Sweets Distribution

Harmonic Distribution version cycle: | 1.0 | Factory |

Summary

This is a set of repositories with native packages that compose Basic software of Harmonic Distribution effort.

Sweets Distributions packages form two major parts:

• Sweets Desktop
  Sucrose, desktop environment of Sugar Learning Platform;
• Sweets Server
  Server Kit components to create school servers to support Sugar Learning Platform.

This is a special, Sugar only, distribution. These are the key points that make the Sweets Distribution different from other Distributions:

• The Sweets Distribution is formed as a 3rd party repository, i.e., it is not a complete GNU/Linux distribution;
• It supports several GNU/Linux distributions, and their releases, at the same time;
• Packages from these repositories do not interfere with the rest of the system, e.g., it is possible to use Sugar from the Sweets Distribution and Sugar from official repositories at the same time.

Repositories

Sweets Distribution provides several repositories:

• 0.94
  Repository with stable Sucrose-0.94 packages;
• 0.88
  Repository with stable Sucrose-0.88 packages;
• Factory
  Packages in development stage.

Repositories are accessible for all Supported platforms.

Installation

The installation occurs in two phases:

• add one of Sweets Distribution repositories to local system;
• install packages from added Sweets Distribution repository.

Add repository

Experienced users might follow manual instructions to add Sweets Distribution repositories to the system.

For easy attaching Sweets Distribution repositories, use sweets-distribution command.

If sweets-distribution is not yet installed, type the following commands in terminal:

wget ftp://download.sugarlabs.org/packages/sweets-distribution.sh
sudo sh sweets-distribution.sh

• To get the status information about currently selected and all available repositories:

sweets-distribution status

• To add chosen, here Factory, repository in the system

sudo sweets-distribution select Factory

Install packages

When sweets-distribution select command will finish, local system will be aware of Sweets Distribution repository and it will be possible to install packages.

Using the regular way, in local system, install one of the following packages:

• sweets-desktop
  The full packages list from Sweets Desktop;
• sweets-sugar
  Only Sugar Shell.

Sometimes, it will be required to downgrade packages while switching to another repository. The easy way to do that is sync command:

sudo sweets-distribution sync

Most of Sweets Distribution packages will be placed to /opt/sweets directory, thus, it will be possible to use Sugar from Sweets Distribution and from official packages at the same time.

Usage

How Sweets Distribution might be useful after installing packages.

Sweets Distribution session

If sweets-desktop was installed, it will be possible to login to Sweets Desktop session:

• On XO laptop (Only for Factory repository). Being in original Sugar, go to Control Panel and select Sweets Distribution component, then enable Sweets Desktop is default Sugar session switch. The back switch will happen the same way.
• On regular desktops. Choose the Sweets Desktop session type in login manager.

Run Sugar in a window

To run Sugar in a window without logging out from current desktop environment, select the Education/Sugar application menu item or enter the following command in a terminal:

sweets-sugar-emulator

Experimental features

To try development version, use the Factory repository. Factory repository provides recent development version of Harmonic Distribution features.

Testing

• Link:http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Community/Distributions/Sweets_Distribution/Testing
• Ubuntu 11.10
• Trisquel 5.5 RC

See also

• Announcement post,
• Latest test results of Ubuntu.

Feedback

• Submit your bug report or feature request.
• Subscribe to the sugar-devel mailing list and email with the subject prefixed with [SWEETS].
• Ask your question on IRC channels, #sugar (not logged) or #sugar-newbies (logged).