OLPC Fork Sugar On a Stick Goes 1.0 146
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the one-easily-lost-usb-stick-per-child dept.
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.'"
Re:Old computers boot from USB? (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. Shouldn't it be a bootable cdrom, at least ?
Re:Does he really think schools are going to do it (Score:3, Interesting)
bash
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.
Re:Shades of Jurassic Park Unix (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Old Boxes with fast USB drives (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:DamnSmallLinux (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.