A matrix of Sugar "solutions"

There are many ways to run Sugar:

(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 0.75.13-1 Yes This is a Live CD of the OLPC system
 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 (Also see Sugar on Fedora)
 Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) 0.79.0-0ubuntu3 Yes Yes Sugar on Ubuntu
8.04 (Hardy) 0.82 Yes Sugar on Ubuntu
packages not pre-built
 Gentoo [x86] [amd64] 2008-10-23 0.82.1 Yes Yes Sugar on Gentoo
MacOS X Sugar on MacOS X
  Slackware 12 Sugar on Slackware
  WindowsXP No Sugar on Windows
Tom van Overbeek describes how to run Sugar using QEMU

Sugar for Various Systems

Complete Sugar Solutions
Manufacturer Model Operating System Tested Notes
OLPC XO-1 Fedora-7 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.jpg

Ubuntu

For a LiveCD/LiveUSB, check out the instructions [1].

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.jpg

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.jpg

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://sdz.fedorapeople.org/olpc/sugar-spin.iso

Here's the SHA1 checksum, just if you're interested:

f032ab45aa116c2728dcd2d676e29a5ee114fd1d  sugar-spin.iso

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

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-logo-small.jpg

Gentoo

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