One Laptop Per Child News on Software

Sugarize it: Intel Classmate 2

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Guest Writer in Software: Operating System

L. Aaron Kaplan is the founder and an active member of OLPC Austria, where he has, among other projects, ported Sugar to the original Classmate PC.

Finally, finally, finally!! I and a few folks have been living with a secret. And of course I wanted to share this as soon as possible. But some events at work (the famous DNS Bug) kept me massively busy. And since work is - well work - you earn a living from it - it got priority. However this nonetheless does not make the secret any less important nor interesting.

Sweet Sugar!

So, what is it about? What's it about? Hm, let's think... the title says "sugarize it". Sugarize what?

As you probably know, sugarlabs.org became independent from OLPC with Walter Bender starting a new organization to continue the dream of an open source user interface for OLPC and for other laptops.

I have been already "ported" Sugar to the Intel Classmate 1. Back then I was quite disappointed with Intel. I did not do any precise tests but it just felt s.l.o.w.
Also Wayan was ranting against the Classmate 1. I agree - the version 1 was not particularly competitive against the XO in my opinion. But is the Classmate 2?

(tada, enter the culprit...)

Silverthrone CPU next to a Penny

So, well... now I received a Classmate 2 with Atom chipset (no, you can't get them yet as far as I know, but you will soon be able to get one for sure). Actually - the fact the you will indeed be able to get them will already be a remarkable difference compared to OLPC's "you can look but not buy" marketing.

Not only did I get a Classmate 2 from Intel, they were even happy to supply one! This was almost a shock for me - compared to the constant pushing I had to do at OLPC's doors to be allowed to contribute and to be granted some resources. Way to go Intel!

So - again - what can we do with that brand new sample version of the Classmate 2 (Atom based)? Can it compete with the XO? Is the CPU really finally fast and power aware at 2.5 Watts? Uhum...

Sugarizing the Classmate 2

Sugarizing gallery

Since the Classmate came already with Ubuntu 7.10 installed, we had to update it to 8.04 over the wifi network. Wait! Did I just write "over the wifi network"? Yes, actually that worked out of the box. So, some 45 minutes later all packages had downloaded and were installed.

The next step was to install Sugar. One way would be to use a Live CD which in in general is well maintained. We instead chose to install Sugar directly as Debian packages. We simply followed the wiki pages and found that the packages were not 100% up to date. We could have re-build everything from scratch using jhbuild but according to Daniel this would have taken a long time to build. So, we decided to live with the fact that in the version we tried the browse activity did not work correctly. For sure a more recent version will fix this.

Summary: installing Sugar on the Classmate is rather easy. Just follow the instructions.

So! How does it look like? Does everything work?

Classmate 2 sugarized!

Camera: Works. Has a pretty decent resolution. Enough for kids to take pictures of things and share it over the network.
Sleep mode: Works. Some minor issues on resume.
Keyboard: Usable. Still a bit small but you get used to it.
Trackpad: Usable. Could be improved with better driver support so that scrolling works better.
Screen resolution: 1024x600 - usable. I miss the reflective display. There are still some minor bugs with placement of objects in Sugar. Supposedly fixed in newer releases.
Wifi: Yup! works out of the box. Currently some issues with resuming after sleep mode. Can be fixed.
OpenGL: Yup, you bet! Glxgears runs in 580 frames / sec. Totally smooth. Great! All OpenGL linux games run great. Tuxracer, GCompris, all there..
Sound: Works ok
Microphone: Fine!
Skype: Works. Nice to have a faster CPU than the XO
Flash: Of course it works if you have space for a full blown Redhat or Ubuntu as basis below it. Didn't bother to install gnash. This means....
YouTube: Works! This is one killer feature for deployment in classrooms. Believe it or not, but Andreas Trawoeger has been brave to test out the features of the XO (and other computers) in a school in Vienna for half a year now. And this was one of the feature he bitterly missed on the XO. Kids love watching things on YouTube and uploading stuff to the site.
Google Earth: Well, Google Earth was a bit CPU and memory hungry. That one started to get a bit slow.
Overall Speed: Needless to say, 1.6GHz is actually really usable for most things in a classroom.
Green ears: No :(
Battery life: Well, medium. I got 3-4 hours out of it. I guess more is doable with proper ACPI support. I guess you can do more with proper tuning.
Price: >188 USD. Approximately 315 Euros in the EU. That is definitely higher. Does it pay off? Yes.

