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This page is updated each week (usually on Monday morning) with notes from the Sugar Labs community. (The digest is also sent to the community-news at sugarlabs.org list, blogged at [http://walterbender.org/ walterbender.org], and [[Archive/Current Events|archived here]].) If you would like to contribute, please send email to [[User:walter|walter]] at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. (Also visit <span class="plainlinks">[http://planet.sugarlabs.org planet.sugarlabs.org].</span>)
 
This page is updated each week (usually on Monday morning) with notes from the Sugar Labs community. (The digest is also sent to the community-news at sugarlabs.org list, blogged at [http://walterbender.org/ walterbender.org], and [[Archive/Current Events|archived here]].) If you would like to contribute, please send email to [[User:walter|walter]] at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. (Also visit <span class="plainlinks">[http://planet.sugarlabs.org planet.sugarlabs.org].</span>)
   −
== Sugar Digest ==
+
== Sugar Digest ==
   −
1. I have been struggling with my end-of-the-year summary; I have
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1. While shovelling snow I have been reflecting on Sugar – a lot of
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always been more interested in looking forward than looking
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snow, hence a lot of reflecting. Looking back, I came across a
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backward. Nonetheless:
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[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7094695.stm quote] from 2007:
 +
"change equals risk". At the time, I was speaking out against
 +
incremental change to a global educational system that was failing to
 +
meet the needs of our children. The ''status quo'' was failing – and is
 +
still failing – and we embarked upon a path to do something about
 +
it. We developed a deployable model of one-to-one computing enabling
 +
us to advocate for a pedagogy of
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[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructionism_%28learning_theory%29
 +
constructionist learning], where "learning can happen most effectively
 +
when people are also active in making tangible objects in the real
 +
world."
   −
The numbers tell some of the story of 2010: we have almost 2 million
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Over the course of four years, we've put Sugar into the hands of
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users, including 100% of the children of Uruguay; we had almost
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almost two-million children. Our goal has been to give them a
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5 million downloads from our Activity portal; we released Sugar
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"learning platform" – one that encourages them to be expressive with
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versions 0.88 and 0.90. The most telling number is 12, the
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knowledge, to collaborate, and to reflect.
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age of our youngest contributor.
     −
As Sugar matures, we are entering a new phase, where more of the
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While we have had impact in the formal setting of the classroom, with
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activity is in the hands of our user community. While we debated how
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Sugar, there is an opportunity for using Sugar in an informal setting
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best to get teachers engaged, the teachers themselves have started
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as well, where, unconstrained by the "official" curriculum, the
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reaching out to each other and to us. While we debated how best to
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learner has more of an opportunity to dig more deeply into areas of
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mesh our development cycle with the needs of OLPC and the distros, the
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personal interest. In Caacupé, for example, there has been extensive
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deployments put together their own builds, meeting their own needs.
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use of Saturday learning clubs. In Rwanda, informal time for the
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computer is being allocated at the end of the school day.
   −
As with any project, we have had some churn. Tomeu Vizoso and
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We have not been advocating anything goes; nor have we been anti
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Sebastian Dziallas have moved on to other projects; others are
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teacher. Rather, we have been encouraging "guided discovery", where
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increasing their engagement: Marco Pesenti Gritti is back. Simon
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the teacher has an active role in steering the learners towards
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Schampijer and Sascha Silbe are taking over responsibility for
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"powerful ideas" and engaging the learners in reflection and a
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Glucose; Peter Robinson is the new Sugar-on-a-Stick lead; Tom Gilliard
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critical dialogue about their work. Sugar facilitates this dialogue by
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is advancing our efforts around virtual machine support. We have a
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providing tools, e.g., the Journal, in support of reflection.
