Filed under: OS Updates, News, Windows, Linux, Open Source
OLPC Sugar OS takes on a life of its own, will anybody care?
by Brad Linder May 16th 2008
The OLPC team yesterday announced plans to load Windows XP on XO Laptops in a handful of countries in June as part of a limited trial. By September, Windows could be available to any developing nation placing orders for XO Laptops. And today, Walter Bender, the former president of software for the OLPC Foundation says the unique software interface that was designed for the XO Laptop will live on. Maybe.
Here's a little background. The XO Laptop was designed to be a cheap laptop that could be distributed in developing nations to help bridge the digital divide. The original plan for the XO was to use Linux as an operating system because it's cheap, works well on low-powered devices, and because it's open source anyone could write software for it easily. A unique desktop environment called Sugar was built to make Linux more user-friendly. But many governments have been reluctant to place orders for the laptops because they don't run Windows, which is the desktop operating system used by most of the rest of the world. So the OLPC Foundation has been working with Microsoft to bring a low cost version of Windows XP to the XO.
But what does that mean for Sugar? Walter Bender says Sugar Labs, a new non-profit will develop new versions of the software. The goal is to continue developing open source software for the XO so that children in developing nations will be exposed to open source applications and ideals as they learn about computing. The question is, if Windows XP is available for just $3 more than Linux, will anybody buy the Linux/Sugar version? Yes, we know that many Download Squad readers would be more interested in the Linux models, but if the goal is to give school-age children in your country computer literacy, wouldn't you want them to use the same software that most students in countries like the US are using?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Alex M said 11:45AM on 5-16-2008
As I understand it, the OLPC goal was not to lock children into a technology, but to introduce them to computers in an open, friendly way.
What will a kid with WXP do? Browse the web, use Office, play Minesweeper, full stop.
Sugar has some very interesting educational
"activities," like eToys, TamTam and Record (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities) that I think are miles ahead in terms of what they can teach to a child versus a standard installation of WXP.
OLPC was meant to get kids familiarized with *computers*, not with an operating system. Windows teaches Windows; Sugar has the potential to teach a lot more than "Linux".
Reply
James said 11:50AM on 5-16-2008
Actually, Windows *with no software installed* teaches Windows, Linux only teaches "more than just Linux" because most distros now ship with several thousand extra packages installed/available. The dirty little secret is that almost all of them are available through Cygwin, and would fit on a single DVD (or the slack space on the OLPC SDD). Granted you can't look at/fiddle with the internal workings of the kernel or anything, but when was the last time you saw a 7-year-old do that anyway?
I like the idea of the project a lot, and I like that using an open OS let them experiment with more radical ideas like the ultra-low-power mesh network mode or the Bitfrost security model, but in the long run I think the kids would be happier if they at least have the option of using the OS with the largest market share.
whiskey said 9:02AM on 5-17-2008
The first fix is free, then you get hooked... now you need this stuff to live. What's that? Oh, you want more? You have a price to pay. What do you have to do to pay it? Well, that part is left for you to figure it out. I won't be giving you anything more if you cannot pay the price.
James said 11:46AM on 5-16-2008
If you ever wanted to know what ten thousand overweight guys in their mothers' basements crying sounds like, just cock your ear and listen.
/runs
Reply
Todd said 11:58AM on 5-16-2008
Sadly the Evil Empire has succeeded in killing the XO, ensuring millions of poor kids will never be allowed to think for themselves and be good little pod people. Battle lost, but the war continues, with Ubuntu Mobile installed on throw away "Fisher Price" style phones;
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/mobile
I wonder what prescription only sleeping pills the execs at Intel and Microsoft use, since their guilty conscious keeps them awake at night, reminding them of their greed at the expense of uneducated, defenseless little kids.
Reply
BrianM said 12:18PM on 5-16-2008
Did you decide to (conveniently) forget/not read this little bit:
"But many governments have been reluctant to place orders for the laptops because they don't run Windows..."
You want to pitch a fit, direct it in the proper direction. Otherwise you just look ignorant, like you need to improve your reading comprehension. Of course, this IS the internet....