Collaboration? Mesh?

Yes, you bet! Collaboration between an XO, the Classmate 2 and an HP 2133 worked out of the box. To be fair, we had a wireless access point in between the three devices since OLPC's 802.11s and Intel's 802.11s won't work together out of the box right now. Sigh, I guess that is why we have standards. Hmmm... did you get the head fake? I will leave you to ponder about it.

Subjective summary:

Collaboration works out of the box.

Well, the good and cosy feeling of "helping the world" is not present anymore. The green ears are missing, the sweetness factor is gone.

... But.. Hey! On the other hand: this small device is for the first time totally usable! It is fast, compared to the others. There is a dramatic speed improvement compared to the Classmate 1. Would I buy the Classmate 1 for kids? No. Would I buy the Classmate 2? Yes.

A friend of mine forgot his laptop at home and he was at my place over the weekend. We had an intensive planning session, lots of research on the web. And since he forgot his laptop at home, he used the Classmate 2. His conclusion? "Totally usable. A bit small for adults." But fast enough.

So everything works more or less out of the box! If you have small fingers it might even be usable for adults. Your kids will not look at it and sigh love it and then leave it in a corner. But they will love it because they can actually do things with it. Like adults. I believe what counts is to give kids the possibility to access information that they would not otherwise get access to. With usable tech. Whatever brand. It's an education project, not a laptop project. Right?

Well done Intel! Congratulations. Credits where credits are due. The Classmate 2 is a solid product! The wikipedia entry of the Classmate will have to be rewritten for the Classmate 2.

Tests by: Daniel Jahre, Helga Schmidt, Andreas Trawoeger, Tano Bojankin, L. Aaron Kaplan @ OLPC (Austria)
Text by: L. Aaron Kaplan

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An Ingenious Ubuntu Experience on 4P Computers

Posted on July 15, 2008 by Jon Camfield in Software: Operating System, Software, Software: Third Party

In May I talked about Ubuntu's Netbook version over at my personal blog, which is designed specifically for the ultraportable, "4P Computing" market. Mark Shuttleworth (Canonical's CEO, the parent company behind Ubuntu) just posted more about the interface design for the "netbook" market:

Mark "Ubuntu" Shuttleworth

Almost universally, they’ve [OEMs] asked for standard Ubuntu packages and updates, with an app launcher that’s more suited to new users and has the feeling of a “device” more than a PC.

The Asus Eee's "basic" mode had a very device-like feel to it and has done reasonably well with it's Xandros Linux backend, and with Ubuntu's star performance as a Linux desktop for the masses, I can only imagine the UX (User eXperience) will be even better, and the review of the current product at Ars Technica sums it up as:

The implementation is, overall, quite ingenious in many ways, but there are still places where it feels a bit clunky. The project is clearly early in its development and we will likely see the rough spots even out as it evolves.

Beyond just a more device-like application launcher and a tabbed window structure; Mark also mentions "two companies that want more radical user interface innovation":

Canonical is participating directly in the design and implementation of one of those UI’s, and we’re integrating someone else’s UI on an Ubuntu base for the second project. I haven’t seen either of those UI’s, for confidentiality reasons, but I’m told that the teams working on them think they have great ideas that will elevate, in different ways, the state of the art.

Now, you've got to wonder who those companies are. Could it be Walter Bender's Sugar Labs? Mary Lou Jepsen's Pixel Qi? Sugar is definitely an innovative UI, and PixelQi's tagline is "The future of portable computing is all about the screen," with a strong focus on holistic computer design and user experience. Other candidates could be OEMs like Quanta (which was planning to produce its own version of the XO laptop.

No matter who it is, Mark concludes;

All in all it will be exciting to see how the netbook era stimulates innovation in the Linux user experience, because there are a lot of companies wanting to build differentiated UI’s on a standard Linux base. And directly or indirectly Canonical will help to bring that innovation to KDE and GNOME and hence to the wider Linux ecosystem.

