Sugar Labs' 'Sugar on a Stick' OS available for any and all

The last time we heard from Sugar Labs, its "Sugar on a Stick" project (a tidied-up build of Sugar OS which can be run live from a CD or USB drive) was just entering beta. Apparently all the company needed to take that version to a release-ready state was a month (give or take). A full, free version of Sugar is now available in a 383MB ISO file for anyone to take advantage of -- though the company is obviously setting its sights firmly in the direction of the education market as usual. The OS -- previously designed for the OLPC XO, but now targeted to any PC or Mac schools have lying around -- is based on the newly released Fedora 11, and is in a "Strawberry" release meant for real world classroom testing. The feedback the company receives on this edition will apparently be incorporated into a future version destined for your hands and eyes at the end of the year. In the meantime, you can take SoaS for a spin... ASAP.

[Via Ars Technica]

[Cris T @ Jun 26th 2009 6:25PM]

This will be great for my little cousin, I could give it to him with my non Windows 7 compatible PC currently pre-installed with Vista.

[Jacobs29 @ Jun 26th 2009 9:39PM]

Or you could avoid the MJ path and not give it to him at all...

[daliminator2000 @ Jun 27th 2009 2:03AM]

Too soon, man. Too soon.

[crsh @ Jun 27th 2009 8:40AM]

How is a PC running Vista not compatible with Win 7?

[Kyle M. @ Jun 26th 2009 6:29PM]

Interesting. I can see this being very beneficial for small children.

[mister.blommer @ Jun 26th 2009 6:35PM]

Any established, lightweight Linux distro would have better served OLPC. Something like Puppy Linux would have been perfect to ship with the OLPC computers.

[mister.blommer @ Jun 26th 2009 6:38PM]

Whoops, meant to reply to myself below.

[mister.blommer @ Jun 26th 2009 6:31PM]

Why are they doing this? Sugar was the biggest problem with OLPC. The hardware was great, but the software was terrible.

[mister.blommer @ Jun 26th 2009 6:36PM]

Whoops, meant to reply to myself below.

[mister.blommer @ Jun 26th 2009 6:37PM]

ULTRA SCREWUP

[hemmy @ Jun 26th 2009 6:59PM]

punch yourself in the gonads for us, and all is forgiven

[TomTom2007 @ Jun 26th 2009 7:17PM]

FAIL

[gyffes @ Jun 26th 2009 10:14PM]

The hardware was underpowered and had too little RAM. The keyboard is crap, the screen is poor, and the trackpad iffy. Yes, the built-in handle is nice, the little ears are cute and the 3 USB ports (and one SD port) are nice, but the rest of it is a total loss. The build quality of my first-gen eee is better, although I grant that the sealed keyboard is better for kids/harsh environs than the eee's little chicklets.

I have the eee, the XO and the Apple eMate side by side and the eMate, built in 1997, still is a better design than the other two. Hell, it still functions: I'd like to see just about anything built today manage that.

[Kamaraderie @ Jun 26th 2009 6:33PM]

Even better idea.
Leave Windows on the PCs and OSX on the Macs.
Children are better off learning how to use any version of Windows or OSX than "Sugar on a Stick".

[Loonie @ Jun 26th 2009 7:04PM]

I respectfully disagree.

[hecklerz @ Jun 26th 2009 7:43PM]

Didn't all the "laptops" at Neverland Ranch use Sugar on a Stick with Jesus Juice battery technology?

Ok, ok.. a bit offensive, but just in case anyone forgot about the man in his 40's hosting sleep-overs for boys under 15 yrs old....

[StimulationEngineer @ Jun 26th 2009 7:31PM]

I think I got diabetes just looking at it

[Poo_and_Wee @ Jun 26th 2009 9:18PM]

It totally mildly irritates me when people make that joke, sending me into a light frenzy. Type 2 diabetes should've been named something else like fatman's condition or something.

[John @ Jun 27th 2009 1:01AM]

Truth hurts, I guess.

[Dave G @ Jun 29th 2009 9:50PM]

Fatman's disease ?? Hmmm.. the thinnest, fittest, most active, with the best diet of my life, and I developed type 2 diabetes. It is genetic. So much for fatmans disease. Easily maintained through diet and exercise.

[jerky @ Jun 26th 2009 7:48PM]

I thought Macs cannot boot non-Mac OSes via USB? I know I tried to create an Ubuntu boot disk on my Macbook Pro, to no avail.

[mattForce5 @ Jun 26th 2009 9:22PM]

You can try installing rEFIt on an Intel Mac for easier approach.
http://refit.sourceforge.net/

[Yipcanjo @ Jun 26th 2009 8:42PM]

Wow. Looks obnoxious. Are those icons supposed to be helpful?

[barry99705 @ Jun 26th 2009 9:29PM]

Uhh, yes. If you can't read, and you play with sugar for more than 5 minutes they are quite helpful.

[John @ Jun 27th 2009 1:03AM]

I agree completely with OP. Just because they're kids doesn't mean they can't handle an organized UI and decently-designed icons.

[nikster @ Jun 27th 2009 4:16AM]

It's meant for kids.

Since everyone knows that kids are way better than adults in figuring out how computers work, they had the liberty to make the icons a colorful soup of meaningless symbols. And they did!

One thing I am sure the kids love though is how adults can't figure out what the hell they are doing with those things.

[jason @ Jun 27th 2009 4:31PM]

I played around with the virtual box version last year. Tricky. Again, correct me if I'm off here, as a Mac user doing the whole sugar on a stick thing just seems a bit tricky. . .

[Valicore @ Jun 27th 2009 12:22AM]

If I were a little kid and was presented with this, I think I'd start crying.

[Max @ Jun 27th 2009 12:42AM]

I still don't get this. I've seen 4 year olds use computers better than most people in there 40's. Why is so much time spent on making a nice ui for kids. All this is going to teach them is to remember where the desktop icons are located, and then freak out when for some unknown reason all the icons move cause the screen res was changed.

[snowtires @ Jun 27th 2009 3:17PM]

Is this for Atari?