OLPC Sugar interface tour gallery

Since being announced in 2005, there aren't too many things we've wanted so much as to get some good, solid time in with the OLPC, and it's sweet, icon-driven Sugar interface. Well, as of yesterday our wishes were granted when official OLPC builds hit the internets. The live CD is of extremely limited utility, but if you want to check out the fruits of Negroponte's ultimate pet project -- and see what millions of kids the world over will be using any semester now -- we've got the goods. Check out the gallery, we covered some decent ground with some of the basic apps bundled with the distro.

Gallery: OLPC Sugar interface tour gallery

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[Mitch @ Apr 11th 2007 12:32PM]

Congrats on the 5000th post! What hardware were you running that on? I want to try it on my MacBook, but just haven't gotten around to it yet.

[Ryan Block @ Apr 11th 2007 1:13PM]

Thanks! Just ran in VMware Fusion on my MacBook Pro. It's a little wonky but definitely works.

[govkid201 @ Apr 11th 2007 12:46PM]

I really like that interface.

[greatslack @ Apr 11th 2007 12:54PM]

Is resolution very low on the screen you're using or is that just a big honkin cursor?

[barrywoods @ Apr 11th 2007 1:53PM]

Why use fusion? Just pop the cd in the drive and hold the d key down. Boots right up. It is a little wonky, would be nice if it actually could get out on the net.

[IrishGandalf @ Apr 11th 2007 1:14PM]

windows 3.1 eat ur heart out, seriously how old does that GUI look? even normal linux without XGL looks about 5 years ahead of that.

[Jean-Michel Decombe @ Apr 11th 2007 1:22PM]

A nice throwback to the eighties. If anyone can tell me what those 4 icons in the top left corner mean, congratulations! So I guess the vintage old school look is in, huh? Seriously, I'm all in favor of a cool user interface for kids but ultimately they will have to use the user interfaces that are in use in the *real* world. Oh well, nice effort anyway and surely something good will come out of it.

[Ryan Block @ Apr 11th 2007 2:01PM]

Because I wanted an easy way to take screen caps at 800 x 600, naturally!

[pelon @ Apr 11th 2007 2:00PM]

One word. Awful

[design4food @ Apr 11th 2007 2:55PM]

Mitch: it seems to run on the macbook pro booting straight from the CD (hold C on boot up)

greatslack : yes it is a big honkin cursor at any res

Jean-Michel Decombe: The four icons at the top seem to be network and app related. I have not seen it working in a network setting yet but the single dot brings up your home(?) screen. The rectangle brings up the app you are working in. The 3 dots show what I assume would be peer network and multi dots I'm guessing would be overall network. (f1-f4 cycle through these)


So far I’m guessing the weirdness of the interface is due to using it on Mac or PC hardware. I’d really like to try it on the $100 hardware before judgment. For now, I think kids will pick it up pretty quickly and adults (read as: the Microsoft tainted) will likely have a tougher time.

[Andy @ Apr 11th 2007 2:44PM]

I played with this last night. Kinda neat interface, absolutely zero configuration possibilities. Not sure why barrywoods had issues, I had no problems getting to the net on my Dell lappy. If I could get it to work with wireless, that would be something. Might make a nice little internet terminal on some really low end hardware...Lord knows I've got plenty of that laying around...

[Ignacio @ Apr 11th 2007 2:47PM]

Mystery Meat Navigation!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/myster

[Juha @ Apr 11th 2007 3:07PM]

Why would Negroponte think that 3rd world kids are a bunch of retards? At least that is the only way I can interpret the UI. Why not just give them what everyone else uses? Fluxbox, Gnome, KDE or even windows would be better than this.

[required @ Apr 11th 2007 6:46PM]

What is the deal with the skull and crossbones? Is the end user dead, a pirate or both?

[Timbobsteve @ Apr 11th 2007 10:31PM]

The interface is great to use. The activity extensions interface (custom apps) is really great. I think they achieved what they wanted, a simple interface with little to no text (for internationalization) and a Window Manager that gets the hell out of the way and lets you use the application you have opened. Its simple, clean and easy to understand. The 4 Icons at the top are very neat. Think of them as "Show Desktop", "Network Places", "Workgroup" and "Entire Network" icons in Windows.

I don't think they are belittling the kids with this interface, instead they are trying to make a simple and extensible interface for the educational environment. I for one think it works quite well. It could use some color, but other than that it is great.

[Steffan Williams @ Apr 12th 2007 7:17AM]

I wrote my own little review of the Sugar environment, running it via Parallels on a Mac.

Check it out at http://www.steffanwilliams.co.uk/software/my-look-at-sugar

[Marc @ Apr 14th 2007 10:07AM]

All the posts about how 'old' or 'outated' or 'from the eighties' that interface is... Read a bit more about OLPC before to comment. Look at the target audience, do you really think a kid from Lybia cares about the latest Linux front-end? The answer is...no! All they want is to have means of communication... So how do you get a computer-illiterate kid to work on a computer? put in front of him simple graphics and a simple interface...
Sugar is genius...
I've had the honnor to work on another aspect of OLPC, and I LOVE SUGAR!

[jokerman @ Apr 18th 2007 8:53AM]

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