[IAEP] Zero Sugar

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 15.12.2009, at 18:28, Caryl Bigenho wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> I asked this before, but I guess my question was missed.  For us slightly less techie...what is "Zero Sugar?"  It sounds like we are all going on a diet! ;-D

It's a proposal for making XO bundles work on more systems than possible (or practical) now. It would put the xo bundles "on a diet", separating out parts that depend on the host operating system and/or processor type.

Many bundles don't have those parts anyway and will work anywhere. But some bundles do, in particular "sugarized" Linux programs like Firefox or OpenOffice. They only work on specific processor types (usually Intel compatible ones like in the current XO) but not on more power-efficient ones like ARM (which a future XO laptop might use). And they may not work in a specific Linux version.

> P.S. This is a serious question and while you are at it, what is a "blob

Depends a bit on the context, but in general it means unmodifiable data. You can only use a "blob" as is but not modify it, for example because it was generated from source code and you would have to modify the source code and re-generate the blob, instead of taking the blob and modifying it directly.

Sometimes all "binary" files (as opposed to text files) are called "blobs". However that is just sloppy usage of the word, since e.g. a PNG image is binary but still modifiable so it wouldn't really qualify.

- Bert -