Sugar on a stick!
The MIT Technology Review has published an article detailing the latest efforts on behalf of the Sugar Labs project. The newest version of the Sugar operating system is designed to install on a USB thumb drive or CDROM. If it is installed on a thumb drive then user files can be written to it and saved in between sessions.
The underlying operating system is built on Fedora 11, which was just recently released. It represents a significant improvement from earlier versions of Sugar. The educational software has greatly improved along with overall stability.
This is an effort that I have been following with great interest since it was part of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. After OLPC decided to stop trying to use Linux in their revolutionary laptop, the main developers of the operating system left to pursue the project further. They have been busily improving the operating system and porting it to different architectures.
The best part is that a $200 computer can now be stored on a $5 USB key:
The open-source education software developed for the “$100 laptop” can now be loaded onto a $5 USB stick to run aging PCs and Macs with a new interface and custom educational software.
“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,” says Walter Bender, former president of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project. “It becomes a whole new computer running off the USB key; we can breathe new life into millions of decrepit old machines.”
It will be interesting to see if this incrementalist approach will be more successful long term than the original vision. Deploying massive amounts of cheap laptops to third world countries has not produced any outstanding successes yet. Time will tell how this works out. For now though, I’m going to try it out with my kids. I’m interested to see how they do with it.
You can find full details on the project in the Sugar Labs wiki.
Posted by Edward Cherlin on June 30, 2009 at 4:54 am
Actually, OLPC never abandoned Linux, but planned to offer dual-boot XOs with both Linux and Windows. I assume that you will be pleased to hear that no country has ordered Microsoft Windows XP for the XO.
http://www.olpcnews.com/software/windows/nobody_buying_windows_xo_laptops.html
There are now several million computers running Linux in the hands of schoolchildren or due to be handed out in the next school year, all of them capable of running Sugar. About 40 countries are involved at various levels from single-school pilot projects to complete national rollouts for every single schoolchild.
Sugar on a Stick will make it much easier for schools to try out the program, possibly by giving students one old, discarded, diskless computer to use at school, and another to use at home. We can reduce the burden of computer recycling significantly in this way.
Uruguay has started up an education blog service, initially for teachers, but soon for all students.
http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/uruguay/update_on_xo_laptops.html
More is needed, and absolutely anyone can take part. See my Web site, http://www.earthtreasury.org/worknet, for an overview, including renewable electric power, Internet access, Free Digital Learning Materials to replace textbooks, and global microfinance for the children to get into e-commerce (initially with their families) and other Information Age jobs. Anything that you know and children around the world don’t is fair game.