My Look At Sugar
Sugar is the interface for the One Laptop Per Child. Since it’s now readily available for download, I thought I would give it a whirl via Parallels.
After being greeted by the incredibly simple “welcome” screen, where you choose a name and colour, you’re taken to an even simpler “desktop”. I’ve heard complaints and arguments that the OLPC UI is just overly simple and “why don’t they just put a fresh Ubuntu or Fedora (the OLPC OS is Fedora-based) on there with GNOME or KDE” but after using it I really do like it.
I don’t love it to the extent that I would ever make it my permanent operating system, like SuSE and Ubuntu were for me at one point but I really do like it. I’m a fan of all things simple and easy to use and this really couldn’t be any simpler or easy to use. Even my mother was able to open up a document and start typing straight away, which usually takes a good few minutes on her Windows PC.
Now, on to what we have here. Moving your mouse pointer to the edge of any screen brings up the Sugar Border around the outside. Across the top left of the screen you have the ‘Environment’ buttons for Neighbourhood, Group, User and Activity. There will (should) also be buttons at the top right of the screen for Power Off, Wired Network and Page, however they don’t seem to be in my SDK build.
Across the bottom of this Sugar Border are the applications. For me (SDK build, don’t know if they differ) they are listed as: Paint, BlockParty, Camera, Calc, Write, Etoys, Web, News Reader, ClassicGnome (which won’t be in the normal version of Sugar), Read and TamTam.
Sugar running at “Full Screen” in Parallels (1920 x 1200).
Paint, as it suggests, is a basic program which has about the same features as Microsoft Paint; the thing to which I lost many hours as a child, for no reason than scribbling.
BlockParty is a block-falling game in which lines of these blocks score points and make the line disappear (can I say Tetris? “Quinn is an implementation of a popular falling-blocks game which, according to the Tetris Company, must not be named here”). Calc is a simple calculator application with the ability of a ‘mode’ button, allowing you to use scientific operations.
The Write application is apparently AbiWord, which works and looks just great in Sugar. It reminds me a little of WriteRoom but with all the features listed in the menu above (bold, italic and so forth). I’ve booted up OLPC just to use it, in fact!
Web is a little globe icon in the bottom left menu. When clicked it launches a Firefox-based web browser, which didn’t work for me because I couldn’t get it to recognise my ethernet cable - I probably didn’t configure Parallels correctly but even in the terminal I couldn’t get it to see eth0. On the same respects, News Reader launches an RSS reader that I couldn’t get working but it looked good nevertheless.
Etoys just confuses me. One of the programs in there reminds me of WinLogo for the PC, with the little turtle. Instead, you can guide a car by changing the numbers for ‘forward’ and rotation, allowing the car to move in different directions. Etoys can do a lot more than that, though, but I don’t dare try and mess around with it because it confuses me. I think there’s too much going on for my little brain to cope with. It’s the type of thing you could give to a kid and they’d have some 3D car moving around a street in no time at all but if you gave it to me you’d have a red line moving up and down and then the program would crash (and, by the way, I did make it crash by doing just that…).
TamTam is a music creation program that is basically a sequencer that lets user put together lots of little, well, sequences and play some pretty amazing creations. I went in there and clicked the cats face over and over to the beat of the middle drums. It was fun.
GnomeClassic gives the developers access to a Gnome desktop with a terminal, the usual file structure and some development documentation. It’s good that you can flick back and forth between this and Sugar via the Sugar Border, too.
Overall I have to say I’m really quite impressed with the environment. Sugar is very innovative and so easy to use and simple. I’m really looking forward to see how this product advances.
What do you think of the Sugar Environment? Do you think a standard Linux install with a KDE or Gnome environment would be better? Would you ever go out and buy one of these laptops?
1:57 pm
Nice review. Does this work on PowerPC’z?
1:59 pm
Unfortunately not with the method I tried. Parallels will only work on Intel-based Macs, which is a huge shame.
8:18 pm
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10:21 pm
Great review. I think having the simple Sugar environment will make things much easier to use. A Gnome/KDE interface would certainly make it slightly harder for people to grasp.
Are they going to actually sell the $100 laptop to the public? I thought they were only going to be sold to kids in developing countries?
11:30 pm
After I read up a bit more on it, I’m not sure you can.
Quoting the answer on the OLPC Wiki for the question of how can I get one.. “Short answer: YOU CAN’T.”
Click that link for more information, as there’s quite a bit there.
10:29 pm
Radical Simplicity. Just great!
The “etoys” application is Squeak, a smalltalk variant. It confused me when I first tried it several years ago. However, there are a couple of things that makes it one of the most exciting things about OLPC. First, since the Squeak community is largely composed of educators, there is a huge body of educational software available for Squeak. Second, Squeak (smalltalk) is a fully general object oriented programming environment. That’s what enables OLPC to morph from a simple to use appliance into a computer with as much programmability as any general purpose machine. That way, the users aren’t boxed in to the admittedly elegant and simple, but limited user interface. They can take their computer explorations as far as their imaginations will extend.
This really could make a huge difference in the world. Let’s hope so.
2:59 pm
etoys — or, squeak — is really cool. It is based on SmallTalk and, what’s more, my seven year old is using it to make a game; he drew a car, made it moveable, gave it sounds, made a track and made the car “race-able” around the track.
But, honestly, it confused me, too. And I’m a programmer… Go figure.
5:58 pm
That sounds great, Howard. It did seem like a powerful utility but I really couldn’t get my head around it! I’m with you on the hoping for a difference, though.
And like I said, Robert, it seems like the kinda thing you could give to a child and they will make something really cool! I think it’s that they think differently and don’t really see the limits or bounds of everything. They know what they want to do and so they do it. However, I’m in university learning (read as: trying) to program and I get no where with it! Hehe.
1:40 am
I also think the Interface looks good. Very web 2.0 style icons etc etc/
9:47 pm
I also like the interface.
2:58 am
@alej744:
You could try in QEMU on a PowerPC-based Mac.
10:02 pm
Eric…
That is very interesting….