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renewed engagement with the OLPC association in Miami, a group
  −
dedicated to the original vision of the project. Activity Central and
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Seeta are among the commercial enterprises offering Sugar support. We
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have some prolific new activity developers, notably ChristoferR and
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Mulawa. I would be remiss in not mentioning the on-going contributions
  −
of Aleksey Lim, who is touching every corner of the project. The Sur
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community has increased its activity and presence in the global
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community. We have a board member from the South, weekly debates on
  −
pedagogy in Spanish, led by Claudia Urrea, keeping us focused on our
  −
mission. Meanwhile, Gary Martin has taken on the bulk of the design
  −
burden. We'd be no where without the time spent by Daniel Drake and
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Bernie Innocenti efforts at deployments. And Bernie and Dogi keep our
  −
infrastructure running. Of course, there are literally 1000s of others
  −
contributing to Sugar development and Sugar deployments. Your efforts
  −
are making a difference.
     −
Other 2010 events of note:
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Our interventions are guided with a goal in mind –
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[http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2006/06/allocation-vs-markets-ancient-struggle.html
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the empowerment of individual competitive and cooperative
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opportunity].
   −
The first Sugar twins: The Sugar community just got larger: Pablo
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:"It would take wit, insight and incredible perspective for many of
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Flores and Micaela Acosta had twins, Nacieron Facundo and Sasha, born
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them to pull back and admit: "Wait... I am prescribing the very thing
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on 27 December.
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I should hate. What I really ought to want are genuinely liberal
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markets, in which the state ensures that all players get to know and
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negotiate and play the great creative game from a level playing
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field. Yes, that will mean some "allocating" to raise up poor children
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to be ABLE to compete well. And yes we must allocate to take into
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account the needs of generations yet to come. But the thing I am
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devoted to is not allocation, ''per se''! The thing I am dedicated to is
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giving all people (including those yet to come) a fair chance to
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play." —David Brin
   −
The first Sugar couple: Sebastian Silva and Laura Vargas met as
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A theme I have taken up repeatedly since we started Sugar Labs is
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volunteers and were married this fall.
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sustainability. We have not been interested in resilience in the usual
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sense of trying to sustain the ''status quo''. Rather, we are trying to
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give children the capacity to grow and adapt so that they can thrive
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in a changing and challenging world.
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I'll do the "leadership thing" and blog about ‘Here’s what we’re going
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Looking forward in 2011, we have any number of technical challenges:
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to do. Here’s how we’re going to do it. Here’s why we’re going to do
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Python introspection, GNOME 3.0, etc. in order to advance the utility,
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it.’ some time in January. Meanwhile, thank you for the great effort
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stability, and maintainability of our product. A recent GNOME camp
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and great accomplishments of 2010.
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attended by Simon Schampijer and Tomeu Vizoso suggest that these are
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achievable goals. We have some refactoring to do in order to better
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support accessibility. Lots of minor patches in service of deployments
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are being submitted by the Dextrose team (a combined effort of some of
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our deployments, community members, and Activity Central employees. We
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have several efforts to revitalize the Sugar-on-a-Stick and Virtual
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Sugar projects, as accessibility to Sugar remains our biggest
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technical challenge. (Indeed, a recent marketing survey conducted by a
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team of Sloan students suggested that while 90% of those surveyed
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recommend Sugar to others, only 33% of those who then try to download
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Sugar are successful.)
 +
 
