The Sugar learning environment is the operating system and software that powers the XO laptops. Sugar Labs packages their software stack onto a flash drive allowing you to not only test drive their environment but also boot to it from any computer at any time. Version 2 of Sugar on a Stick (SoaS) is a major milestone release which brings activity updates along with new activities, better wireless networking, and subtle updates to the UI. So how does the new Sugar on a Stick v2 Stack Up?
My first impression was how incredibly easy it is to obtain and install on your memory stick. Fedora has released a flash installation tool that handles downloading and imaging the flash drive on Windows systems. (There are installation instructions for other operating systems as well.) Not only is this tool available for use to install Sugar on a Stick, but you can also test drive other Fedora Linux distributions. The tool also allows you to partition off some space to save your documents to when in the Linux environment. Keep in mind that when you run this utility you will wipe anything on the memory stick.
Once I had my flash drive loaded with the Sugar on a Stick environment, I was ready to try it out. As my computer started up, I hit the function key that allowed me to choose a boot device. If I were to use this regularly, I would reorder my boot devices to prefer USB over the internal hard drives making it easier to run when needed. This may be useful if you want your child to be able to use the Sugar environment as a gateway into computers while keeping them out of your Windows installation.
As an owner of the original XO-1, I already had a foundation on how the Sugar environment works. The biggest difference that Sugar on a Stick offers is performance. By allowing the Sugar environment to run on modern hardware, you get not only the speed improvements that a 2.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo system can offer over a 433 Mhz AMD Geode but also the use of a real keyboard and mouse instead of the XO-1 membrane keyboard and touchpad. And while the XO-1 keyboard has hardware specific keys that allow bringing up the menu or navigating the UI, Sugar has been engineered in such a way as to not require those keys and I had no problems using Sugar on non-OLPC hardware.
After tooling around the interface a bit I started to dive in to the activities themselves. There are several new stand outs that are part of this default install that I do not have on my current XO-1. Notably there is a typing tutor, a spreadsheet application, a mind mapping tool, math activities, a fun physics simulator (gravity, motion, etc…), and updates to existing packages such as Turtle Art which is a LOGO development environment. A list of activities can be found at the SugarLabs.org website.
The wider range of activities available are impressive and it’s nice to see the community continuing to develop for the platform. I’ve said earlier that opening Sugar to hardware outside OLPC’s XO-1 is a smart move. And while OLPC continues their efforts improving the hardware in the upcoming XO-1.5 release and continues to learn how to navigate the international educational market, Sugar is clearly no longer tied to OLPC’s success or failure.
Allowing us as parents to not only test drive but also use the Sugar environment outside of OLPC is a big deal. It’s not clear if OLPC will be doing the Give One Get One programs again and even if they were, you’d want to wait until the XO-1.5 hardware refresh anyway. So in the mean time, Sugar on a Stick is the only game in town. So dust off an old laptop and download SoaS because there’s never been a safer or more fun way to introduce your young children to computers.
All screenshots by Chuck Lawton. Sugar on a Stick Logo from sugarlabs.org.
