This is a bit late, but let me have a go at it. First, thank you guys for going to KMR and taking a look. We OLPC volunteers really appreciate it :-)
On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 2:00 AM, Thejaswi Puthraya <[email protected]> wrote: > Ever since Shakthi and I got a chance to meet [1] the KMR Foundation folks > and check the OLPC hardware and sugar interface, I had an urge to try it out > on my PC. Fedora made life easy with a sugar spin [2] but I had a tough time > using the interface, partly because I am used to the "window" desktop > environment and the numerous seg faults. > > As I looked into the details of the project, I found what I think are > anomalies. This mail is my attempt to seek clarifications, understand the > context and reduce my ignorance on the same. > > 1) The XOs are x86 based running on the AMD Geode family of processors. Any > specific reason for choosing x86 over ARM (both being low power processors)? > Doesn't the equation change with projects like Android [3] and Meego [4] in > the fray? Not only does these have big companies backing it, there is also a > larger community to support efforts and a fairly open store for content and > apps. Meego supports both ARM and x86 and seems to have a cleaner UI. Though > the XO is touted to have very good battery backup, it didn't seem so. The > battery backup was only as good as a netbook and the XO was fuming in a > moderately air conditioned environment. > ARM machine is under development. Android and Meego will both influence things. In fact, Sugar has already started building on top of Meego pieces. Evidently, ARM isn't as easy as x86. There are several variants, so the dev work becomes more vendor-dependent. The XO 1.75 work is being done together with Marvel. XO1 was based on Geode, which runs warm to the touch and allows for longer battery life (no spinning drive, no cooling fan). The XO-1 shouldn't fume...it should be mildly warm. If it fumes, there's something wrong in the machine. The newer firmware and OS builds allow for the XO to sleep between keystrokes with the screen still running. Its kinda like someone sleeping with his eyes open :-) The challenge is that no vendor will build this on their own. Their bread-and-butter market doesn't need it. Evidently, Dell, Microsoft, Apple etc. wouldn't build such a beast. They *were* approached first before the project took on a FOSS flavor :-) Pretty much all netbooks I've seen in the market come with a fan. Atom, the most popular netbook chip right now also runs quite hot. You either need a fan or a large heat sink. The XO 1.5 uses a VIA processor, which runs hotter than the Geode, but still manages without a fan. > 2) Why is the OLPC project bound to hardware vendors? Is it to make > application development easy or to benefit (probably as a very small token > of appreciation) the vendors who have invested (and donated) millions of > dollars in the project? OLPC is bound to its own hardware design. The plastic, display, motherboards, etc. are all designed in-house (or contracted to people who work with OLPC). So, for example, the motherboard tweaking is done in house. The sunlight readable screen was built in-house, and has since spun off into the Pixel Qi effort (http://www.pixelqi.com/). Now others can look into getting sunlight readable screens. Similarly, the in-house software development effort spun off into Sugarlabs, and OS to Fedora. So, arguably, today one can install Sugar on a netbook other than the XO. > > 3) Is the sugar interface relevant even now? I find it really hard to use > and as hard (or easy) as to develop upon when compared with any other > toolkit. It's true that I am not the intended audience for Sugar but > projects like K12LTSP, Edubuntu and Swecha have had a good impact in the > educational field. These projects have quite a lot of applications and most > importantly content. On the other hand, the sugar interface didn't even have > translations for some of the most basic strings nor even a management > interface for course instructors or administrators. Is this just a case of > the NIH syndrome [5] (the other projects that I have compared with too seem > to suffer from the same) or am I really missing something fundamental. > Sugar is significantly different and my experience is that most grown-ups have a hard time with it. Interestingly, children seem to take to it quite nicely. Sugar's inspiration comes from a variety of research done with children and learning. Two more notable names are Seymour Papert (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Papert) and Alan Kay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay). It definitely takes some getting used to. For example, Sugar uses the concept of a journal, where your work essentially gets recorded as a journal entry as opposed to a file. The file metaphor, along with folders comes from the office concept, and not the learning concept. The Journal instead keeps track of work and one simply resumes where one left off. So, its kinda like a CVS tree in the back, with commits every time you resume an activity, be it writing a letter, or drawing a picture. A lot of grown ups don't like the Journal :-) There are other bits in the platform where they use Bitfrost (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bitfrost), a framework that allows for a secure system, without requiring a login or password. Evidently, 6 year olds have a hard time understanding the concept of login/password and even if they do, they usually choose weak passwords, thereby defeating the whole purpose of a password. Instead Bitforst runs each app in its own "randomly generated uid space". All this is to create a secure platform, that may not have the luxury of being yum update'd every night :-) There are other approaches that can lock up a XO laptop at the BIOS (open firmware, actually...OLPC does not use a traditional BIOS) level if stolen. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Theft_deterrence_protocol The other big feature in the Sugar platform is that each application (called activity within the Sugar world) ships with its source code. So, if some enterprising kid (like many of you here) decides to extend the Write or Record activity, she can. Sugar comes with a Python IDE called Pippy. So, one can extend the platform as time goes by. The philosophy is to induce a culture of production along with consumption. FOSS after all doesn't thrive unless patches flow through :-) Here are a a few videos that have feedback from the kids and families. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnLo-j8GvPM http://vimeo.com/6642323 http://vimeo.com/6642323 I'd be happy to answer any other questions on the list. Oh, and the newer builds OS ship with Sugar and GNOME, so older children can switch. cheers, Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Information Systems Director, Campus Business Solutions San Francisco State University http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ http://cbs.sfsu.edu/ http://is.sfsu.edu/ > PS: Most facts here are based on results fetched off a search engine and > might be inaccurate at this point in time. > > [1] http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ilughyd/message/20825 > [2] http://spins.fedoraproject.org/soas/ > [3] http://www.android.com/ > [4] http://meego.com/ > [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Invented_Here > > -- > Cheers > Thejaswi Puthraya > http://thejaswi.info/ > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > > ------------------------------------ > > ----------------------------------------------- > Next Meeting as on our Website: http://ilughyd.org.in > -----------------------------------------------Yahoo! Groups Links > > > >