With any luck, the 4PC market that the OLPC has helped to create will also spawn a new round of UI considerations which traditional software companies (Microsoft and Apple) will be interested in designing for as well, creating functional but light-weight versions of their OS (WinCE hardly counts, Apple's iPhone OS might be a sleeper candidate however).

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The power of Sugar

Posted on May 24, 2008 by Christoph Derndorfer in Software: Operating System, Software: Sugar

While reading one of the hundreds of e-mails related to OLPC that I’ve been finding in my inbox these past few days I realized something: When we’re talking about “Sugar” everyone seems to have a different idea of just what it is. Obviously the lack of a clear understanding of “Sugar” make every discussion about it that much harder.
There are several different perceptions of what “Sugar” is or at least should be. The three most popular ones seem to be:

It's all about Sugar.

(1) Sugar is the User Interface. It’s all about the UI and how information is presented to the user. It’s also a tailored UI in that it’s very much adapted to the target user group, children, instead of the jack-of-all-trades software solutions that we’re used to.

(2) Sugar is really the technology developed for OLPC. It’s the underlying services used on the XO such as collaboration, the presence service, the data store and so on.

(3) Sugar is the overall user experience on the XO. It’s been argued that Sugar really is the combination of both the UI and the underlying technologies and that separating one entity from the other would break the whole concept.

Here is my (slightly philosophical) take on the situation: Sugar is a “gravitational force” when it comes to developing software, content and services for educational purposes.

Allow me to elaborate. During an interview with Apple’s Steve Jobs in October 2004 BusinessWeek asked him the following question:

“What can we learn from Apple's struggle to innovate during the decade before you returned in 1997?”

Steve Jobs replied:

“… Lots of companies have tons of great engineers and smart people. But ultimately, there needs to be some gravitational force that pulls it all together. Otherwise, you can get great pieces of technology all floating around the universe. But it doesn't add up to much. … There were bits and pieces of interesting things floating around, but not that gravitational pull.”

Wanted: more Sugar.

To me Sugar is that gravitational pull. None of the technologies and concepts embodied in Sugar are fundamentally new. What’s new is the unique combination of a very different approach to key aspects of computing: the desktop metaphor, information storage and retrieval (Journal) and the fact that collaboration is a “first order experience” (as Walter Bender put it). It’s this combination that makes Sugar unique and sets it apart from much of the other available software solutions.

Sugar is currently very much focused on providing a platform for laptop-based educational purposes but I can see the principals embodied in Sugar working on a variety of different devices, in different applications and for different services. In the short-term I imagine Sugar becoming available for community-based internet-cafés, computer-labs in schools and similar scenarios that are relatively closely connected to the mission at hand. I believe that services will follow suit, for example educational platforms such as Moodle being tailored to fit into an XO and school-server based environment.

Taking it a step further it’s not that hard to envision “Sugar” coming to a device near you from the much-discussed computing cloud, basically being a Web-based service that you can use from any connected device at your disposal. In that sense it reminds me of Microsoft’s slogan when it announced its HailStorm initiative many moons ago:

“Any time, any place and on any device.”

To conclude, we can spend a lot of time discussing what Sugar is or should be, whether the technology running in the background should be decoupled from the UI or if it should be ported to Windows and OS X. The fact remains that Sugar is a strong gravitational pull for an innovative approach when it comes to presenting information on connected computing devices. To me Sugar is also a good example of Alan Kay’s famous quote:

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

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Ultraportable Ubuntu?

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Jon Camfield in Software: Operating System, Software

Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth

A recent The Guardian interview with Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth reveals this gem:

TG: Will you be coming out with a tailored version of Ubuntu for the ultraportable sector?

MS: We're announcing it in the first week of June. It's called the Netbook Remix. We're working with Intel, which produces chips custom-made for this sector.

Though they're working closely with Intel; with any luck a "lightweight" version of Ubuntu would also be a natural fit for the OLPC (and perhaps Intel's Classmate?). Naturally, the OLPC community already has Ubuntu and other Linux versions and/or window managers running on the XO-1, but further developer support on creating an ULPC/4PC desktop system that can compete feature-to-feature with Windows could be a great asset for the anti-XP/MS/Closed source crowd.

