Supported systems

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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:

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

Sugar Taxonomy.png

Two steps

  1. 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.
  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 Sugar on a Stick.)

Matrix of Sugar solutions

There are many ways to run Sugar:

Technical considerations

A discussion of technical considerations regarding supported systems.

Starch

Sugar-on-CD-USB.jpg

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
Fedora.jpg Sugar on a Stick is a Fedora Live USB. There is also Fedora "Rawhide" on XO development.
Ubuntu.jpgUbuntu 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 Collaboration Links Notes
binary packages available
Debian.jpgDebian 4.0 0.82 Yes Yes Sugar on Debian
Fedora.jpgFedora 7,8,9 0.82 Yes Yes Sugar on Fedora
Ubuntu.jpgUbuntu 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 team small.pngALT Linux 4.1
Sisyphus
0.82.1
SugarPlatform-0.84.0
Yes Sugar on ALT Linux
Mandriva.pngMandriva Cooker SugarPlatform-0.84.0 Yes Sugar on Mandriva
Caixa Mágica.pngCaixa Mágica 12 SugarPlatform-0.84.0 Yes Sugar on Magalhães
packages not pre-built
Gentoo-logo.svgGentoo 2009-03-19 0.84.0
9999
Yes Sugar on Gentoo
Suse-small.jpgOpenSUSE 11.1 0.84 Yes http://en.opensuse.org/Sugar
IRC Freenode #opensuse-edu
Sugar on OpenSUSE]
Apple.gif Sugar on a Mac (in emulation)
Slackware.png Slackware 12 Sugar on Slackware
XP.gif 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.jpg

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.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

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

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:

https://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.

Gentoo-logo-small.jpg

Gentoo

Alt_linux_team_tiny.png

ALT Linux

  • ALT Linux Team is an international software developers team, collectively working on Sisyphus.

Mandriva.png

Mandriva

To install Sugar on Mandriva follow these instructions.