Supported systems

Note: Development changes occur rapidly, and the documentation here lags the current state of systems development. For the latest information on any development project, visit their work sites.

See Sugar Application Stack for a picture of the software stack.

Ways to run Sugar

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

Pre-installed Sugar:
Some computers come with Sugar pre-installed, most notably the OLPC XO-1 laptop.
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. For USB Solutions goto our Sugar on a Stick project page.
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.
Emulator/Virtualizer:
QEMU, VirtualBox, or VMware let you run Sugar in an emulator or by virtualization on your computer—you'll need to install an emulator from which you launch Sugar and one of the Emulator image files.

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 Sugar on a Stick.)

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.

Technical considerations

A discussion of technical considerations regarding supported systems.

Starch

Starch is a complete disk image for Sugar.

**A complete disk image for Sugar**
Name	Sugar Version	Tested	Notes
Sugar on a Stick	0.84	In process	This is a Live USB of the Sugar, and one of the primary focuses of Sugar development.
LiveBackup XO-LiveCD	0.82	No	This is a Live CD of the OLPC system. Release Notes
	0.84.2	yes	Sugar Desktop on a Stick is a Fedora11 Sugar USB.img [2] "real install" 4GB stick
			Sugar on a Stick is a Fedora Live USB. There is also Fedora "Rawhide" on XO development.
Ubuntu LiveCD/LiveUSB	0.82		Instructions for installing a Ubuntu LiveUSB

Sucrose

Sucrose is the Sugar interface plus a set of demonstration activities. System maintainers should visit the Packaging Team page.

**The interface, plus a set of demonstration activities**
Operating System	Version	Sugar Version	Bundled	Tested	Collaboration Links	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	http://wiki.ubuntu.com/SugarTeam	Sugar on Ubuntu
	8.10 (Intrepid)	0.82	Yes			Sugar on Ubuntu
ALT Linux	4.1 Sisyphus	0.82 SugarPlatform-0.84	Yes			Sugar on ALT Linux
Mandriva	2009.1 Cooker	SugarPlatform-0.84 SugarPlatform-0.84	Yes Yes			Sugar on Mandriva
Caixa Mágica	12	SugarPlatform-0.84	Yes			Sugar on Magalhães
packages not pre-built
Gentoo	2009-03-19	0.84 9999	Yes			Sugar on Gentoo
OpenSUSE	11.1	0.84	Yes		http://en.opensuse.org/Sugar IRC Freenode #opensuse-edu	Sugar on OpenSUSE]
						Sugar on a Mac (in emulation)
	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

The Sugar packages in Ubuntu 9.04 do not work. Stick with Ubuntu 8.10 for now.

For a LiveCD/LiveUSB, check out the instructions [3].

*Ubuntu 9.04 contains a startup usb application which will install Ubuntu iso files with persistence.
These allow system upgrading and if a user is created and switched to
the "Install to hardisk" icon is moved to System Administration instead of the desktop.
The SUGAR packages are broken and do not work [satellit 04/30/2009]

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

Project page: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sugar_Spin

With this spin, you'll be able to run Sugar, which is developed by Sugarlabs and the desktop environment used on the OLPC, directly 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

...along with several other activities including Chat support.

See our Sugar on a Stick page.

The Fedora OLPC SIG, https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OLPC, will be importing further activities into Fedora, which might be installed using yum install sugar-* at a later time.

Recent development spins:

http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/1/

For more information, please refer to the announcement here:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2008-December/msg00061.html

Fedora 11 Preview contains USB Creator which can make USB and SD's with persistence of Fedora F11 (and Sugar if added with Synaptic) and Soas-beta's [satellit 04/30/2009]

What if you wanted to put it quickly onto your USB Key? You'll just need to grab Luke Macken's liveusb-creator, which already includes support for the Sugar Spin. Here's the link:

http://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

The liveusb-creator still contains an 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:

# sudo olpc-update 767

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

OLPC Clean Install

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Clean-install_procedure

Joyride

See OLPC:Future releases, the Joyride train is in the round house.

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.