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Who Actually Needs Windows XP on the XO Laptop?

Posted on May 02, 2008 by Guest Writer in Software: Operating System

I am Gaurav Chachra, founder member of OLPC India Student Chapter. Well, I've demonstrated XO to a couple of engineering students in India. And one question is common: Can it run Windows XP?

Looking for Windows XP?

We have been working on Windows since we first saw computers. Switching to a totally new system is a tough thing and not everybody can adapt. Why people demand XP to be available on XO? Because these people are used to Windows. And this has a major impact on acceptance of OLPC in various countries.

But whom are we targeting? Children. Children who are going to get technology in their hands for the first time . And that's where Sugar came in. A platform that works on the psychology of the learning process.

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The New Sugar User Interface Desgin and Development

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Software: Operating System, Software: Sugar

While the brave are updating to the newest build candidate-703, those waiting for the full Update 1, might want to check out the new Sugar designs. There you can get a taste of what the new Sugar may look like:

The Frame surrounds the viewable screen area, remaining just out of sight until activated. This persistent UI element provides useful functionality and information across activities and zoom levels, including info about people in a collaboration, places and activities, objects on the clipboard, and both internal and external devices.

Just for fun, I juxtaposed this new Sugar UI with Alexandre Van de Sande's Aquatic Sugar: The Children's Interface, Translated for Adults on the OLPC News Sugar Forum and had an interesting response.

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Sugar Build 703 - Where Did Activities Go?

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Software: Applications, Software: Operating System

XO laptop update caution

Are you updating your XO to the newest build candidate-703? If so, be warned that this Sugar build is a "blank slate" - it must be customized with activities and content bundles at installation time. Or as LesleyT says:

Holy disappearing activities, Batman! THAT was a nasty shock.

Now that I am prepared, I really like being able to choose my activities, but may I point out something rather obvious? It's damn hard to install activities in sugar without a browser and/or knowledge of terminal.

I really hope there is at least Browse or XO-Get installed when they ship with this new version. The target audience won't have a computer nearby with a USB stick.

While its One Laptop Per Child's intent for a large XO distribution to install a standard package of Activities before they're handed out to children, G1G1 participants would be smart to follow Walter Bender's advice:

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Sugar on Classmate PC: Education 0wned by Open Source

Posted on April 07, 2008 by Guest Writer in Software: Operating System

Clasmmate PC - Sugarized!

I am L. Aaron Kaplan. I recently got a Classmate into my hands (the old one, not the new Intel 2Go next version of the Classmate). Now if the XO laptop is rare in Europe... the Classmate is even rarer.

As a member of OLPC Austria, what is our first idea? Right! A great chance to install our favorite operating system from One Laptop Per Child. So Nadja Igler and me set out to go where no OLPC geek has gone before. We set out on a long fearless journey to free the Classmate from commercial operating systems.

Sugarizing the Classmate PC

Well, it turned out that Sugarizing the Classmate PC was extremely easy thanks to Wolfgang Rohrmoser's wonderful LiveCD. Here is how:

download the current OLPC liveCD and burn it
attach an extern USB drive and insert the CD. Attach the USB CD drive to the classmate
start the Classmate PC, at the boot prompt press TAB and append the following to the boot options: bootoption lb_symlinks=64m
Press ENTER and ... wait...
After some time the Classmate will have booted Sugar.

However you will run in 640x480 mode instead of the 800x480 that the Classmate has. This can be fixed with a proper Modeline in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Same goes for the dpi value. The fonts are too small by default, and you need to correct the font sizes To connect your Sugarized Classmate PC to a network, open a shell, connect a LAN cable and type in: ifup eth0 If your LAN has a DHCP server (most do), you will receive an IP adress. Check that you can ping google or any other IP adress of your choice. No extra configuration is necessary. Web surfing works!

