Sugar on a Stick/Hardware
A SoaS Hardware Effort
What's this about
This attempt has been started shortly after the SoaS beta release on April 22nd and is focussed on tracking hardware compatibility with newer SoaS versions. The overall goal of this effort is to gather information about issues with various hardware configurations using SoaS. So if you just came across an issue or want to help us by providing your hardware specs, please follow these instructions.
What we're doing
We're using the Smolt project to keep information about the various systems. Smolt is a hardware profiler and has been introduced with Fedora 7. Since then, also openSUSE has joined the project. We're working on creating an identifier for SoaS in the Smolt database.
Smolt basically helps you to submit your hardware information to a place, where people like us developers can check them out. Smolt development is hosted here and if you're worried about your privacy, you can have a look at Smolt's privacy policy here. Note that you can remove your hardware information at any time - instructions for this are also listed below!
Next Steps
So. What's next? Here're the instructions:
- First of all, you'll need to download SoaS, which already includes Smolt. Please use the latest snapshot and not the beta for this! Here's the direct link: http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/2/Soas2-200906221314.iso
- Boot into SoaS and start the Terminal Activity.
- Now you're ready to submit your hardware specs. For this, just call (as root): smoltSendProfile
- It will ask you again if you're sure and will also give you a link to your profile and an admin password then. Please keep those!
Now that you've received the link to your hardware profile, please add it to the table below, as this will help us a lot to get an overview on which hardware SoaS is used on where issues occur. Note that with your admin password, you'll be also able to rate your experience with SoaS regarding the hardware support on your profile page. You can also provide it if you're filing a bug report on dev.sl.o.
What if you want to remove your information?
- Just type in the terminal (again as root): smoltDeleteProfile
- Consider also reporting observations of your testing here, Sugar on a Stick/Getting Involved/Testing.
Measuring Responsiveness
We are trying to get a handle on what hardware produces a snappy experience, and what produces a sluggish, but acceptable experience. For slow machines, we are curious whether they could be upgraded by adding memory (potentially scavenged from other donated computers) or add a USB 2.0 card (<$10). We are imagining getting a good number of donated, older computers, and we are thinking ahead about how to turn these into acceptable computers that kids could take home.
Please report boot-up speed and how long it takes to open common activities for the 2nd time. Some of them are slow on the first load. Turtle Art, Browse and Write are good ones to look at.
Running dstat -at --output dstat.log in a terminal can be helpful.
Program Members
Upcoming Improvements
We're working on getting Smolt integrated in a Sugar Activity to ease the process of submitting the information.