Thanks for this Douglas I believe virtualbox was chosen since free (beer) and multiplatform.
Sebastian, what do you think about these ideas? thanks Sean On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 3:07 AM, Douglas McClendon <[email protected]> wrote: > Sean DALY wrote: > >> You've mentioned how the website could be improved - the "fine print". >> When you look at the Sugar on a Stick page, what do you think it could >> express better to guide inexperienced users? The single biggest >> barrier we face is installation fear - this is how Windows keeps its >> marketshare (with help from proprietary file formats), and why >> GNU/Linux desktops have so much difficulty breaking out. Sugar on a >> Stick sidesteps the problem by not touching the hard disk, but does >> indeed require system-specific BIOS fiddling. > > In response to this, and DancesWithCars autorun html point, I can see > possible progress in this direction- > > a) autorun html. Simple to add technically. I'd opt for pure open source > but possibly less compatable simple autorun technique, as opposed to using > the various less-free and often closed source autorun helpers. > > b) the content of the html to be autoran- obviously the sky is the limit, > and something marketing is particularly suited for. To the extent that > technical information should be contained, there is the LiveDistro wikipedia > page, which would be included, as well as a layer above it translated/shrunk > into a quickstart version targeted at average parents/teachers. > > c) other low hanging fruit windows FOSS. Firefox seems worth it if you've > got the space. But more importantly qemu, or whatever the best open source > windows virtualization solution is (qemu/virtualbox/?). I.e. the webpage > should include simple instructions for launching that virtualizaiton > targeted at the CD/USB that contains it. > > Now, these are all old ideas I brought up with Fedora years ago, but they > just aren't that interested, perhaps due to demographics. I.e. sugarlabs > demographics would seem to benefit more from these things IMO. > > The reason in my own fedora derivative I haven't spent much time on (C) for > instance, is because I personally just really don't care that much about > windows. One thing that scares me is how fragile qemu for win32 sounded. > It looks like virtualbox is gpl and available for win32 but I haven't tried > it. As such, I think it would be a good idea to do (C), but not really > advertise it as anything but experimental for at least a year. > > Also, since pygtk appears available for windows ala liveusb-creator, perhaps > the best in the long term would be an autorun program that is just a simple > pygtk app that can either launch information via a portable firefox install > pointed at the html on the stick/cd, or launch the cd/stick virtually under > qemu/virtualbox. Or enter a chat session with sugarlabs techsupport. Or > launch liveusb-creator (in a mode that pulls the data from the stick if that > isn't yet supported. I.e. stick replication) > > Anyway, thats where I see the lowest hanging fruit for the longterm solution > to the problem end-users grokking the whole experience upon first > introduction to the product. > > $0.02... > > -dmc > > > _______________________________________________ SoaS mailing list [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
