Supported systems

Try Sugar

This page is intended to give instructions on how to try Sugar. For an overview of the components composing a Sugar system see the Sugar is implemented on top of existing or modified operating systems and hardware. Sugar Activities ("Sugarized applications") are accessed by the user in the Sugar platform, integrated into a single Journal for storage, and are often designed with peer collaboration as a primary feature.

Journal Content	meta-tagged content datastore
Sugar Activities	Browse | Chat | Read | Write | Record | EToys | Turtle Art | Terminal | et al...
Sugar Platform	Sugar Platform Stack: Sugar Framework and Sugar Software Stack
Operating System	Fedora | Debian | Ubuntu | Linux, other | LTSP | Mac OSX | MS Windows (emulation) | ...
Hardware Platform	OLPC XO-1	ASUS EEE PC	Intel Classmate	OLPC XO-2	...

The layers in a Sugar system are:

• Journal
• Activities
• Sugar Platform Stack
• Operating System
• Computer Hardware

Sugar System Stack (ASCII Text)

Sugar Labs has borrowed names from carbohydrate chemistry, which includes sugar, to personalize and help distinguish pieces of Sugar software. See Taxonomy and On the Naming of Sugar for background.

System Stack Illustration

.

Step 1. Determine which of the various methods of running Sugar meet your needs:

LiveCD/LiveUSB

Suitable for trying Sugar without having to install any software on almost any computer—just boot Sugar off of a CD or USB drive.

Emulator

QEMU or VMWare let you run Sugar in an emulator on your computer—you'll need to install an emulator from which you launch Sugar.

Install Sugar

If you are running one of the currently supported distributions, you can install Sugar using your systems standard package manager, e.g., Synaptic, apt-get, or yum.

Build Sugar

You can run sugar-jhbuild to build the complete Sugar environment on most GNU/Linux systems.

Pre-installed Sugar

Some computers come with Sugar pre-installed, most notably the OLPC-XO-1 laptop.

Step 2. Refer to the matrix below to find a Sugar solution that works for you.

Computer labs

Bill Kerr has written up instructions for trying Sugar in computer labs which run only Windows (Please see [1]).

Caroline Meeks is developing a deployment model that only requires one USB stick per child (Please see DeploymentTeam/School_Key).

Matrix of Sugar solutions

There are many ways to run Sugar:

• As a complete disk image on an existing machine;
• As a session on a Linux system; or
• As part of a complete hardware-software platform.

(A discussion of technical considerations regarding supported systems is found here.)

Starch

Starch is a complete disk image for Sugar.

A complete disk image for Sugar

Name	Sugar Version	Tested	Notes
LiveBackup XO-LiveCD	0.82	No	This is a Live CD of the OLPC system. Release Notes
LiveBackup Fedora-LiveCD	0.82	Yes	This is a Fedora Live CD of the Sugar system
Ubuntu LiveCD/LiveUSB	0.82		Instructions for installing a Ubuntu LiveUSB

Sucrose

Sucrose is the Sugar interface plus a set of demonstration activities.

The interface, plus a set of demonstration activities

Operating System	Version	Sugar Version	Bundled	Tested	Notes
binary packages available
Debian	4.0	0.82	Yes	Yes	Sugar on Debian
Fedora	7,8,9	0.82	Yes	Yes	Sugar on Fedora
Ubuntu	8.04 (Hardy)	0.79.0-0ubuntu3	Yes	Yes	Sugar on Ubuntu
	8.10 (Intrepid)	0.82	Yes		Sugar on Ubuntu
packages not pre-built
Gentoo	[x86] [amd64] 2008-10-31	0.83.1	Yes	Yes	Sugar on Gentoo
MacOS X					Sugar on MacOS X
	Slackware 12				Sugar on Slackware
	WindowsXP			No	Sugar on Windows (using QEMU)

Sugar for various hardware systems

Since Sugar is now available on most major GNU/Linux distributions, it is possible to run Sugar almost any computer that can run GNU/Linux. We highlight some systems below. Please add your favorite to the list.

Complete Sugar Solutions

Manufacturer	Model	Operating System	Tested	Notes
OLPC	XO-1	Fedora 9	Yes	Standard (reference) distribution
ASUSTeK	Eee PC		In initial testing phase
Intel	Classmate Gen 1 & Gen 2		under development

Getting the Sugar sources

Distributors can find the latest sources for the sucrose components here. Each sucrose roadmap entry has as well links to the release pages of earlier releases.

Updating Sugar to the Latest Version

Ubuntu

For a LiveCD/LiveUSB, check out the instructions [2].

Updated sucrose packages are usually published in a PPA: See here for details.

If you want up-to-the-minute freshness (and brokenness) you can use jhbuild to build from source instead of the released packages. Follow the instructions here to install sugar-jhbuild as an xsession option.

