On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 02:52:09PM -0400, Erik Garrison wrote: > On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 05:01:41PM -0400, Michael Stone wrote: > > My impression, based on historical conversations with the parties > > involved is that there are a bunch of hackers who feel that we did > > ourselves a disservice by dropping _so much_ backwards compatibility, > > specifically with Unix filesystems and desktops, in exchange for > > cool ideas. The feeling is that had we traded compatibility for features > > less aggressively then there would be many more hackers available to > > help write the features since there would be many more hackers who felt > > it was possible to live within Sugar. > > > > This is just an impression, however. > > For what it's worth, it is also my impression. I have heard similarly > from virtually all technically-oriented parties involved. I have heard > echos of this from less technical users (e.g. teachers who are confused > by the behavior of the journal).
As an outlier, it seems, I found it interesting to explore the different views and apps^Wactivities and wasn't put off since I didn't expect a "normal" laptop experience straight away. I get annoyed by most GUIs pretty quickly, but with Sugar/Browse/Read + Terminal I have, doing the standard Internet-kiosk type stuff I find myself doing away from home, few annoyances that aren't generated by non-Sugar limitations (keyboard, distro choices like evince/gnash). I'm being very modest in my GUI expectations, but I've rebuilt kernels (and modules/initrd) a number of times (3hrs with my - undoubtedly slow - SD card) and muck about with gcc and git a lot, so I wouldn't say I exactly fit the profile of a minimally demanding user. I found it interesting to work out how to restore items from the various datastore<xxxx>/ directories into the current journal (thankfully not necessary any more!). > Erik Martin PS - I think these impressions are quite valuable for both historical context and future direction: however people might feel tempted to dismiss criticisms as vague or outdated, they need to be considered when we tout and improve Sugar or the OLPC distro. PPS - I realized in changing the subject that perhaps the "hackers" and "technically-oriented parties" whose impressiosn were mentioned are being assessed as (prospective) activity authors more than "technical users" or sugar hackers. This might be useful to clarify.
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