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Comments: 146 +- News: OLPC Fork Sugar On a Stick Goes 1.0 on Wednesday June 24, @07:52AM
Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday June 24, @07:52AM
from the one-easily-lost-usb-stick-per-child dept.
from the one-easily-lost-usb-stick-per-child dept.
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education
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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.'"
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Submission: OLPC fork Sugar (on a Stick) goes 1.0 by Anonymous Coward
Linux: Negroponte Sees Sugar As OLPC's Biggest Mistake 268 comments
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Old computers boot from USB? (Score:4, Informative)
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But, yes, the older hardware not booting from USB is something of an issue. At least for today's older hardware.
But, tomorrow's older hardware is today's current hardware. Just because it is a bit of a limiting factor right now doesen't mean it will be a problem going forward.
Re:Old computers boot from USB? (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. Shouldn't it be a bootable cdrom, at least ?
Parent
Re:Old computers boot from USB? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Well not necessarily. If the 'sugar on a stick' build expects to be able to write to the stick, you'd need to add something like UnionFS in order to be able to run it from a cdrom. Not to mention that you'd need to setup something to keep users' settings in between reboots (e.g. a usb stick).
USB better, stores the kid's data (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.
Parent
Re:USB better, stores the kid's data (Score:4, Insightful)
Why aren't more schools doing something like that? Issue/sell USB flash sticks with the OS on it to kids, that way they can essentially carry their entire computer with them to home and school. Give the kids OS-less computers at school to boot with their sticks, and you can stop spending so much money on OS support for every single terminal.
Parent
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Use the boot helper CD (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!"
Parent
Re:Old computers boot from USB? (Score:5, 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.
Parent
Just burn it to a CD! (Score:3, 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.
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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 represen
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And many of those will be USB 1.0, although (hopefully) that shouldn't pose a problem.
Re:Old computers boot from USB? YES! (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Um, (Score:3, Insightful)
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".
Re:Um, (Score:4, Funny)
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".
Or a compromise between the two.
And no, I don't mean "sugar on a stisk".
Wait for it...
Parent
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That's not what they mean by "Think of the children!" you pervert!
Problem is.... (Score:2)
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.
Really cool project, But it's gonna be hell to un-shovel even the Windows 98 machines in schools as the teachers for the computer classes are highly xenophobic when it comes to OS changes.
Re:Problem is.... (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 [sugarlabs.org] 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.
Parent
Suger is like drugs? (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=page&page=learners [sugarlabs.org]
Re:Suger is like drugs? (Score:5, Funny)
Going by the pictures I would keep this away from children: http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=page&page=learners [sugarlabs.org]
Arrrgh. I need to dim the lights, put on some Pink Floyd and look at that comic strip again.
Parent
Careful! (Score:2, Funny)
A word of caution. In the U.S., asking for sugar on your stick is only legal in Nevada and Rhode Island. [sexwork.com]
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I'm pretty sure hispeed data transfer from male end to the female port would be bad in this case.
Shiny? (Score:3, Funny)
> 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?
Great headline (Score:2)
I know, individually, what all the words/acronyms mean but when put together in that order, they make no sense to me.
Shades of Jurassic Park Unix (Score:2)
From the demo video, I've got to wonder what the they were thinking. This doesn't seem like a kid-friendly UI.
http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=gallery&page=media_01 [sugarlabs.org]
The intial interface showing what I assume is the "neighborhood" view of other Sugar users/machines (arranged in cum-by-ya campfire circles) is cute, but seems more designed for a Movie than for actual use (cf Jurassic Park's "Oh, it's Unix! I know that!" interface where they zoom down from a building view to an individual computer
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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
Old Boxes with fast USB drives (Score:3, Interesting)
It is NOT a fork! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Does he really think schools are going to do it (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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bash
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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?
Re:Does he really think schools are going to do it (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent
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That's a good point, we went from Apple II computers, to those obnoxious 9" early Macs to combinations of first-gen (and maybe second?) Pentium PCs and Macs from the same era in my progress through grade school.
That's a pretty big change.
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I started with BASIC on a Commodore 16, moved to a 128 with 64 mode. With a basic introduction to it, I taught myself machine language for the 6510 using a chip reference book.
Then I started working on the IBM clone computers at work. I would definitely say that had I gone as in depth with an IBM clone rather than a Commodore 64, I would have been better prepared for coding on 80386's.
If you are talking about learning a GUI, several of us here switched to Mac OS X. That was about a month long learning cu
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Re:Does he really think schools are going to do it (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Does he really think schools are going to do it (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
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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
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Not every country in the world treats it's children like morons in school, thereby generating morons. Perhaps you are totally ignorant of the fact that several governments are migrating to Linux, and encouraging populations to migrate. The official operating system in China happens to be Red Flag. Google it - but I warn you, you may be exposed to ideas and concepts foreign to American capitalist ideals. Nor is it only a communist country that is migrating. A number of articles have been written in rece
this ain't no disco (Score:2)
Re:DamnSmallLinux (Score:5, Informative)
OLPC is an educational project, not a computer project.
Parent
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While not as light-weight at DSL, Qimo [qimo4kids.com] provides an educational Linux desktop that runs reasonably well on older hardware.
Disclaimer: I am the developer of Qimo.
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...if the old codebase is not maintained: http://dev.laptop.org/git/sugar/ [laptop.org]
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.