Debian

Sucrose packages are usually updated in unstable. These packages migrate to testing after a while. You can see the current package versions here.

If you want up-to-the-minute freshness (and brokenness) you can use jhbuild to build from source instead of the released packages.

Fedora

Fedora LiveCD/Live USB

The Fedora Sugar Spin incorporates the Sugar environment on a Fedora Live CD.

With this spin, you'll be able to run Sugar from a Live CD! You'll find several activities on the image including most notably...

• sugar-browse - a web browsing activity based on xulrunner
• sugar-write - a word processor based on abiword

...among with several other applications introducing e.g. chat support.

The Fedora OLPC SIG will be importing further activities into Fedora, which might be installed using 'yum install sugar-*' at a later time.

Where can you get it? Easily, here:

http://download.sugarlabs.org/sugar/liveimages/fedora-sugar-spin/fedora-sugar-spin-0.82-i686.iso

Alternatively, you might want to refer to this, which is in fact the same image, just on another location:

http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/olpc/0.82/i686/sugar-spin.iso

Please be aware of the fact that the link above has changed recently - the old one won't work anymore! For more information, please see this post: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2008-November/msg00003.html

And what if you wanted to put it onto a USB Key? Even easier! You'll just need to grab Luke Macken's liveusb-creator, which already includes support for the Sugar Spin. Here's the link:

https://fedorahosted.org/releases/l/i/liveusb-creator/liveusb-creator-3.0.zip

The liveusb-creator still contains the old link, which is the reason why you'll need to download the spin manually until this gets fixed.

Tip of the hat: Sebastian Dziallas and the Fedora team

Fedora on an OLPC XO

On an OLPC XO-1 laptop, run olpc-update as root.

Normally you only need to run olpc-update in the Terminal application with a build number, like this:

# olpc-update 703

Note: Now you can do this by means of the graphical Control Panel.

Update to the latest experimental version (a.k.a. Joyride)

Joyride is for developers; it is not supported. Joyride builds may cause data corruption and in rare cases, even cause hardware damage, so please do not use Joyride on mission-critical systems.

Joyride contains all the "bleeding-edge" features that are being debugged for inclusion in the next release.

Open the Terminal application and type the following, substituting 2469 for the latest version number.

# olpc-update joyride-2469

What's the latest version? You can find the latest build number (shown above as 1779) at the bottom of http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/xo-1/streams/joyride/

Updates usually takes 10–15 minutes. It's advised that you plug your XO in while Sugar updates itself, then reboot it to see the new OS take effect.

Other Options

These are options that can be used with the update command:

# olpc-update --help

Usage: 
 olpc-update [options] --hints hints-file
 olpc-update [options] [-rf] build-number
 olpc-update [options] [-rf] --usb
 olpc-update --version
 olpc-update --help

For example:
 olpc-update 630
 olpc-update joyride-1779
 olpc-update update.1-700

Options:
  -h, --help    show this help message and exit
  -f, --full    skip incremental update attempt.
  --force       force update to an unsigned build.
  -r, --reboot  reboot after a successful update.
  --hints=FILE  name of json-encoded hints dictionary identifying the desired
                new version.
  -u, --usb     upgrade from new build on inserted USB stick.
  -v            display verbose progress information; repeat for more verbose
                output.
  -q, --quiet   don't output anything; use exit status to indicate success.
  --version     display version and license information.

Gentoo

There are two methods to get Sugar on your Gentoo box: sugar-jhbuild and Sugar overlay. See Gentoo for details.

Sugar Application Stack

Sugar is designed to encourage children that have not been exposed or indoctrinated in any exiting computing environment. It has Activities rather that programs or applications. Sugar is implemented on top of existing or modified operating systems and hardware. The Activities are accessed by the user in Sugar. One of the Activities, Browse, has lets the student examine library collections. Some of these are included with the Sugar system. Others may be installed from the web or they can be created locally.

The hierarchy of the system is:

- Library Collections (Browse Activity)
- Activities
- Sugar
- OS
- Hardware

Graphical view of the Sugar Application Stack:

----------------------------------------------------------
|      Library Collections |       |       |       |     |
| Pre-installed    Locally-|       |       |Turtle |     |
|        From-web  created |       | EToys |  Art  | ... |
|--------------------------| Write |       |       |     |
|          Browse          |       |       |       |     |
----------------------------------------------------------
|                         Sugar                          |
----------------------------------------------------------
|  XOS   |   Linux  |   MacOSX  |  MSWindows+QEMU  | ... |
----------------------------------------------------------
|   OLPC XO   |   Asus EEE PC  |  Intel Classmate  | ... |
----------------------------------------------------------