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Windows XO: A New Child-Centric OLPC Development Process

Posted on April 01, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Software: Operating System, Software: Windows

Windows XO Operating System

With the departure of Andres Salomon, One Laptop Per Child is hiring a new Sugar programmer:

As you may have already noticed, some days ago (so not an April fools' hoax) appeared a new job posting in the main laptop.org site: User Interface Developer for Sugar.

So, if you would like to become part of the core Sugar team and help to deliver a new platform for education, please apply!

What Tomeu Vizoso left out of his note is the change in the platform and software development strategy for OLPC. As a way to beat Microsoft at its own game, Sugar will soon be re-named:

Windows XO: A Child-Centric Operating Platform for Learning, Expression and Exploration

Better yet, OLPC is re-aligning its developers to be as child-centric as the name suggests. Windows XO will be developed using an innovative One Child Per Programmer (OCPP) process - each developer will be paired with a child from the developing world. These children will lead the software development process, from use case to bug tracking, and in high-profile Activities, approve every line of Python code.

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Multiple XO Operating Systems and Sugar Everywhere

Posted on March 14, 2008 by Edward Cherlin in Software: Operating System

On January 14, 2008, Wayan wrote,

Ubuntu running Xfce4 on XO-1

"Back on New Year's Eve, I was talking with Bryan Berry of OLE Nepal about different operating systems on the XO for governments who wanted options in addition to Sugar,"

and went on to describe the process of getting Ubuntu onto the XO. But there is more. See also instructions on creating a Debian dual-boot.

At SCALE (Southern California Linux Expo) I took time out from the OLPC booth and invited the various communities to put their software on the XO for dual booting. NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Gentoo, and Knoppix were there, in addition to Ubuntu and Debian. The invitation extends to all other distros, so pass it on.

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This is The End My Friend: Negroponte Says XP on XO in 60 Days

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Software: Operating System, Software: Windows

My opinion: No XP! What's yours?

We all have strong opinions about Windows XP on the XO laptop, and soon according to Laptop Mag, our greatest fears or hopes will be realized:

Negroponte says that a Windows operating system is in the process of being fine-tuned on the XO as we speak. “Microsoft and OLPC are in discussion on how to release it, as well as how to announce,” he said. Negroponte added that the Windows operating system should be available on the XO in less than 60 days.

For me, that paragraph represents the end of a dream. I say that XP on the XO is the end of One Laptop Per Child as an educational project. With a Microsoft operating system, an XO becomes a "$200 laptop", a cheap Toshiba replacement, not an educational learning tool for children.

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OLPC Hacking: Editing the XO Icon Colors and Image

Posted on March 05, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Software: Operating System

At this month's OLPC Learning Club DC meeting, I talked with Luke (aka: ffm) about changing the name of my laptop or the color of my "XO guy" - the XO icon you see when you use the OLPC laptop.

He explained that to change both, its best just to erase the XO config file, and then restart your XO - it would prompt you at startup for new names and colors. Graciously, Luke agreed to make a How To video, so we can all experiment with XO laptop colors and names:

But what if you want to get even more radical than that? Say replacing the XO figure with a whole other image?

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Mini vMac on the OLPC XO Laptop

Posted on February 04, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Software: Operating System

Mac OS on the XO

In your post-Super Bowl daze, did you remember any of this year's ads? Are there any that can compare to the Apple 1984 ad?

That revolutionary marketing experience ushered in the Macintosh, a revolution in computing for 1984. Now that we have the XO laptop from OLPC in 2008, we're in the midst of a whole new revolution, and thanks to John Ralston, the two revolutions are colliding.

John has just added the Mini vMac to the XO laptop.

The Mini vMac emulates Macintosh Plus, the next generation of Macintosh after the 1984 ad, brining that moment in computing history forward for your enjoyment today:

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OLPC Help: How to Install Ubuntu on the XO Laptop!

Posted on January 14, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Software: Operating System, Software: Third Party

Back on New Year's Eve, I was talking with Bryan Berry of OLE Nepal about different operating systems on the XO for governments who wanted options outside of Sugar. In the middle of a rant against XP on the XO, I wondered if we could have a FOSS OS alternative instead - Ubuntu.

So I issued a challenge to the OLPC News Forum: Get Ubuntu on the XO!

