Fedora, OLPC, and Sugar Labs

[David Farning]

I just want to let those of you who do not follow political intrigue
know that OLPC is spinning off the development of Sugar to Sugar Labs
[1].

Once we get things untangled, we hope that Sugar development can be more
responsive to the needs of other distributions such as Fedora and
Redhat.

If you have any questions or comments about Sugar or Sugar Labs please
feel free to ask on the Sugar development mailing list [2] or contact
me personally [3].

thanks
dfarning

1. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Main_Page
2. sugar(a)laptop.org
3. dfarning(a)sugarlabs.org

[Jef Spaleta]

On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 5:37 PM, David Farning <dfarning(a)sugarlabs.org&gt; wrote:
>  I just want to let those of you who do not follow political intrigue
>  know that OLPC is spinning off the development of Sugar to Sugar Labs
>  [1].
>
>  Once we get things untangled, we hope that Sugar development can be more
>  responsive to the needs of other distributions such as Fedora and
>  Redhat.
>
>  If you have any questions or comments about Sugar or Sugar Labs please
>  feel free to ask on the Sugar development mailing list [2] or contact
>  me personally [3]. 
I'm sort of following it.

Here's the thing... sadly I don't have as much time as I would like to
even start helping with this in a more direct way.

My really big question is what can we do to get the people actually
using the Sugar interface?
And not just the target audience for olpc..but we need to get older
people using the interface as well, people we can get involved in the
development process via bug reports and patches.  I think it really
comes down to being able to provide an alternative Sugar desktop that
our Fedora users can live and work inside of.

Locally I'm in contact with some teachers who are basically sitting on
a pile of slightly dated surplus Dell desktops that the military gave
away. Some have been put in use, but there's still a pile of them. I'd
like to take a few of them and make a Sugar lab, but I'm not really
sure how I can do that from a policy standpoint.  I can't just walk
into the school system and setup a lab. I could try to set one up here
at the university but I doubt anyone would really touch it.  I'm just
not sure how to make effective use of the resource, even if I got my
hands on a few of those computers.


-jef

[David Farning]

On Mon, 2008-07-14 at 10:27 -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:

>  My really big question is what can we do to get the people actually
>  using the Sugar interface?
>  And not just the target audience for olpc..but we need to get older
>  people using the interface as well, people we can get involved in the
>  development process via bug reports and patches.  I think it really
>  comes down to being able to provide an alternative Sugar desktop that
>  our Fedora users can live and work inside of. 
This a unique open source project in that developers are not developing
for themselves.  Many people become involved with a project by
scratching their own itch.  With Sugar, we are (hopefully) helping the
next generation. 

In the end, this will help us.  10 years ago hackers were typified as
loners working away in their parents basements.  Now, many of us are
parents.  We can share our [passion|hobby|job] by setting up a Sugar
desktop for our kids.

>  Locally I'm in contact with some teachers who are basically
> sitting on
>  a pile of slightly dated surplus Dell desktops that the military gave
>  away. Some have been put in use, but there's still a pile of them. I'd
>  like to take a few of them and make a Sugar lab, but I'm not really
>  sure how I can do that from a policy standpoint.  I can't just walk
>  into the school system and setup a lab. I could try to set one up here
>  at the university but I doubt anyone would really touch it.  I'm just
>  not sure how to make effective use of the resource, even if I got my
>  hands on a few of those computers.
>   
Right now, the Fedora community can help by working on a Sugar based
respin so we can increase the size and visibility of our user/tester
base.

thanks
dfarning

[Arthur Pemberton]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 5:27 PM, David Farning <dfarning(a)sugarlabs.org&gt; wrote:
>  On Mon, 2008-07-14 at 10:27 -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
>
> > My really big question is what can we do to get the people actually
> > using the Sugar interface?
> > And not just the target audience for olpc..but we need to get older
> > people using the interface as well, people we can get involved in the
> > development process via bug reports and patches.  I think it really
> > comes down to being able to provide an alternative Sugar desktop that
> > our Fedora users can live and work inside of.
>
>  This a unique open source project in that developers are not developing
>  for themselves.  Many people become involved with a project by
>  scratching their own itch.  With Sugar, we are (hopefully) helping the
>  next generation. 

Maybe it would be a good idea to start targeting potential devs within
school environment world wides. Ie. the guys who could actually
becoming users (sort of) of Sugar.



-- 
Fedora 7 : sipping some of that moonshine
( www.pembo13.com )

[Camilo Mesias]

Surely publishing an image for VMWare (ie. a virtual appliance) would
be the quickest way to let people try out the software (and get
started with developing it?)