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Meanwhile, we continue to debate core issues regarding Sugar as it
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relates not just to usability, but also to how Sugar impacts
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learning. Towards that goal, we face social and organizational
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challenges: working with deployments; working with teachers; working
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with end users. Claudia Urea's weekly learning chat has been a model
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that I hope we can scale up in coming months. Pablo Flores is also
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working on various models of community outreach.
 +
 
 +
Sugar is as much a service as a product. As a community we have not
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put as much effort into that aspect of our offering. I am hopeful that
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a large portion of our services will be offered by our growing number
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of local labs. But we need to ensure adequate support for those
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efforts.
 +
 
 +
2. A few weeks ago I was at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The
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small, inexpensive, connected device was ubiquitous. We have to think
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about what role these devices may play in learning and if or how Sugar
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(or some derivative of Sugar) will be part of the mix, i.e., are there
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aspects of Sugar that we should be exporting into the context of
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Android? Perhaps the biggest challenge is how to bring the spirit of
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appropriation to these platforms which are first and foremost tools of
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consumption.
 +
 
 +
=== Help wanted ===
 +
 
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3. Chris Leonard is looking for help with translations. "Just about
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every language (besides Spanish) has some strings that need work.
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Please consider volunteering some time and effort to improve the
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localization in your favorite language.  Recruiting new localizers is
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also a very valuable contribution." See
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http://translate.sugarlabs.org/
 +
 
 +
=== In the community ===
 +
 
 +
4. We are in the process of rethinking our wesite design and also the
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collection of tools we use for communicating with the Sugar
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community. Please add your suggestions to
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[[Blogs#Possible_tools_for_a_new_community_site|possible tools for sa
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new community site.]]
 +
 
 +
5. The [http://www.federacionciclistauruguaya.com.uy/ Tour of Uruguay]
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will be taking place in late March. The Sugar Labs-affiliated
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[http://www.slipstreamsports.com/ cycling team] will be one of the
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teams participating. We should do something
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with the community involving the physics of cycling (e.g.,
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[[Activities/TurtleArt/Using_Turtle_Art_Sensors#Bicycle_trip_computer|odometer]])
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and maps (e.g., get every child to  
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document the part of the race that goes through their town or village)
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and whatever other ideas people have.
 +
 
 +
=== Tech Talk ===
 +
 
 +
6. I've been tardy in acknowledging the release of os860 from OLPC. It
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is the latest "official" release for the XO-1 and XO-1.5 laptops. The
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release is based on Fedora 11 and contains the latest Sugar 0.84
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(including many backported patches from more recent Sugar releases)
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and the GNOME desktop. See
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[http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/10.1.3 release notes].
 +
 
 +
Many thanks to everyone Simon Schampijer, Martin Langhoff, and the
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OLPC Association team, who led a group of testers, translators,
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documenters, developers and others!!
 +
 
 +
A few selected highlights (from Simon's release notes):
 +
 
 +
* We have significantly improved collaboration when XO-1.5 is used
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with no Access Points available ("under a tree"). The Neighborhood
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View now shows three default Ad-hoc networks (for channels 1, 6, and
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11) in user-friendly icons, and XOs will auto-connect without user
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intervention. This behavior is similar to the "mesh" behavior on
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XO-1.
 +
 
 +
* You may now share Journal entries with another learner using a USB
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drive or SD card. The user experience is: Martin wants to give a
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picture he has been drawing to Simon. He plugs in his USB drive and
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copies the Journal entry on the drive. Simon plugs in Martin's drive
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in his laptop. The entry will be shown with Martin's XO color on the
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drive. Simon copies Martin's entry into his Journal.
 +
 
 +
* We have added support for USB2VGA adapters. You can now connect an
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XO to a projector over a USB2VGA adapter and project what is on your
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XO screen onto a screen or for many people to see.
 +
 
 +
* In this build certain activities are protected from being deleted by
 +
accident. In the activity list in the home view the erase option is
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disabled for those. Protected activities are: Browse, Terminal, Log,
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Write, ImageViewer and Record. Nte that the user can still install
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newer versions of these activities.
 +
 
 +
7. Tom Gilliard (satellit) has been making steady progress on Sugar
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images for use in virtual machines. In particular, he is getting much
 +
better (more stable and consistent) results on MAC hardware. See
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[[Emulator_image_files#Other_virtual_machines|other virtual
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machines]].
    
===Sugar Labs===
 
===Sugar Labs===
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<gallery>
 
<gallery>
−
File:2010-Dec-24-Jan-01-som.jpg|2010 Dec 24th-Jan 1st (37 emails)  
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File:2011-Jan-22-28-som.jpg|2011 Jan 22nd-28th (43 emails)
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File:2010-Dec-18-24-som.jpg|2010 Dec 18th-24th (16 emails)
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File:2011-Jan-15-21-som.jpg|2011 Jan 15th-21st (46 emails)
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File:2010-Dec-11-17-som.jpg|2010 Dec 11th-17th (46 emails)  
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File:2011-Jan-8-14-som.jpg|2011 Jan-8th-14th (21 emails)
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File:2011-Jan-1-7-som.jpg|2011 Jan 1st-7th (15 emails)
 
</gallery>
 
</gallery>
  
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