User:Inkyfingers/Getting Started(0)
This page is under active construction at this time. Please check back shortly for updated information.
--Inkyfingers 04:51, 19 November 2011 (EST) Hope to finish early December.
About Sugar
Sugar is a desktop environment that is an alternative to the ones typically used in Microsoft Windows, Apple's OS X or other GNU/Linux operating systems. It is conceived as a platform upon which children learn with Sugar Activities. The platform provides mechanisms for collaboration, reflection, and exploration. Sugar Activities cover a broad range of applications: browsing, drawing, composing, writing, programming, etc.
The Sugar desktop has multiple full-screen views: a Home view from which Activities are launched; a Neighborhood view where learners can connect to each other through a Jabber network; a Journal view, which can be used as a lab notebook; and the Activity view, where Sugar Activities are run.
Sugar Activities have no Save menu: everything is saved automatically. While the interface uses very little text, additional information is revealed when the user hovers over icons.
Sugar is Free Software. It is developed in Python and runs on a GNU/Linux Kernel, originally from the Fedora Project, and now from a variety of GNU/Linux distributions.
For an overview of the components composing a Sugar system see the Sugar System Stack.
Getting Sugar
Sugar on a Stick
Sugar on a Stick is the introductory page.
If this is going to be your first attempt at running sugar, you could take the advice buy rather than build. For purchase information for Sugar pre-installed on a bootable USB flash drive, see Sugar Creation Kit#Commercial source of SoaS-loaded media.
Do not be discouraged by this comment from building Sugar on a Stick. It was the first bootable flash drive I made and worked at the second attempt.
Hardware requirements
You will need to ensure the computer you plan to use is capable of booting from USB. From http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora we see these minimum requirements for the current distribution, Fedora 16.
- A 400MHz or faster processor
- At least 768 MB memory (RAM), 1 GB recommended for best performance.
The minimum size of your USB flash drive is 2GB.
For installing Sugar on a flash drive, see Downloads.
- Alternate: Boot from burned CD and enter "liveinst" in root terminal of sugar
- This starts the fedora anaconda installer and you can select your 4 GB or larger USB; or your Hard Disk; as the media to install to.
- (this is a real installation) not a compressed file system with a persistence file)
Linux Distributions supporting Sugar
A list here
- Community/Distributions ALL
- Sugar_Creation_Kit#Community_Distributions With Good Support
Release notes
Release notes for Sugar 0.121 are available here.
Sugar platform release version cycle: | 0.82 | 0.84 | 0.86 | 0.88 | 0.90 | 0.92 | 0.94 | 0.96 | 0.98 | 0.100 | 0.102 | 0.104 | 0.106 | 0.108 | 0.110 | 0.112 |
Other resources
What is required here is a 3 line paragraph helping to orientate a new user to the wiki, and link to the areas he/she might most need.
Other resources are listed on the Deployment Team/Resources page. Is this the most useful link?
Wiki_Team/Guide/Wiki_Structure "Our challenge is to organize the wiki so that communities can find the information they need."
The Sugar Lab Teams are listed on the wiki sidebar.