). For some reason, it had never occurred to me to just give him his own disposable OS to play with that was set up specifically for educational games/tools - And it looks like the desktop you put together fits the bill quite nicely. If all goes well, I hope to just configure a drive for him and let him keep it to boot into when he wants to play.

I just ordered a 2 GB thumb drive from Amazon and have SOAS and Qimo downloading to try out - Thanks again, I look forward to trying it.

Re:like etch-a-sketch,sugar = a "tool for expressi

[Mr. Slippery]

A lot of people bash the environment as being bad. But I doubt they use it.

I don't use it because it's bad. I tried, but Sugar is a bad idea dreamed up by theorists attached to their ideas of how children should learn, not on any actual observation or testing.

Re:Schoolkey

[mhall119]

Please send us feedback (email is on the website) on Qimo. We're going to be releasing our final 1.0 version very soon with much better artwork. Watch http://www.qimo4kids.com/ [qimo4kids.com] for our future website for the distro.

Re:Sugar is why OLPC is dumping Linux

[Tetsujin]

Sugar just couldn't deliver. Anybody with a clue about software development could have predicted it.

Just look at the mess:

We write an ENTIRELY NEW and FULLY INCOMPATIBLE toy interface in a REALLY SLOW language that is only mildly popular with free software programmers.

Python is "only mildly popular" with free software programmers? That's news to me...

I agree with what you say about using fundamentally inefficient programming tools on resource-limited hardware. Low-power hardware can do quite a lot if you really code with your target platform in mind. But another thing to consider is that they only have limited resources to develop this thing - if writing in Python can reduce the time it takes to write all this stuff then I think it's still the right choice.

A key question to consider is how much of the system is really written in Python, versus how much is implemented as a library in C. Obviously GTK as a whole is a C library - presumably a lot of other things are implemented as compiled libraries as well. Even on a slow system, optimization doesn't have to go all the way to the top.

So why not just use a regular Linux desktop? Probably the goal was to have something specifically tailored to the machine and what it was intended to do... To organize the machine specifically for educational purposes. There's a lot in a typical Linux desktop that doesn't serve that goal - and some that might, but which won't support the XO's mesh networking or Sugar's mechanisms for organizing data. So if they were to re-use existing apps, there would be a lot of work to do adapting them.

As for moving away from Linux and to XP - probably the people getting these machines are attaching a higher perceived value to getting XP on the machines than to getting Linux -- any Linux. The OLPC group's goal is to maximize the machine's usefulness while minimizing its cost... They don't specifically seek to promote free software.

I don't know. I think there's more merit to this whole sugar thing than you suggest.