Sugar on a Stick/FAQ

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Frequently Asked Questions about Sugar on a Stick

Post questions here for the Sugar on a Stick project team.

See the Sugar Labs community FAQ for more answers.

What do I have to obtain to make it work?

The software can be run on must personal computer systems, but at this point, Sugar on a Stick in-school deployment is in Beta testing stage, starting its first pilot deployment at a school in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. We would welcome other pilot deployments, but this is still technology in its early stages. At this stage, one might need a technical person who can interface with the Sugar community to make it work.

How much does each stick cost?

(Note that Sugar Labs does not sell hardware, software, or services.) You will need at minimum a 1-GB stick for each student. Check your local computer store for prices. Right now, it's about $8 USD. To deploy on a large scale, you will also need either very dedicated volunteers or a bulk copy device. We are using one from NeXcopy that retails for about $1200. You should also budget for some USB stick loss.

Do you have a space where there is information in a concise, easy to digest format?

I don't have a tremendous amount of time to float around your website.

This FAQ would attempt to meet that need. If something is missing or unclear, please edit this page or post a new question on the accompanying comment/question page.

Can I try some of it out?

The full software package can be downloaded from Sugar on a Stick/Strawberry. You can use this download to install Sugar on a Stick onto a USB flash memory drive and test it out.

Is the platform another cost?

We refer to the Sugar Learning Platform as platform because it is a complete software environment for learning. You will need a computer to run Sugar on a Stick, and for school deployments, you will also want an administrator's computer for the School Server. The server software is free, but also in a Beta testing phase. The School Server does not need to be high powered, a $500 to $1000 server hardware budget should be sufficient for a pilot program.

Is it learning games, homework help, search engines?

Sugar on a Stick provides a consistent, child friendly environment with learning games, software for music, graphics, text, and software creation, a calculator and physics modeling Activities, an Internet browser and chat programs, an electronic book reader, and a tool for teachers to select and package web-based content for students for offline exploration. Additional learning software is available for download in the Sugar Activity Library. The software on the portable memory device allows students to have the same learning tools at school and at home. The teacher can use it to assign homework, but it does not in itself provide homework help. The web browser can be used as a search engine.

Is it an effective learning tool?

Please see the first question on this FAQ, Government FAQ.

What answers can you provide to common questions about deployments?

Please see this FAQ list, Government FAQ, prepared for common questions from governmental officials.

Is running the SoaS Beta on a netbook a real alternative to XOs with Build 767 when it comes to classroom settings?

It is still in Beta and we feel very strongly about not overselling it. However, it is an alternative to consider today if you are an early adopter and you set a realistic roll-out plan. It is Beta software so I would set the expectation that the teacher/school would want to pick out which hardware they want, pick out which activities they want to start with and test those and work closely with the community.

The technical results and the excitement of the educators at FOSSVT was encouranging. Based on discussions at FOSSVT and others who have posted, we are confident that Sugar will be in classroom use on netbooks and on existing computer labs in Q3 2009.

What hardware is it known to work on and what are the known hardware releated bugs?

computer	comments
OLPC-XO-1	Works (but doesn't support all XO features, such as power management, special keys)
Intel Classmate	Works great on the Magellan version
HP Compaq 6715b	Works great
Acer Aspire One	Works
Toshiba Satellite	Works great; boots very quickly
IBM Thinkpad X60	Works great
IBM Thinkpad T43	Works great
Eee PC 900A	Works great
Dell Latitude 600	No network due to proprietary driver
Dell Latitude 610	Network with Intel Pro Wireless works

Please add your results to the table above.

Have the resolution issues, which used to be a major issue w/ running Sugar on a non-XO, been solved?

While not every activity has been modified, most now accommodate variable screen sizes. All of the activities at http://activities.sugarlabs.org work at variable sizes and resolutions as far as I know.

What about font sizes?

This is also fixed in Sucrose 0.84

Do all the activities (incl. collaboration) work reliably on SoaS these days?

Collaboration on SoaS is as robust as collaboration anywhere. (There is a Google Summer of Code project that will be addressing one general issue of collaboration robustness--this will be relevant to SoaS and non-SoaS deployments.)

There are some Network Manager issues that need to be worked out in general regarding Sugar on non-OLPC kernels, but this impacts connectivity, not collaboration.

We saw some issues at FOSSVT on some laptops and netbooks accessing wireless, others worked great.

As you pointed out development is going very quickly right now. As we take this out into the world we are finding and fixing bugs. Our main goal right now is to get volunteers to help us do this and keep track of what hardware is working.

Does SoaS allow for power-management to kick in on netbooks?

Yes, but currently not the special OLPC XO features.

Are there networking or audio issues?

AFAIK, any audio problems were fixed in the Beta release. There is a discussion upstream about the best way to handle csound support in Fedora.

We had found some issues with connectivity with a small number of machines--this seems to be a Fedora issue, not a Sugar issue, and is being worked on upstream.

Does Sugar on a Stick work on the OLPC XO Hardware

For the OLPC XO hardware, we are targeting F12 as the timeframe for a general release. In the meantime, on that hardware, we recommend the 80X series of builds from OLPC. But by all means, please test SoaS on your XO hardware (you'll need a developer key); see Sugar on a Stick/Installation/OLPC and give us feedback.

How do I set the keyboard map for a non-US keyboard

Open the Terminal activity and run the setxkbmap program, specifying the code for your keyboard.

For Spanish:

setxkbmap es

For Portuguese:

setxkbmap pt

To make the change permanent, add the command to the end of your .Xclients file found in the home directory.

/home/liveuser/.Xclients