It would be very accessible in terms of platforms and would avoid any
hardware specific foibles.

I had a look at the wiki but didn't find any references to VMWare etc.

-Cam

[Bryan Kearney]

Point me at the instructions for building.. and I will spit out the 
appliance for you.

-- bk


Camilo Mesias wrote:
>  Surely publishing an image for VMWare (ie. a virtual appliance)
> would
>  be the quickest way to let people try out the software (and get
>  started with developing it?)
>  
>  It would be very accessible in terms of platforms and would avoid any
>  hardware specific foibles.
>  
>  I had a look at the wiki but didn't find any references to VMWare etc.
>  
>  -Cam
>

[Camilo Mesias]

Hi Bryan,

2008/7/15 Bryan Kearney <bkearney(a)redhat.com&gt;:
>  Point me at the instructions for building.. and I will spit out the
>  appliance for you. 
http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/

I think there's not much more to it than starting with an empty
appliance (with a BIOS?) and installing the distro of your choice. On
top of that you would install the Sugar stuff, then save the resulting
machine image.

You might want to start with the Fedora images above.

I can't take the credit for the link above, but I have used his VMs
from time to time.

I'm sure the usual suspects will be along shortly with warnings of
legal implications and so on :) Even if you don't publish an image as
such (for whatever reasons, legal, disk space, bandwidth or whatever),
a clear set of instructions that have been tested and proven would be
very useful.

My children all use Fedora and I'd be keen to show them Sugar so long
as it's an easy install. If there was a VMWare image I could probably
show it to representatives at the school too. I suppose how well it
would be received would depend on the fit with the curriculum, but
it's worth a try.

-Cam

[Jerry Williams]

http://dev.laptop.org/pub/livebackupcd/build-708+joyride-2024/XO-LiveCD_0806
07.iso

Seems to work pretty well on VirtualBox. http://www.virtualbox.org/


>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: fedora-devel-list-bounces(a)redhat.com [mailto:fedora-devel-list-
>  bounces(a)redhat.com] On Behalf Of Camilo Mesias
>  Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 10:05 AM
>  To: Development discussions related to Fedora
>  Subject: Re: Fedora, OLPC, and Sugar Labs
>  
>  Hi Bryan,
>  
>  2008/7/15 Bryan Kearney <bkearney(a)redhat.com&gt;:
>  > Point me at the instructions for building.. and I will spit out the
>  > appliance for you.
>  
>  http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/
>  
>  I think there's not much more to it than starting with an empty
>  appliance (with a BIOS?) and installing the distro of your choice. On
>  top of that you would install the Sugar stuff, then save the resulting
>  machine image.
>  
>  You might want to start with the Fedora images above.
>  
>  I can't take the credit for the link above, but I have used his VMs
>  from time to time.
>  
>  I'm sure the usual suspects will be along shortly with warnings of
>  legal implications and so on :) Even if you don't publish an image as
>  such (for whatever reasons, legal, disk space, bandwidth or whatever),
>  a clear set of instructions that have been tested and proven would be
>  very useful.
>  
>  My children all use Fedora and I'd be keen to show them Sugar so long
>  as it's an easy install. If there was a VMWare image I could probably
>  show it to representatives at the school too. I suppose how well it
>  would be received would depend on the fit with the curriculum, but
>  it's worth a try.
>  
>  -Cam
>  
>  --
>  fedora-devel-list mailing list
>  fedora-devel-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list

[Jef Spaleta]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 7:50 AM, Camilo Mesias <camilo(a)mesias.co.uk&gt; wrote:
>  Surely publishing an image for VMWare (ie. a virtual appliance)
> would
>  be the quickest way to let people try out the software (and get
>  started with developing it?) 
As a project we have so far not directly sponsored the creation of any
Fedora images..for any purpose. People make them, but at the project
level we do not provide anything that could be considered pre-cooked
for vmware.

-jef

[Bryan Kearney]

Jeff Spaleta wrote:
>  On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 7:50 AM, Camilo Mesias
> <camilo(a)mesias.co.uk&gt; wrote:
> > Surely publishing an image for VMWare (ie. a virtual appliance) would
> > be the quickest way to let people try out the software (and get
> > started with developing it?)
>  
>  As a project we have so far not directly sponsored the creation of any
>  Fedora images..for any purpose. People make them, but at the project
>  level we do not provide anything that could be considered pre-cooked
>  for vmware. 
I have a first cut at a kickstart file for an f9 Sugar appliance using 
the thincrust appliance creator [1]). I am having some issues with  it, 
are they best directed at this mailing list [2] ?



[1] http://www.thincrust.net/tooling.html
[2] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar


-- bk