[IAEP] [support-gang] <OLPC

[Peter Robinson]

On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 5:36 AM, James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 03, 2012 at 03:53:32PM +1100, James Cameron wrote:
>> For a truly shared computer, I suggest switching to a login screen
>> before Sugar, such as that provided by the default Fedora (before OLPC
>> OS removed it).
>
> I tried this just now on an XO-4 with 13.1.0 build 15, and was able to
> switch to using a login screen:
>
> # yum install -y gdm       # install the login screen
> # chkconfig olpc-dm off    # turn off the automatic login by OLPC
> # chkconfig gdm on         # turn on the login screen
> # passwd olpc              # set the password on the default account
> # adduser fred             # create a new account
> # passwd fred              # set the password on the new account
> # reboot
>
> It worked reasonably well, and the login screen had a Sugar vs GNOME
> option, but there were a few irritating bugs that would need to be
> worked:
>
> - fonts used by Sugar are too small, (perhaps this is something done
>   by olpc-dm when it should instead be done in a platform-specific
>   session startup for Sugar),
>
> - there's no Logout option on Sugar, to take the system back to the
>   login screen,

It's easy enough to enable with a GConf key

gconftool-2 --direct
--config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s -t bool
/desktop/sugar/show_logout true >/dev/null

> - after Logout from GNOME, there is system startup text displayed for
>   a short time before the login screen appears,
>
> - no Sugar Activities are present in the second account even if they
>   are copied manually ... something that the Sugar developers could
>   probably advise on.

Yes, for the OLPC deployment all the Activities get installed in the
local user directory. For SoaS and Fedora in general where we package
Activities as rpms they get installed in /usr/share/sugar/activities/

I've heard of a couple of places using sugar multiuser on desktops and
even one (or maybe more) using it with thin client/remote X setups
with multiuser without issues so it's certainly usable in this manner.

IMO the gdm login is the only really workable solution. Things like SD
cards or USB sticks are likely to get lost by youngsters.

Peter