Sugar on a Stick hits 3.0, teaches us about a new kind of fruit

Strawberries go great with shortcake. Blueberries? They make one heck of a pie. But, when we learned about the latest release of the Sugar Learning Platform, we had to go look up just what a Mirabelle is. Turns out it's a small, orange plum that really has nothing to do with Sugar's Fedora underpinnings, but certainly sounds healthier than Google's versioning schemes. Mirabelle has just been given the Sugar on a Stick treatment, and as with previous releases this one can be loaded to DVD or thumb drive and booted to give a taste of XO without requiring any repartitioning. Sugar on a Stick is now an official Fedora spin, distributed on the Fedora site in both 32- and 64-bit flavors at the other end of that source link below.

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Sugar Labs Announces New Version of Sugar on a Stick, Educational
Software for Children


BERLIN, June 10, 2010 - LinuxTag - Sugar Labs®, nonprofit provider of
the Sugar Learning Platform to over one and a half million children
worldwide, has released Mirabelle, the third version of Sugar on a
Stick, a collaborative learning environment that can be loaded onto
any ordinary USB thumbdrive and used with a PC, netbook or Mac without
touching the hard disk. It is available free for download at
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick. Sugar runs natively on
major GNU/Linux distributions and can also run in virtualization under
Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X.

One year after the premiere of v1 Strawberry at LinuxTag 2009 and
following v2 Blueberry last December, v3 Mirabelle brings improved
stability and simplified customization to curious teachers interested
in testing Sugar on new netbooks or PCs already in the classroom. We
suggest teachers reach out to university level computer science and
education schools to build local support structures, important with an
ICT project.

Sebastian Dziallas, Project Lead for Sugar on a Stick and a recent
high school graduate based in Germany, said, "Teachers have told us
how important reliability is in the classroom while engaging students,
so we decided to create a release that has a stable core and can be
customized to fit every deployment's needs. Mirabelle is a solid
baseline which teachers can customize with Activities interesting to
young learners. Part of our strategy is to achieve sustainable
development while inviting new contributors. We achieved this by
integrating Sugar on a Stick more closely with Fedora, the underlying
GNU/Linux distribution; Mirabelle is now an official Fedora Spin."

Sugar Labs is also making available a Sugar Creation Kit, a
downloadable DVD which includes Mirabelle, documentation, and a
library of Sugar Activities, fun and engaging programs for children
taken from the Sugar Activity Library
(http://activities.sugarlabs.org).

Thomas Gilliard, a Sugar Labs contributor, said, "The Sugar Creation
Kit turns any PC into a Sugar on a Stick generating station. Tools and
documentation are gathered on one disk; busy teachers don't have to
hunt down anything. This makes it possible to work via 'sneaker net'
and in a classroom behind a firewall."

Visitors to LinuxTag are invited to meet Sugar Labs contributors at
Hall 7.2a, Booth 115.

[KetsuSan Posted Jun 11th 2010 10:33AM]

So instead of 2.0 are these 3.0, which I assume is much faster?? o_O

[d0mth0ma5 Posted Jun 11th 2010 10:46AM]

@KetsuSan Theoretically about 10 times faster. USB 2.0's theoretical maximum is 480 Mbps, 3.0's is 4800Mbps

[krishansy Posted Jun 11th 2010 10:46AM]

@KetsuSan
Another fruit company? This time I want a larger touchscreen.

[KetsuSan Posted Jun 11th 2010 11:52AM]

@d0mth0ma5 darn thats fast!!! Unfortunately Im not up on my usb game like I should be. But thats awesome!

[thisNthat Posted Jun 11th 2010 10:36AM]

Those colors look juicy! Makes me wanna eat an apple... erm... orange.

[Xstream Posted Jun 11th 2010 10:38AM]

can't believe you didn't know what a mirabelle is

[Crudelitas Posted Jun 11th 2010 10:49AM]

@Xstream
They are techbloggers, their eating habits are most likely pretty bad and if you consider they are americans we can be happy they know what fruits are, even if they do only refer to them as ingredients in cakes and muffins :p

[SeeKo Posted Jun 11th 2010 10:54AM]

@Xstream

You can't expect the computer geeks to know much about fruits and vegetables. Ask them about something that comes in a microwave box or in form of a candy bar. ;-)

[TimStevens Posted Jun 11th 2010 10:59AM]

@Crudelitas I'll have you know I have a garden in which I grow things. Things which, it must be said, are not mirabelles.

I do, however, enjoy a nice cake and muffin from time to time.

[d0mth0ma5 Posted Jun 11th 2010 11:22AM]

@Xstream To be fair unless you're a Farmer from the French region of Lorraine (cheers Wikipedia), then you don't really need to know what a mirabelle is, just say plum.

[smkoerner Posted Jun 11th 2010 11:19AM]

Just had to comment on how bad this article is. I scanned it using RSS and clicked on it because it caught my eye. The author goes into lengthy detail about what fruit it is, but then rattles off a bunch tech jargon with no explanation other than tag references. I realize that they need to cater to a certain audience, but explaining with a little more context would have been welcome. I think these guys get paid by the article, the level of effort is obvious.

[TimStevens Posted Jun 11th 2010 11:27AM]

@smkoerner Curious what sort of content you're looking for and finding lacking in the above? We've already covered SoaS quite extensively:

http://www.engadget.com/tag/SugarOnAStick/

Explaining what it is every time is a bit redundant. That's why there are links above back to the prior releases if you need some further explanation.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 11th 2010 11:33AM]

More like diabetes on a stick. Insulin resistance +3.

[magallanes Posted Jun 11th 2010 1:20PM]

is OLPC spin off product still alive?

O_O