[ubuntu-za] XO MOD groups needed on Ubuntu Forum and Wiki

[Morgan Collett]

Hi David

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 00:04, David Robert Lewis
<ethnopunk at telkomsa.net> wrote:
> Dear Forum, Ubuntu, Clug, Lug, OLPC, XO-Booters,

This mail only came through to the Ubuntu-ZA list. Sugar lists are at
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/, and OLPC lists are at
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/.

> I am writing this as a proposal to save the Sugar XO desktop
> platform/environment within Ubuntu (and my home gnome). Heard that sugar
> was getting dumped in favour of some-other Tux flava and my Gnome is
> like seriously upset, lwhat did it think, I was going to stick to one
> desktop, ignore KDE and all the rest? Once the rabbit is out of the
> habit, is there any way of turning back, I forgot where I was and now
> the evolutionary process?

Uh, what? I'm trying to make sense of what you said. I suggest not
posting after midnight... :)

The desktop software you are referring to is called Sugar. It is found
as an upstream project at http://sugarlabs.org and is overseen by a
non profit organisation called Sugar Labs which was founded by Walter
Bender, ex President of Software of OLPC, who left them after
Negroponte started talking about Windows. Sugar Labs is independent of
OLPC, although it has an OLPC staff member on its board.

"XO" is the name of OLPC's laptop, which ships from the factory with a
custom Fedora-based distribution that is stripped down to fit on the
XO's 1GB NAND flash - with Sugar as the UI.

So Sugar on Ubuntu has nothing to do with the XO.

Anyway, OLPC laid off their entire software development team, except
for two extra-super-critical people - with the result that:

* OLPC are not developing their custom distro any more, and are
looking to the Fedora community to produce a Fedora derivative that
can run on the XO and meet the same needs as the existing OLPC distro.
Fedora includes Sugar, so this will include Sugar - but not
necessarily excluding GNOME or XFCE - on the XO.

* Sugar development is now a completely separate project from OLPC,
and all the developers are "community" (a.k.a. unemployed).

> All I am suggesting (see http://indlovu.wordpress.com) is that the XO
> project is interesting enough to actually develop
> applications/packages/uses. I can't see myself coming up with anything
> of any interest to any of you in Gnome, except of course for the Ubuwiki
> "Data-Mp3" see http://ubuwiki.sourceforge.com which is slowly but surely
> evolving and needs some young minds to tackle the meta-programme goals
> ---- assemble wikispaces of well-known distro's and port them to a
> format that can be carried around in ones pocket - offline.

Do you mean the XO project, or the Sugar project? Again, the XO
project has nothing to do with Ubuntu, unless you want to install
Ubuntu on an XO laptop.

> Okay, so here is the XO Sugar thing - I demand a kickass Music Playa and
> Video-editing suite that will allow everybody, especially global teens
> to whiteboard and mashup in realtime, guess the games will pop in one of
> the activities, let's seperate the game playa from the audio and video
> tools, in an entire XO layer or compartment in which you can code
> without interferences or the need to remember anything.

I'm not sure who you are "demanding" this of, as you don't seem to be
engaging with the right people... Sugar is a meritocracy. The people
who get listened to are those who show up and give to the project, not
vice versa. "Show me the code" is the mantra, coming from the
development team, which states that working code is respected over
PhD-level pi in the sky designs. (Of course, it's really "Show me the
code or artwork or design or website or documentation or whatever else
the project needs...")

The XO laptop is very underpowered, as most affordable systems are
(although in addition it is capable of being recharged by solar power,
cow power and yes even a hand crank) and this rules out blingetybling
video editing etc. Think of it as an ebook reader that by the way can
also crunch some numbers, play some games (with View Source, tweak the
code...) etc. It's the ultimate hackable device, rather than the most
capable device.

Steve Jobs offered MacOS X free of charge, but OLPC turned him down,
wanting Free Software to put the kids in charge. The iPhone and the XO
(or other Sugar-enabled box) are completely antithetical.

> To be able to lock-off spaces or x-zones would be amazing. Imagine this
> you key in your password and boom, the box is an entertainment tool away
> from school. During school, pack your play things away where they can't
> disturb your neighbours. This is pedagologically correct, and why XO
> computing needs some attention, away from the potential clutter of gnome
> once you start wrapping up libraries.

Well, yes, and the latest Nokia smartphones have a dual work/personal
profile system - but OLPC (and Sugar)'s intention has been that there
ought to be no difference between "work" and "play" when it comes to
learning. Hence the first features in use by the children are the
camera and the paint program.

> Found a wonderful Deblib tool that will pack 32 bit for 64. Wish I could
> blueprint, or etch my daily work to a clean slab of silicon and be done
> with the anxiety of backups or not actually having a means of backing
> the machine up. Where is the undo? I've gone and destroyed gnome trying
> to upgrade my system. Details later when I get down to it. So this isn't
> even my own ubuntu that I am writing from and I sound like a total noob.

If you're "packing 32 bit for 64" without knowing what you're doing
(and I don't know what you meant by that) then I'm not surprised
you're breaking things. However, that's all part of learning. I've
broken my system many times, including totally trashing my (work)
system by testing a prerelease of Ubuntu 3 years ago that should have
NONdestructively resized my partitions. By logging the bug report I
helped in some small way to ensure it didn't happen to others...

We've gone from requiring users to type "Yes, do as I say!" when doing
something that might be harmful, to point and click. Most days I think
we are progressing, but it comes at a price...

Regards
Morgan