Philip said 12:25PM on 5-16-2008
yah but what is sad is that linux users think the saem way..
thay think thay are so mutch supperior then windows..and osx thinks its bedder then both..
god this sounds alot like religion
linux is jubyisem windows is christanaty and mac is islam..
thay all think thay are bedder and more supperior then the rest..and try and force thair belifes on everyone elce..
i say let the custamer deside...
give them ALL and SD card with sugger installed on it..
rather then take up valuable disk space dul booting..
Matias Korhonen said 1:14PM on 5-16-2008
Why don't they just ship the XO with a normal Linux GUI? Gnome, KDE, XFCE, anything...
Reply
Christina Warren said 2:59PM on 5-16-2008
The thought was that the current distros would still be too difficult for non-computer literate users and installing additional software would be too hard. I always thought it was a lame argument too -- but whatever. In the end, creating a dumbed down distro that makes the PC seem less usable can only create a perception that it isn't a real device, whereas if it can run Windows, all open source arguments aside, it seems to the uninitiated and to those with limited access, like it is a "real" device.
Wayne said 11:29AM on 5-17-2008
Well, there really isn't any such thing as a "Linux GUI". Neither UNIX, nor any of the UNIX clones like Linux, have ever had a native graphical interface. Instead, the X-window system (a "network transparent graphical environment") an independent and portable system is used as the GUI for UNIX-type systems. KDE, Gnome, and XFCE are unique graphical environments which run on top of the X-window system (which runs on top of Linux).
While a command line Linux system is very resource efficient, the shear bloat of something like KDE running on top of X running on top of the Linux system will totally overwhelm the little 433MHz Geode processor the XO is based on. Keep in mind as well, in order to keep power requirements to a minimum, the XO does not have a heavy duty GPU the CPU can off load the graphics to.
Examples: I have built "Linux from scratch" on an old 100Mhz 486 computer and it runs just fine (slow building all the libs, but runs great in the end). But, as far as being able to run X on that machine - forget about it! I also have an old 450MHz PIII computer which I routinely try out different Linux distros on. This computer would be close to the XO in terms of processing power (probably a little faster, actually). I can tell you, KDE and Gnome are so slow it's too painful to even use these environments on that computer. XFCE is much faster and actually usable, but still not much fun on such a machine. And I'm talking about the "lighter" distros, like Xenwalk, etc.
The OLPC team had to create a Linux system with a GUI which would work decently on the little XO laptop. None of the existing distros worked with the limited power and disk space of the OLPC. The version of WinXP that MS has created to run on the XO is also specially made for that laptop. It is not the XP that ships on standard computers. It would probably take the XO laptop 10 minutes to even boot up a standard copy of XP, assuming that it could even run it...
hazard said 9:01AM on 5-17-2008
I think it's a real shame that MS got their mits onto the XO as [idealistically] I think it would have been much better for the OLPC team to stick to their guns and introduce as many people as they could to a completely different GUI paradigm. However, commerical reality being what it is, MS has a lot of money to throw around and obviously too much for the OLPC team to resist :(
Nonetheless, if they have the HDD space they should provide the option to dual boot, so if you elect to use XP you don't lose the ability to use Sugar. That way everbody's happy .. except [of course] the MS haters.
Reply
Rocketboy said 9:00PM on 5-18-2008
What the same is that OLPC wasted so much time and effort creating it's own OS, as opposed to working on an application that would work on any OS. That way, Linux for the countries that don't care, and XP for the countries that do. If you do a little reading, you'd see that the lack of XP was the dealbreaker for many countries. The other shame is that the 'theories' why OLPC would work have NEVER been proven to. And the theory has been around for quite some time. Or that NickNeg is so self important that he thinks that any for profit company that is doing the same thing that he is is evil. Even when they create a better product.
Reply
JayMonster said 5:16PM on 5-19-2008
Plain and simple, the SugarOS was a bust. Even computer literate people found it a bit... odd and unintuitive (and ugly). That is not a knock on Linux, but on the GUI they put on top. With this less that ideal interface, you go to sell this idea on a 3rd World country, and they see it as crap being dumped on them rather than the OS that the "rest of the world" is using.
Nothing wrong with an alternative OS to XP though... just fix it and try again.
Reply