Over sixty replies later, and thanks to the extensive work of Moocapiean and Free Like GNU, we now have step-by-step tutorials for two different ways to get Ubuntu on the XO:

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Microsoft Windows XP and Office on the XO Laptop

Posted on January 11, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Software: Operating System, Software: Windows

On the OLPC News XO Laptop Forum, we've had an on-going discussion about dual boot for the XO laptop, but mainly around Ubuntu and Xfce.

We didn't see Nicholas Negroponte's announcement of a Windows XP dual boot on the XO coming. Neither did Microsoft, according to Ina Fried:

"[James] Utzschneider said Microsoft normally wouldn't have even talked about its XO effort this early, but was concerned by statements made by Nicholas Negroponte that suggested Windows was ready to go on the XO.

"We wanted to come out and say flat out that's not the case," Utzschneider said. "Despite all of the rhetoric, we don't think we can have a production version until the second half of 2008.""

But Microsoft is in fact working on putting XO on the XO, just not on a dual boot. Microsoft is designing its low-cost Windows and Office bundle to boot off a 2GB SD Card.

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Windows to the End of a Sugarized Beginning

Posted on January 10, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Software: Operating System, Software: Windows

Not a Red Hat to be seen

Tonight I shed a tear for Sugar. I am in sadness for it. I may even be in morning, here on the eve of my wedding.

I am reading Ivan Krstić blog about Microsoft and I see a repeat of history past in OLPC present. I see the death of Sugar, like so many other GUI dreams.

We will begin with a photo of Microsoft demoing Windows XP on the XO to OLPC. There I see happiness and awe. Geeks all excited about a new technology trick - fitting the fat Windows XP on the slim OLPC XO. Developers in awe of each other's work, a mutual respect of brilliance working together.

And when I read, I hear Ivan's optimism, his exuberance, his dedication to technology innovation:

The folks running this work on the Microsoft side are good people. They have left no doubt in my mind that they believe in what we’re doing and want to play along. I am also confident we have made the right decision at OLPC by embracing their work instead of stonewalling it.

But I must admit I do not share his belief than Microsoft sees One Laptop Per Child, the XO laptop with Sugar, as a configuration they want to play along with.

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Windows Dual Boot XO Laptop: Possible? Permissible? Desperate?

Posted on January 09, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Software: Operating System, Software: Windows

My opinion: No XP on the XO!

XP on the XO is not news, Microsoft announced it was trying to squeeze Windows onto the OLPC laptop in 2006, and talked about their progress late last year.

But the possibility of a dual boot is. And Nicholas Negroponte just told Dan Nystedt of IDG News Service that OLPC is working on a dual Windows/linux boot of the XO laptop:

"We are working with [Microsoft] very closely to make a dual-boot system so that, like on an Apple, you can boot either one up. The version that's up and running of Windows on the XO is very fast, it's very, very successful. We're working very hard to do both," said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC.

But is it possible? In the comments of another post, Winter, a frequent OLPC News contributor has this to say:

There is no room in the current XO for two OS's. It is that simple. To deliver dual boot laptops, they would need up to 8GB storage. But that would be a complete waste of storage space. Furthermore, for a lot of the technology, there is no Microsoft counterpart.

.

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Can the XO Laptop Compile its Own Software?

Posted on December 16, 2007 by Guest Writer in Software: Applications, Software: Operating System

Seeking XO self-compilation

I'm a Canadian still waiting to hear when my G1G1 XO will arrive. In the meantime I daydream how the future of OLPC will unfold.

An interesting milestone that I anticipate will be the day when an XO is able to compile most of its own software. I am curious when and how this will happen, the pros and cons of enabling XO owners to do this, and whether I/we should provide any encouragement to the software developer community to make this milestone happen sooner rather than later.

If you have relevant experience or comments about reaching the self-compilation milestone, I would like to read them in my OLPC News Forum Post on this. I am curious how much extra storage would be needed, how long self-compilation might take (hours or days or weeks?), and whether the process can be substantially automated so that a rusty old programmer like myself could get an XO to self-compile with no outside help aside from a README file.

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